SOME POSSIBLE TOPICS FOR TERM PAPERS This list is by no means comprehensive. Rather it is a list of examples, to show what sorts of questions may be asked to make a suitable topic. If one of these topics catches your interest, you may adopt it; or you may devise your own, using these as examples. Writing on a topic which is of personal interest makes the task pleasanter, and often encourages better work: consider subjects which interest you, and whether a topic in American history which involves those interests can be created. History embraces not only traditional political concerns, but also economics, social movements, religion, literature and art, science, and even sports. As well as national concerns, topics may focus more narrowly, on localized subjects, or more widely, on international relations and movements. If you do think of another topic on which you might like to write, discuss it with the instructor to confirm that it is suitable.

1. What really went on with John Smith and Pocahontas?
2. Why did it take so long for the North’s numerical and industrial superiority to take effect in the Civil War?
3. What brought about the Panic of 1837, and what were its effects?
4. Why did the Spanish penetration of what became the United States stall after its early success?
5. Jay Gould: the “American Dream”?
6. How influential was tobacco in establishing and shaping the Colonies?

7.How were native societies affected by the introduction of the horse?

8. American railroading and land development: who was taken for a ride?
9. How did the social and political ideals of the revolutionaries of Virginia and Massachusetts compare?
10. Was the Mormon religion a product of its place and time?
11. Was Abraham Lincoln’s humour an asset or liability, politically?
12. How much was George McClellan’s prosecution of the war with the South affected by his political opposition to Lincoln?
13. The “Great Awakening”: who awakened and what was the result?
14. How did the West Coast respond to the Civil War, and why?
15. How did the “Regulators” of the Carolinas and other frontier protesters see their relationship with the seaboard centres?
16. Did the conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson cause the creation of the two-party system?
17. What did the response to Shay’s Rebellion say about the new United States?
18. Was slavery essential to the establishment of the American colonies?
19. Why did the witch-hunt of Salem grow so large and so rapidly?
20. Is it accurate to call the “Trail of Tears” genocide by the U.S. government?
21. How was the Mexican War justified?
22. John Brown: madman or martyr? 23. Was the secession of the South legal? 5
23. Why did the Roanoke colony fail? Was this inevitable?
24. Did the Puritan settlements develop in the way their founders intended? Why or why not?
25. Why was the concept of “militia” so important to Americans? Did the militia in practise live up to expectations?
26. Why did the Tea Act provoke such violent response, when it actually lowered the cost of tea to the American public?
27. Could Britain have won the Revolutionary War?
28. The War of 1812 has been called the “second war of American independence”. Is this a fair description?
29. Abolitionism and anti-abortionism are both intense campaigns based on morality; how comparable are the two movements?
30. Why were patent medicines and alternative medical systems so popular in the United States before the Civil War?
31. Why did the United States become such a center of technological innovation as the nineteenth century progressed?
32. Was slavery cost-effective?
33. Why did Benedict Arnold change sides?
34. Compare the revolutionaries of Virginia and Massachusetts. How were they different?
35. How did the campaign against slavery lead to the women’s rights movement?
36. Was Benjamin Franklin the quintessential American? 38. What education was available to women before 1865?

Notes serve the following purposes

: (a) To indicate the exact source of every quotation used. (b) To acknowledge indebtedness to others for opinions or ideas. (c) To show the source of factual details. (d) To give authority for a fact that the reader might be inclined to doubt. (Naturally no note is required for facts that may be regarded as matters of common knowledge and that are generally accepted as true.) (e) To give other material that, if it were included in the essay itself, would interrupt the main current of thought.

2. Notes at the bottom of the page (“footnotes”) are convenient for the reader, but the alternative of presenting all notes on a separate page at the end of the paper (“endnotes”) is also acceptable. When a work is first cited the note should include the author; the full title; the place, publisher, and date of publication; the volume number; and the page reference.
3. If the author and title of the work are fully included in the body of the paper, only the remaining information–that is, place and date of publication and page reference–need be cited in the note.
4. Because notes are not arranged alphabetically by author there is no need to invert the author’s names. The title page of the work dictates whether the author’s given names or his initials are to be cited.
5. If a work is cited more than once on the same page, and if its references are consecutive, then the term Ibid. (from the Latin ibidem meaning “in the same place”) is used, followed by the page number.
6. If a work is cited more than once but there is an intervening citation, then the author’s surname, the title in abbreviated form, and the page number must be cited. 7.

Commas, not periods, are used in the note because the whole note is regarded as an elliptical sentence. A period ends a note on all occasions.

8. Notes should be numbered consecutively throughout the paper. 7 Examples

BOOKS IN ONE VOLUME 1Nicholas Shakespeare, The Men who would be King: A Look at Royalty in Exile (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984), pp. 122- 127.

2Arthur Kallet and F.J. Schlink, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1933), p. 47.

3 Ibid., p. 49.

4Shakespeare, Men who would be King, p. 134.

MORE THAN TWO AUTHORS

5 J.L. Granatstein et al., Twentieth Century Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1983), p. 127. TRANSLATION

6Alexander Solzhenitsyn, August 1914, trans. Michael Glenny (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 110.

BOOKS IN MORE THAN ONE VOLUME

7Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution: 1917-1923, 3 vols. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), III:170-173.

BOOKS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF AN EDITOR

8Marylee Stephenson, ed., Women in Canada (Toronto: New Press, 1973), p. 261.

PERIODICAL ARTICLES,

ABSTRACTS, REVIEWS, ETC. 9Yuri Fedosyuk, “Immortal Victory,” Sputnik: Digest of Soviet Press, May 1975, pp. 4-7.

10R.M. Saunders, “The First Introduction of European Plants and Animals into Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 16 (1935): 392.

11W. Kaye Lamb, review of British Columbia: A History, by Margaret Ormsby, in British Columbia Historical Quarterly 21 (Ja.-Oct. 1957-58): 221.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

12″Bull and the Gun,” Edmonton Journal, August 18, 1990, p. G1.

13Vancouver Sun, April 21, 1990.

ARTICLES IN ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND SIMILAR REFERENCE WORKS

14Dictionary of Canadian Biography: Volume II, 1701-1740, art. “Laval, François de.”

ARTICLES OR ESSAYS IN COLLECTIONS 15Gwen Terasaki, “Hunger in the Mountains,” in Imperial Japan, 1800-1945, ed. Jon Livingston et al. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), p. 470.

CITATIONS AT SECOND HAND

16Dièreville, Relation, quoted in Andrew Hill Clark, Acadia: The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 166

LATER EDITIONS, REPUBLICATIONS, REPRINTINGS,

ETC. 17Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff, The Modern Researcher, 3rd. ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1977), pp. 3-5.

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

18British Columbia, Report of Royal Commission on Matters Relating to the Sect of Doukhobors in the Province of British Columbia, 1912 (Victoria: King’s Printer, 1913), p. T22.

19British Columbia, Department of Agriculture, Statistics Branch, Agricultural Statistics 1927 (Bulletin no. 104) (Victoria: King’s Printer, 1928), pp. 10, 33, 38.

STATUTES 20British Columbia, Horticultural Board Act, 1892.

ON-LINE SOURCES

On-line databases which reproduce print sources (e.g. JSTOR, Googlebooks, etc.) should be cited in the usual fashion, followed by the statement “Accessed via JSTOR” (or whichever database 9 used).

Other websites should be cited as the name of the webpage, then its IP address, then the date accessed.

21“CBC Radio Summer – Revision Quest”, www.cbc.ca/radiosummer/revisionquest/ Accessed Aug. 27, 2009

The Web should be used as a source only with extreme caution, as many websites are extremely inaccurate, and many other are deliberately misleading. Generally speaking, trust only websites which emanate from academic institutions, government agencies, or major libraries and museums. Wikipedia is generally reliable, but it is a general reference source only – it is suitable for verifying names and dates, but does not have sufficient detail and depth of discussion to support a term paper.

10 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. All books and articles cited in the notes and text should be listed alphabetically in the bibliography. Any other material used but not specifically cited may also be included.
2. Periods, not commas, are used in the bibliography to separate the author from the title and the title from the publication details. 3

. When an author appears more than once in a bibliography the ditto sign for his name appears as a line of 10 hyphens followed by a period: ———-. (If the bibliography is written by hand, use the following form: __________.)

Sample Bibliography

Barzun, Jacques, and Graff, Henry F. The Modern Researcher. 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1977.

British Columbia. Department of Agriculture. Statistics Branch. Agricultural Statistics 1927. (Bulletin no. 104) Victoria: King’s Printer, 1928.

“Bull and the Gun.” Edmonton Journal, August 18, 1990, p. G1.

Saunders, R.M. “The First Introduction of European Plants and Animals into Canada.” Canadian Historical Review 16 (1935): 388-406.

Shakespeare, Nicholas. The Men who would be King: A Look at Royalty in Exile. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984.

QUOTATION

Quoted material should correspond exactly with the original in wording, spelling, and punctuation. Students are urged to re-check all quoted material against original sources to ensure absolute accuracy. Avoid excessive quotation.

Short direct quotations should be incorporated into the text and enclosed in double quotation marks. Use single quotation marks to set off one quotation enclosed in another

. Prose quotations longer than three typewritten lines should be indented five spaces; should begin on a new line; should (usually) be introduced by a statement ending with a colon; should be typed single spaced; and should not be enclosed in quotation marks.

One or two lines of quoted verse may be incorporated into the text if the passage is enclosed in quotation marks and a slash (/) is used to indicate a line ending within the passage. The capitalization of the original should be retained. Quoted verse extending beyond two lines in 11 the original should begin on a new line, should be indented, and should not be enclosed in quotation marks. Note, for example, this famous limerick by A.H. Reginald Buller of the University of Manitoba:

There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.

Students are cautioned against plagiarism–that is, the using of another person’s words or ideas without proper acknowledgement. The rule is that when two or more important words are used in the same form and juxtaposition, they must be placed in quotation marks. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. See the section of the Okanagan College Calendar on “Academic Offenses” for Okanagan College’s plagiarism policy and procedures.

SPELLING AND STYLE

Use the most recent Oxford dictionary for correct spellings. In cases where more than one spelling is given, use the first listed. Do not mix English and American usage. Reference works of correct usage are readily available. One particularly appropriate manual is The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing (Toronto and London: Dundurn Press Ltd., 1985). This book was prepared by the Department of the Secretary of State’s Translation Bureau, and gives accurate Canadian standards of usage for such matters as abbreviation, spelling, punctuation, and quotation.

FORMAT

Students are encouraged to type their papers, although neat, legibly handwritten papers will be accepted. Standard quarto size paper (8½ x 11 inch) should be used. Do not use erasable bond. The text should always be typed double spaced, except for lengthy quotations; footnotes and bibliography should be single spaced within each entry, with a double space between entries. Margins should always be not less than 1½ inches on the left and not less than 1 inch on all other edges.

A paper should include: (a) title page, including title of the paper, student’s name, course name and number, section number, instructor’s name, and date submitted;

(b) body of text;

(c) endnotes (if not given as footnotes at the bottom of text pages);

(d) bibliography. 12 Students are strongly recommended to keep a draft or photocopy of the paper, in case of accident to or loss of the original.

GOING FURTHER This style sheet is an adaption of an Undergraduate Style Sheet from the University of British Columbia. It is by no means comprehensive. Students needing further information should consult style manuals which use this system of citation, such as the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual of terms.