For example, a person, a castle, a weapon, a type or piece of armor, an animal important to medieval people, a medieval myth, a town, forms of clothing, a saint, a medieval book, a work of art, agricultural implements, writing implements--the list could go on forever, but by now you should get the idea!!

Length:  5-7 pages; double-spaced typewritten (pages must be numbered!)

If you choose to do footnotes, then they will be part of the 5-7 page limit.  If, on the other hand, you choose the endnote option, you may, but do not have to count them as part of the 5-7 page limit.  Thus endnotes give you somewhat more space for writing.  This is an option that will be appreciated by people like myself who always have more to say than space to say it in!

Citation:  Footnotes or Endnotes of the sort used by historians

I do not want you to use the MLA style involving parenthetical insertions in the text and a source list at the end. a system that has been developed for literature papers and one that many of you may have learned in English classes you have taken.

My reason is this:  you are at present taking a history course and should learn how historians do things

To learn how to set up proper footnotes for writing a work of history, access the following website:

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/footnote.html

1.  Submit the paper in a soft-covered, three-prong folder (of the sort displayed in class several times during the course)

This is the type of folder where you put the prongs through the three drilled holes, then bend them over to secure the paper.

The holes MUST be drilled and fastened into the folder with the prongs.  Don't just place an undrilled paper into the folder.

2.  This folder should also contain a short appendix made up of photocopies of major sources employed in writing the paper.  

(a)    If you have made extensive use of a book or a lengthy article, photocopy ONLY the title page of the book, the opening page of the article, and the most important pages in each that you have used in your research.

(c)  If you have used a website and the article is a shot one, print down and include all of the webpage(s) you have used.

(d)  If you have used a website and the article is a long one, print down and include only that part of the web article that you have used extensively.

3.  The paper and appendix MUST have the three holes punched and be inserted into the three prongs in the folder.

4.  The paper should have a SEPARATE title page containing the following information:

(a)    The title of your paper
(b)    Your full name, including any middle initial(s)
(c)    Your UTEID
(d)    Your College
(e)     Instructor
(e)    The course name and course  number in the UT system

The following is an example of how I would prepare the title page for one of my papers if I were a student in this course:

Title:  Taking the King's Shilling to Avoid the Wages of Crime:  The Use of Military Pardons in the Early Phases of the Hundred Years War

Name:  L. J. Anrew Villalon

UTEID:  av4487

College:  Liberal Arts

Instructor:  Professor Villalon

Course Name and Number:  Medieval History/HIS 309k or AHC 310

It is always better to do a thorough job on a more limited topic.  It is for precisely this reason that I ask you to hand in a brief perspectus; in that way, I can help you fine-tune your efforts.

Wikipedia will not be accepted as a valid source of information in your paper without your citing at least one other source corroborating any piece of information that you have taken from Wikipedia.

(c)  At least one of these sources and preferably several should be primary in nature.

No research paper should be based entirely upon secondary sources.  Few if any such articles are ever worth writing.

A primary source is a source more or less contemporary with the event, individual, or whatever else you have chosen to write about.  Eyewitness accounts are a good example of primary sources.

I do not expect you to go to sources in the original language (particularly if you do not know that language); however, there are many printed primary sources available in English translation.  Some such sources I do expect you to find and use.  With the professor's help, the wise student will select a topic for which some such sources are available.

Determining that fact is another good reason for consulting the professor.

Write in your own words, combining information from different sources.  This is the best way to avoid one of the most deadly of intellectual sins--PLAGIARISM.

These are but a very small sampling of the innumerable questions that could be explored in an interesting and informative paper.

Once you have decided upon the question (or questions) you wish to answer and completed your research, you should be able to begin the paper with some sort of a thesis statement.  It may be a simple sentence stating what you intend to accomplish in the paper OR what amounts to paragraph embodying this information.

The two following are examples of how one might enter the same paper on the fall of the Knights Templar and the degree to which they bore responsibility for their own demise:

Here is a simple way into the topic that sets forth a thesis around which the paper will be based, namely the fact that the actions and activities of this religious order helped bring about its fall.

In 1307, the French monarchy , soon followed by the Church, moved against the richest and most secretive of Church orders, the Knights Templar, whose own actions and activities contributed greatly to their fall.

Now if I were writing the paper on how the Knights Templar helped bring about their own sorry fate, I would tend to start my essay somewhat more expansively and dramatically, a writer's trick for holding the attention of his/her readers.

On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV “the Fair” (1285-1314) had royal officials suddenly and without warning arrest every member of the Templar Order throughout France.  In the next seven years, these men would be imprisoned, tortured, and forced to confess to numerous crime.  In 1312, Pope Clement V (1305-1314), due largely to pressure exerted by the French king, disestablished the order and distributed its property among other orders of the church, in particular, the rival Knights Hospitaler.  Two years later, when the Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, and several of his subordinates retracted their confessions, Philip had them publicly burned at the stake.  While contemporaries found these events strange and shocking, the fact that they took place should not really come as any surprise.  In many ways, by their own attitudes and actions, the Templars played an extensive role in their own undoing.

Note:  in my short opening passage, I have tried to accomplish two things:
(1)   I have set the historical stage.
(2)  I have also made clear the principal argument I shall be pursuing throughout the paper:  that  "the Templars played an extensive role in their own undoing."

Jack would be proud of me!!