Basic Instructions:

Subject Matter:  Spanish History and/or Culture

Specific Topic:  Something  that interests you

Length:  7-10 pages; double-spaced typewritten

Date Due:  Last regular class period of the semester.  (Note:  This does not mean the reading period or the exam day!!)

Citation:  Footnotes or Endnotes of the sort used by historians

Do NOT use the MLA style involving parenthetical insertions in the text.

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

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

Rules for Submission:

(1)  The paper should be placed in a soft-covered, three-ring folder (of the sort displayed in class at the beginning of the course).  This folder should also contain photocopies of major sources employed in writing the paper.  

(a)    If you have made extensive use of a book or article, photocopy the title page of the book, the opening page of the article, and the most important pages used for research.

(b)    If you have used a website, print down and include the webpage(s).

(2)  The folder can simply be inserted into the half-inch binder being used for the portfolio and the two turned in together.

(3)  Both the portfolio and the paper should have a title page containing:

(a)    The title of your paper

(b)    Your full name, including any middle initial(s)

(c)    Your UTEID

(d)    Your College

(e)    The course name and number

General Suggestions for Approaching a Research Paper:

The paper can deal with any topic relevant to Spanish history and/or culture.  In other words, it can be either a historical paper or one dealing with present day Spain.  However, keep in mind the following:

1.  Choosing a Topic

(a)  The topic should be something that is of enough interest to you to spend the time to do it well.

(b)  Do not choose such a large topic that you cannot cover it adequately within the assigned page limit.

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.

(c)  By the 7th week of the semester (at latest), all students should have chosen (at least tentatively) their topic, consulted with the professor, and begun to gather research materials.

2.  Sources and the Importance of Primary Material

(a)  The paper should use and cite at least a half dozen sources.  (These are not to be the same as the 15 sources that you have collected for the portfolio.  Finding those is a separate assignment.)

(b)  At least several of your research sources should come from places other than the web.  (Books, articles, etc.)

(c)  At least one (and hopefully more) of these sources 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.

3.  Avoiding Plagiarism

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


An Added Suggestion from your Professor:

My academic mentor, J. H. Hexter, one of the twentieth century's foremost historians of the early modern period, regularly told his graduate students “your historical writing will only be as good as the questions you ask.”  This is good advice for undergraduates as well.

All good historical writing must do more than just convey information; while names, facts, and dates form the vocabulary of history, they are not its end-all-and-be-all.  Instead, they should be used as needed to answer those "good questions" to which Jack Hexter was referring.

Once you have decided upon the question (or questions) you wish to answser and completed your research, you should be able to begin the paper with some sort of a thesis statement.

For example, if I were writing a paper on how the famous Knights Templar helped bring about their own sorry fate, I might start my essay as follows:

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) disestablished the order and distributed its property among other orders of the church.  Two years later, when the Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, and several of his subordinates retracted their confessions, Philip had them burned at the stake.  While contemporaries found these events strange and shocking, that they took place should come as no surprise.  In many ways, by their own attitudes and actions, the Templars, the leading military-religious order of the medieval period, played an extensive role in their own undoing.

Note:  that in this short opening passage, I have accomplished 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, i.e. "In many ways, by their own attitudes and actions, the Templars, the leading military-religious order of the medieval period, played an extensive role in their own undoing.

Jack would be proud of me!!