Assignments

Undergraduate Paper Assignment: You are asked to write an essay of no less than 3000 words (approximately 12 double-spaced pages) on a topic of your choice.   The paper is due the week of November 29 at a time and place specified by your section instructor.  Topics must be discussed with and approved by your section instructor.

All papers must be based in significant part on primary sources, although it is appropriate (and usually necessary) to use secondary sources as well.  Primary sources can consist of contemporary published or unpublished materials; film; painting; photography; music; recorded speeches and radio broadcasts; oral histories; or any other artifact of the period examined in this course.  A great deal of primary material is available in the Columbia libraries and on the Internet.  (The website for this course contains links to many sites from which you might derive sources.)

Although primary sources might suggest a topic to you, they should not themselves be your topic.  Instead, you should use your sources to ask, and attempt to answer, a question about the 1918-1945 era that seems to you interesting and important.  The evidence you gather should support your argument, not be a substitute for it.   At the same time, you should be careful not to choose a question for which no evidence is available or that is too large to be effectively answered in an essay of this length.

Relatively early in the term, your section instructor will ask you to submit a short description of your topic and, a short time later, an example of your sources with a brief analysis of it.  This will give you a chance to work out your plans for your paper with some guidance and will help prevent last-minute desperation.

Your sources should be properly cited, and your paper should contain a bibliography.

Graduate Student Paper Assignment: You are asked to write a paper of 3000 to 4000 words in length, which should be delivered to Professor Brinkley's mailbox by December 6.   Your paper should focus on a subject in the history of the period 1918-1945 for which a significant body of scholarship is available.  You should familiarize yourself with the scholarship on your topic and write a review essay in which you discuss the arguments in at least three (and ideally more) important sources.  The purpose of the essay is not simply to summarize the arguments of others, but to offer your own assessment of the state of the field and the questions still to be answered.  You should consult with Professor Brinkley about your topic in the first half of the semester.