HST 495
The American Experience in Vietnam
Paper Topic Assignment
The purpose of this short assignment is to help you develop a good paper topic for the final paper you will turn in at the end of the course.
Thesis: Describe the challenges faced by American combat soldiers in Vietnam. What conditions and factors blunted the effectiveness of the American military?
Assignment Guidelines
- It must be a two to three page paper – not including bibliography
- You must use footnotes for all sources mentioned in your essay
- Your paper must include a bibliography.
- Separate your primary and secondary sources in your bibliography.
- You must use correct form for footnotes and for the bibliography. Remember, citations for footnotes and bibliographies are different. See Rampolla for the rules and examples. Check her sample pages, 131-132, that demonstrate how notes and a bibliography should look in a research paper.
First, introduction the topic you wish to write on
Then, what do you hope to prove about this topic? You do not need to have a thesis—that is, one argument and its answer—developed yet. But you do need at least one and perhaps several open-ended questions about your topic that you hope to answer. These questions should present puzzles that you, the intrepid historian, can solve. (Write these questions as questions—with a question mark.) For example, it’s not enough to say “I am going to write a paper on women’s experience in Vietnam.” What about women’s experience? Which women? What are the specific events or questions you’re going to try to answer in your paper?
Your answer must reflect your reading of primary and secondary sources. George Herring’s book, America’s Longest War, is an excellent secondary source; however, you must also refer to one other secondary source, which can be as brief as one article or a single chapter from a book.
Also, how do you intend to answer your questions? You must explain what primary sources you will use for your paper and how you know these sources are available and relevant for your paper. In other words, you must explain how reading these documents will enable you to solve your questions and thus write your paper. (See paragraph above; you obviously have to do some reading of the primary sources to answer this. At least enough to get your feet wet!)
