Academic Journal Articles

Find three academic journal articles that touch on your topic. They can come from academic journals OR from collections of articles bound as books (i.e. from an “article anthology”). Some strategies for finding articles (try them all, so you get experience using each of these tools):

• Use the standard BU Library search system, turning on the filter for “peer-reviewed article” and for “available online”
• Plunder the bibliography of a published book or article you found earlier
• Look on Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)

Note: to count for this assignment, the article must (1) date within the last 20 years, (2) be written from a historian’s perspective, (3) focus at least in part on the events and culture of the period we’re studying.

Pro Tip Use keyterms (names, events, places) from your research so far to find articles on aspects of your topic that interest you.

For Class On your GoogleDocs research findings page, create a new heading, “Peer-Reviewed Articles.” Then list bibliographic information for each of your articles, along with a BU library link and a screen capture of the first page. In addition, for each article give the following three bits of information:

1. One sentence naming the article’s topic
2. One sentence voicing the prior understanding that the author addresses (often explicitly voiced as a reference to the work of prior scholars)
3. One sentence voicing what the author has to say in response to that prior understanding. What new insight or findings does the author present (the article’s I Say)

Choose one of these article write-ups to highlight in the comments below.

In Class

• Evaluating Academic Journal Articles (which of yours are any good?)
• Primary Sources: Illustrations or Evidence?
• Qualities of a good presentation (Steve Jobs & the iPad)

Plundering the (Virtual) Shelves of Mugar

Ahoy, Matey! We pirates be a greedy bunch, and there are books aplenty at Mugar—and many of them are available online!

But don’t weigh yourself down with leaden coins. Many a book bears a promising title but turns out, upon inspection, to focus on matters irrelevant to your inquiry. So sit yourself down under the light of Mugar’s many lamps and crack open each of your books to see what lies therein. Then, if the book is indeed of use, turn it to further use by trawling through its notes and bibliography for leads on other books you might find and plunder.

Remember that your focus here is historical: you’re looking to learn the history of an movement or idea. That may be easy for some topics—the history of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, for example, has been extensively documented. By contrast, there are lots of books on dinosaurs, but few (none?) on the history of dinosaurs as a cultural phenomenon. If you can’t find a book with a focus that’s exclusively historical, however, you may be able to find some that discuss the topic’s history in the introduction or in early chapters. So it’s really important that you crack the covers on your books before you check them out of the library: read the table of contents and skim through the introduction and several chapters to get a sense of what’s on offer here. What approach does the author take to the topic? Does the book adopt a historical perspective at some point, attempting to explain the present by reference to the past? If so, you have a source worth your while.

Research Findings Create a Google Doc for publishing your research findings:

1. Go to docs.google.com
2. Make sure you’re logged in to your bu.edu google account. (This will facilitate sharing, below.)
3. Start a New Document
4. Click on Share, then under “Get Link” choose the “Boston University” option.
5. Copy link, then add the link to your post on this website on the Topics for Unit Three page.

In the coming weeks, you’ll be using this Google Doc to keep a record of your research findings. This will provide your classmates access to the fruits of your research, and it will make it easier for you and I to confer during office hours.

For today, paste a list of 3 single-author books you think look interesting formatted Author, Title, Year, Link. The link you’re looking for is the one that the library website displays after you’ve clicked a green “Online Access Available” link. It might be labelled Jstor or Proquest Ebook Central. In your Google Doc, format the link as an embedded link, rather than as a long text string. Skip two lines between entries.

After you’ve done all that, make a screenshot of the table of contents for the book that strikes you as most promising, and upload the screenshot in a comment, below, along with two sentences describing what this book is about and why you want to read it.

Reading

Michael Gerson, “The Last Temptation,” an article from the current issue of The Atlantic magazine. Gerson offers an example of a writer seeking a deeper understanding of a present-day phenomenon by studying its past.

As you read, note moments where Gerson surprises you. Type one such quotation in as a comment, below. If someone else has already put up the quote you were planning, write a reply commenting on what made that moment in the essay surprise you. In particular, what’s Gerson doing, as a writer, to engage his readers in this way?

Example of a Multisource Essay

Reading HW Download and read the excerpt from Brett Harvey’s oral history of women’s experience of the 1950s that’s posted among the Readings on our Blackboard Site. As you read, make a list of all Harvey’s sources. I found about 10.

Harvey’s account of motherhood in the 1950s is partially interest since those suburban moms gave birth to late-60s teen rebels. But my principal aim here is to provide you with an example of the sort of scholarship I’m looking for in the upcoming essay. Harvey has assembled her account by piecing together both Evidence and Authority sources. But, because she’s writing for a popular audience, her book lacks scholarly source citations. So you’ll have to read carefully and do a bit of guesswork to piece together what sources she’s drawing on at any given moment of this chapter.

In the comments below, post ONE of the sources you identified by reference to the page and the moment in her argument. For instance, (these are both made-up examples):

• “On p101 in speaking of family trips, Harvey draws from a 1950s travel brochure published by the American Automobile Association.”
• “On p120 Harvey draws on another historian (I assume) to provide a brief history labor-saving appliances like clothes-washers from 1930s up through the early 60s.”

Preliminary Findings: Wikipedia

Read about the topic you selected for this unit in Wikipedia and other easily accessed resources. Make sure to read around your topic, trying to find a broad range of articles that bear on it.

Note that there may be no article that focuses specifically on your particular, so be inventive and look for articles that reference or relate to your topic in some way.

Writing HW Paste into the Comment Field, below:

• A list of TEN key individuals, organizations and events, ranked in order of significance. If you’re covering a movement, consider including not just movement activists, but political opponents and enemies.
• A paragraph written by you providing a basic outline of what you’ve learned. Your paragraph should briefly sum up the “story” of what happened in your topic over the past few decades (reaching back as far as a century if you like). If possible, end this ¶ with a question motivating further research: What would you genuinely like to know more about? What strikes you as odd or in need of further explanation?
• Following the ¶, list any 2 or 3 leads on secondary sources (scholars/authorities). These should be published sources, not mere websites. You’ll find these leads at the bottom of each wikipedia article, under the headings “References,” “Further Reading,” and “Bibliography.”

In Class: Books in Mugar
Please bring your laptop with you to class, preloaded to this link: http://www.bu.edu.

The Earliest Essays, 1 of 2

Read Montaigne’s “On Cannibals,” available in the Readings posted on the Blackboard site.

Respond to ONE of the following in 3 or 4 sentences, then rewrite your response and submit in 2 sentences MAXIMUM:

1. Point to (or quote) a moment when Montaigne draws on “Authorities.” (Don’t duplicate what others have already posted.)
2. Point to (or quote) a moment when Montaigne draws on real-world experience or “Evidence.” (Again, try to avoid duplication.)
3. Looking at the examples posted in response to questions 1 & 2, does Montaigne seem more dependent on Authorities or on Evidence? Which does he trust more?
4. Connect Montaigne to Hall’s conception of the essay from last week.

Classes Cancelled

In 2021 this class is being cancelled to provide a Wellness Day.

The Crux of Debate

A philosophical dialogue aims to deepen the reader’s understanding of an issue by subjecting both sides of the debate to critique. To ensure you address those aspects, this homework asks you to read back through your research of the opposition’s arguments.

Point of clarification: Some of you may be planning a dialogue between a moderate and a radical on the same side of an issue. In this case, you will need to adapt the following HW assignment to fit your situation. Your opponent is the group you will debate in the dialogue and NOT necessarily the other side of the political divide. For example, if you’re arguing a “moderate gun control” position against a radical one, your old research of the opposition from Class 6.1 (G1|G2|G3) likely presents the anti-gun-control position and is no longer relevant for your dialogue. You’ll need to identify which articles from Class 5.2 (G1|G2|G3) represent the radical gun-control position and use them as your new collection of opposition articles.

Assignment: Read back through your research of the opposition’s arguments from Class 6.1 (G1|G2|G3). To make sure you haven’t missed anything vital, Google up two additional articles to add to your collection. Then from among this collection of articles:

• What are the two strongest arguments made by the opposition? Ideally, try to identify two categorically different arguments: an appeal to emotion and a statistical appeal to reason, for example. Summarize each one in a separate ¶.
• Can you find any moments where the opposition references and counters arguments from your side? Summarize the point they’re making, and the rhetorical appeal they’re employ—pathos, logos, pathos, or something else? Give this one ¶.
• Statistics: give a ¶ to contrast how your side and the other side use statistics. In listening to several anti-gun-control arguments last week, I was struck that the NRA and its supporters make claims using statistics that would seem to run precisely counter to the claims made by gun-control advocates using statistics. How is this possible? I’d like to think that close analysis of the statistics and claims of both sides would reveal a deeper truth—and that would be an amazing move to make in a dialogue.

Upload all 4 ¶s as a pdf, choosing ONE of the four to paste in your comment—choose the one on which you’d like feedback.

The Essay and the Age of Discovery

In 1492, Columbus transformed Europeans’ understanding of the world. Not by proving that the world was round—most people believed that already. But rather by discovering lands and peoples that had not been known to the ancients. In an era that gave great weight to Greek and Roman learning, Columbus stumbled on something wholly new—what Harari calls “The Discovery of Ignorance.”

For class, please read the first two sections of Harari Ch 14 (stop reading when you get to the heading “The Scientific Dogma”) as well as an essay by Michael Hall titled “The Emergence of the Essay and the Idea of Discovery,” posted among the readings on our Blackboard site.

For homework, respond to one of the following prompts, posting under the appropriate heading below:

• Hall argues that the essay owes something fundamental to the ethos of the Age of Discovery, while Harari suggests that the Age of Discovery was fundamental to the invention of modern science. If so, should we conclude that there is something “scientific” about essay writing? Explain why or why not in a brief ¶.
• How does Hall’s understanding of the essay differ from Wampole’s earlier in the term? If you need a refresher, her speech can be viewed here.

A Setting for Debate

Your homework tonight asks you to think of the upcoming dialogue assignment as a scene from a movie. For example, check out the opening scene from The Social Network. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin introduces us to Mark Zuckerberg in the midst of a date. The ensuing conversation ranges widely, from the number of genius-IQs in China to the challenge of getting into a Final Club at Harvard. But though the subject changes, the focus remains consistently on one thing

Who are the characters? How do they know each other? What are they doing when the dialogue starts, and what gets them talking about the issue you’re planning to cover?

Political Context One possibility is that breaking news prompts the conversation. Political issues are often brought to the fore by the course of events.

Personal Context You should also consider what emotional situation serves as backdrop for this political debate. Some possibilities:

• old friends reunited
• strangers stuck on an elevator
• construction workers talking on a job
• barbershop conversation
  

Extra points for personal situations that in some way echo the issue(s) at stake in the personal debate—so long as it feels artful and not “fake.”

Physical Context Lastly, consider the location where your debate takes place: a creative choice of setting will make the dialogue feel more real to the reader. You may also be able to set up a key metaphor—as for example a fish market sets up references to rotten smells, poisonous cuts of sushi, or tossing a wide net. And the right location might make your issue a pressing practical concern rather than just a theoretical discussion.

In THREE 1-sentence bullet-points, list a plan for your dialogue (be creative!):

• political context
• personal context
• physical context

Paste as a comment, below. We’ll discuss in class.