This prompt is about justice, equality, and the experience of women, ethnic minorities, immigrants, and protesters/demonstrators:
To “establish justice” is one of the primary goals of the Constitution according to the preamble. In brief, to “establish justice” means to be concerned with fairness, safety, and equality for all under the law (you may find more expansive definitions elsewhere). The preamble’s mention of “justice” is connected to the “self-evident” truth in the Declaration of Independence that “all men [nowadays, we mean all people] are created equal … endowed … with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Let’s consider what evidence we see on the theme of “justice” in American life during the period from the 1890s through the 1920s. Was the goal to “establish justice” expanding or shrinking between the 1890s and 1920s? Consider specifically how “justice” affected women, ethnic minorities, immigrants, and protesters/demonstrators.
Essay Expectations:
Expectations for each essay are as follows:
• Respond to the question asked with an argumentative essay.
• Use evidence that demonstrates knowledge of our assigned course material.
• Write clearly and cohesively.
• Use citations appropriately.
• Minimum of 750 words.
• Danger-Warning-Beware:
o Late essays lose 1 point per day.
o Evidence of plagiarism and/or collaboration = zero points.
Let’s break down these basic expectations more specifically below.
Respond to the question asked with an argumentative essay.
An argumentative essay is a persuasive essay based on evidence. The essay prompts will ask you to take a position on an issue. Your response should state a claim and reason in the first paragraph and then use the remaining paragraphs of the essay to explain evidence that supports your claim. More effective essays will also acknowledge the evidence that does not support your claim. In short, your essay should explain your position; it should not simply describe the topic.
Use evidence that demonstrates knowledge our our assigned course material.
We will rely on Roark’s Understanding the American Promise for finding reliable evidence to use in the essays. Where should you look? The terms at the end of each chapter (i.e. the Flashcards in LaunchPad) provide useful concepts, events, people, etc. that you can use for evidence. Also, the “Analyzing Historical Evidence” section of each chapter provides excellent primary source material that you can integrate into your essays. For each essay, you should plan on using a minimum of five pieces of evidence drawn from at least two different chapters.
Can you use other sources? Yes, of course, but they are not required. You can integrate other sources into your essay to complement (but not replace) material from our text. Other sources will make your paper longer, but that’s fine. Make sure they are reliable and relevant and cite them appropriately in your essay.
Use citations appropriately.
The more you use your own words and ideas the more effective your paper will be. Do not rely on numerous quotations or block quotations to bulk up your paper.
That said, all work in history builds on primary sources that already exist and conversations (secondary sources) that are already underway. Consequently, we need to use citations to point out when we are borrowing from those sources and conversations.
There are primarily three situations when you need to use a citation: 1) when you summarize or paraphrase a source; 2) when you quote a source verbatim; and 3) when you borrow an idea from a source.
Why do you use citations? 1) to give credit where credit is due (and avoid charges of plagiarism); 2) to show that you are using reliable and relevant sources; 3) to allow your readers to find the sources and read them.
Since you’re only required to use one source (our text), citations should be quite straightforward. We will use the Chicago Manual of Style Author-Date system for citations in this class. This means having a “References” section (like a bibliography) at the end of the paper and parenthetical, in-text citations (instead of footnotes).
Reference-style citation of our text (use this at the end of your essay):
Roark, James L., Michael P. Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, and Susan M. Hartman. 2017. Understanding the American promise: A history. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Parenthetical citation of our text (use this in the body of your essay):
(Roark, et al., 2017, page number)
If you use additional sources in your paper, use the examples above and resources below to format the citations correctly.
How to Cite:
“Author-Date System,” Chicago Manual of Style. Here you’ll find examples and explanations of converting sources to the correct citation format.
Write clearly and cohesively.
You are expected to write clearly and cohesively. Your essays will be evaluated for clarity (i.e. lack of errors in syntax, grammar, spelling, and word choice) and for cohesion (i.e. the logical flow of the paragraph from sentence to sentence and of the essay from paragraph to paragraph). Clear written communication is a core goal of this class, so you are expected to improve your writing based on feedback as the session progresses. In other words, each essay is graded with a higher expectation than the one before it.
Minimum of 750 words (and other other formatting expectations).
• We mean 750 words of your writing. This doesn’t include citations, reference list, titles, extended quotations, etc.
• Title pages are unnecessary; but, include your name and a title for your paper at the top of the first page of your paper.
• Use page numbers.
• Use 1-inch margins.
• Write your paper in a word processing program acceptable to Blackboard (e.g. MS Word); don’t submit PDFs.
• Include a claim (thesis) and supporting reason(s) that directly address the prompt in the first paragraph of your essay.
Resources:
On avoiding plagiarism, see “use citations appropriately” above!!!!!!!
