Historiography paper

The culminating assignment in HIST 400 is an historiography paper. What is an historiography paper? It is an analytical assessment of the state of the scholarly history writing about your topic. More to the point for this class, it is a 15-20 page paper (double-spaced, around 4500-6000 words) that analyzes and compares the five monographs (books) you collected for your annotated bibliography. Using sources that are not blocked by pay walls. Including a five page rough draft. Your paper should be broken down along these lines: Introduction (1-3 pages): Provide brief background context for your research topic. Outline what kind of work has been done on the topic. In other words, you will briefly introduce each of your five books. Present your analysis of the five books as a group. How do they compare with one another? Are there distinct schools of thought or research approaches you can identify? Briefly point out any controversies within the field or any recent research that has raised questions about earlier assumptions, if they are relevant to your paper. Conclude with a purpose or thesis statement. The thesis statement will sum up and evaluate the current state of research on this topic. If applicable, your thesis might make an argument that there’s a hole, or a gap, in the existing research that you plan to fill with your own work. Body (2-3 pages per book): Address each book one at a time. Analyze the book’s scope and content, its sources and methods, and its argument(s). Organize your discussion of each book it a logical way. In other words, group them in a way that makes sense given your paper’s thesis, which may mean, for example, associating similar books with one another, establishing contrasts between different approaches, or presenting emerging research findings chronologically. Smooth and meaningful transitions from discussion of one book to the next should support the paper’s thesis and make the paper’s overall argument clear to the reader. Conclusion (1-3 pages): Summarize the evidence presented and show its significance. Rather than restating your thesis or purpose statement, explain what your historiographical overview tells you about the current state of the field and discuss implications and possibilities for future research.