Reference no: EM133688907
Assignment:
ESSAY PROPOSAL AND RESEARCH ESSAY ASSIGNMENTS
There are two parts to the essay assignment: the Essay Proposal and the actual Research Essay.
Part 1: The Essay Proposal
The outline should consist of with a description of your proposed essay, an argument if you have one and/or your approach to the subject and its significance to the course if not immediately evident. around fourhundred
A one or two page annotated bibliography of at least seven (7) ACCEPTABLE academic sources should accompany the essay description. See: Acceptable Academic Sources Websites are almost always UNACCEPTABLE as sources, as is the course text book (but not the academic journal articles in your readings). Encyclopedias, history television or YouTube videos (including those used in this course) are NOT ACCEPTABLE. Popular magazine and newspaper articles are NOT ACCEPTABLE. Sources should be current academic monographs or academic journal articles -- not popular works like Time-Life Books, Complete Idiot's or Dummies Guides, Colliers Children's Encyclopedia, Encarta, Wikipedia, or websites like Historyplace.com, etc. ("Websites" does not mean internet databases of journal articles like MUSE or JSTOR, for example, or primary and secondary source material made available on government websites of agencies like the CIA or the US State Department, etc, or university websites, archives, etc.
For your essay you will be often be drawing from the same source as for your assigned academic journal articles in the module readings, which can be searched for, located and downloaded from the Ryerson Library journal databases like JSTOR (usually the best place to start to search out an assigned journal article) or Academic Search Premier. You will also be be searching here for sources for your Essay Proposal and Research Essay.
Ryerson Library has guides to history sources at
Journalistic works and 'trade book histories' (trade books from non-academic publishers, like Penguin-Random House, HarperCollins or Simon & Schuster, for example) are acceptable, but only if the book provides citations with specific page source references. No websites can be used as a source without submitting them in the proposal for approval by the instructor, with the URL of the webpage you propose to source and cite.
In general, if your source does not provide detailed references in the form of footnotes, endnotes with specific page references, which you can verify, it is unsuitable as a source. This especially applies to websites. If you intend to include websites, provide their URLs in the proposal for approval.
Your Annotated Bibliography will identify the author, title, publisher, and year of publication of the book, journal article, or other source and a short three to five sentence commentary on the significance of the source to your essay. Outlines submitted with no annotations to the bibliography will be severely penalized.
No essay can be entirely based on websites without permission from the instructor after submission of the Essay Proposal.
You will be assessed on the uniqueness and originality of your topic and on the depth, currency and academic quality of your sources. The use of academic journal articles, many of which are available online through the Ryerson Library is highly encouraged. If you are not familiar with academic article databases like JSTOR and Project Muse, go (run!) immediately to a librarian at the Ryerson Library and ask them to show you how to use these databases. You can access them from home and many (but not all) articles are available for downloading in full text. A link on the course website also provides you an introduction as to how to enter the online journal interface.
You may at any time after submitting a proposal, change your approach, your sources, and even completely change your essay topic without submitting a new proposal, but I strongly suggest to check with me first on such topic changes.
List of Possible Essay Topics:
The Essay topic can be based on any issue in international relations 1900-1945 as covered in the course modules.
Please use this topic;
At the turn of the 20th century:
- Examine the degree to which imperialism OR nationalism OR industrialization OR militarism OR demographic transformations shaped international relations at the turn of the 20th century?
- Examine the factor or factors that led to the outbreak of the First World War.