In this module, we study about four decades of U.S. History through the use of many different kinds of resources we used: online textbooks, the encyclopedia website Wikipedia, readers that contained a rich treasure trove of primary source documents, a digital archive, pages from the Library of Congress, and more. My goal in throwing so many different types of materials at you was to expose you to the wealth of ways that American history can be studied. It also was to give you a chance to try and discern the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different documents we examined.
For this assignment, I would like you to take a closer look at three documents and write a brief essay (about 250 to 500 words) about them.
To prepare for the assignment, please do the following:
Review the M2 Study Guide: Nuts and Bolts of Historical Research and the following resources:
United States v Bhagat Singh Thind summary from Wikipedia
United States v Bhagat Singh Thind Supreme Court Ruling
Bhagat Singh Thind Materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive
Your essay should:
Identify each type of resource
Explain what kinds of different information each resource conveys
Break down the strengths and weaknesses of each resource.
Reflect on the research skills you have been using in the course to this point, and share some insights as to how you knowledge of how to do historical research is growing.
Identify any questions you might be having about doing historical research.
Please use the Chicago Style for citations, and take care to ensure that the citations are completed properly. For assistance in completing your assignment utilize the resources available to you in the Library Resources, Academic Integrity and Research Guidelines page of the Course Information documents.
Your Assignment will be assessed on the strength of the historical question you ask as well the extent to which you develop your argument based on the selected documents along with the Historical Writing Guidelines.