A Guide

to Your Documents Assignments

Primary Sources

Primary sources are firsthand accounts of historical

events produced at the time the event took place.

Examples of primary sources include diaries, oral histories, court testimony, laws,
newspapers, public records, memoirs, correspondence, and official reports.

Material artifacts created at a certain point in time can also be considered primary
sources. Examples of this type of evidence range from photographs, paintings, maps,
and film, to songs poems, literature, furniture, and clothing.

Historians engage with primary sources to interpret the past, draw conclusions about
it, and construct narrative versions of it. (This is doing history, as historians like to
put it.)

For the purposes of our class, we will be working with mostly primary documents, that is to
say, written evidence rather than artifacts of the material record. But you will also
encounter photographs, paintings, and other sorts of images for consideration as we engage
with historical sources throughout the semester.

Primary Sources vs. Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are created by people who not directly observe an event or who lived
in a different historical period. Secondary sources can also be used as primary sources on
occasion. For example, medical textbooks from the late nineteenth century reflect societal
assumptions about gender and race during that period.

The Documents Assignments

What? On TWO occasions this semester I will distribute a formal, written Documents Assignment
(DA for short) that will require you to analyze a set of primary documents I provide you through
Canvas.
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Why? To provide you with a means to digging deeper into historical document sources by doing
careful reading and interpretation on your own, outside of class. By the time your first DA is given,
you will have already had some exposure to (and practice in) working with historical documents. My
goal is to help you further develop critical thinking habits as you evaluate and analyze firsthand
accounts of historical events, people, and/or issues.

How? Each of your DAs will normally be drawn from about 6 weeks of subject material. You will
have a choice of which assignment you want to tackle from the different versions available. For
example, a DA might ask you to compare and contrast Woodrow Wilsons 1917 congressional
Declaration of War Message to speeches made by members of Congress who opposed U.S. entry
into World War I. (I have included an example of a previous version of a Documents Assignment on
page 5 of this Guide.)

How Much? Each of your DAs will be worth a different number of points: DA#1=55 points;
DA#2=100 points. The total number of semester points available for your DAs will be 155.

Turning Them In

You may submit your first DA in hard copy OR as an attachment to a Canvas email message
(your choice). If you select the latter option, your assignment must be in the form of a Word (or
compatible text file) attachmentno PDF files or any other formats please! If I cannot quickly
convert your assignment to a Word file, I will send it right back to you. I will also not accept DAs
embedded in the body of an email message. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU GET CONFIRMATION FROM
ME THAT I HAVE RECEIVED YOUR ASSIGNMENT.

DA#2 must be submitted as an attachment to an email message (no hard copies)!

Distribution Schedule & Due Dates

The distribution and due dates for your DAs are as follows:
Wednesday, October 4: DA#1 Distributed!
Wednesday, November 1: DA#1 Due! DA#2 Distributed!
Wednesday, December 6: DA#2 Due!
Thursday, December 14: ePortfolio Signature Assignment Due! (by 11:59 pm, MST)!

It is your responsibility to make sure I have received each of your DAs by the due dates! Make sure I
respond to your email submissions with a CONFIRMATION reply that I have received them!

PLEASE NOTE: Canvas issues are impossible for me to resolve at my end (for a number of reasons,
unfortunately). As such, if you email me your assignments through my faculty email address
(tamora.hoskisson@slcc.edu) as a LAST RESORT, I will accept them without penalty that way as well.
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Turning Them in Late

If you fail to submit a DA by the due date, you will have a 24-hour grace period where I will
accept it without penalty.

After this 24-hour grace period expires, you can still turn in your DA, but I will dock 10
points from it.

Late DAs will not be accepted 48 hours after the due date (11:59 pm MST deadline), no
exceptions (including technical difficulties, so plan ahead)!

Format & Length

Your DAs must be typed in 12- point readable font and double-spaced. There is no formal
length requirement. However, when considering the length of your DA essay, pay close
attention to the How to Score Well and Scoring Rubric sections found on page 4 of this guide.
Your score will suffer if you do not write enough to tackle the assignment properly. (A minimum of 3
pages is advised.)

Structure
Your DAs should have an Introduction, a Body, and a Conclusion:

Introduction: The paragraph that introduces your topic and ends with your thesis statement (i.e.,
argument statement). The thesis statement is normally a sentence or two that informs your reader
what you will prove/defend, based on the question(s) I ask you in the assignment.

Body: These paragraphs should support your thesis statement through the use of textual support
from the document(s) you read. Each of these supporting paragraphs should contain a discussion of
a specific point that helps prove your thesis statement. The first sentence of each of these
supporting paragraphs should be a topic sentence that informs your reader of that particular
paragraphs point in relation to your essays thesis/argument.

Conclusion: This, your final paragraph, should briefly restate your argument. Your conclusion should
also contain final, more open-ended statements that might convey additional thoughts of yours,
express a new idea, or state the need for further analysis and discussion.

Page and Paragraph Citations

Please be sure to cite page numbers and paragraph numbers as you provide textual evidence from
the documents in support of your thesis statement/argument. You do not need to use any formal
citation style (i.e., APA, Chicago Manual of Style, MLA, etc.). You are welcome to use a formal
citation style however, if you prefer. I am leaving that decision up to you. In most cases however,
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naming the author/speaker and paragraph number within the body of your essay itself is enough for
me.

PLEASE properly attribute direct quotes by using quotation marks AND identifying the
author/speaker and paragraph(s) you have quoted!

Scoring (Assessment) & Returns

Your DAs will be assessed for content and style in accordance with the criteria outlined in
the Documents Assignment Scoring Rubric.

Your DAs will be returned to you in your submission format (hard copy or email attachment),
along with a scored rubric and my feedback.

PLEASE NOTE: DA#2 will be returned to you UPON REQUEST only, after December 20 (the day Fall
Semester final grades are made available), as an email attachment with your scored rubric.

How to Score Well

1. Try to avoid vague, general sentences that do not specifically, textually support your points.

2. Try to thoughtful in your responses. Although I appreciate precision, I do expect some insightful
discussion and analysis of the document addressed.

3. Above all, try to be clear! This means-in a nutshell-edit, edit, edit, and then, edit again!
If I do not understand what you have written, your score will suffer.

Documents Assignment Scoring Rubric (subject to change, if needed)

Expectations Does Not Somewhat Generally Somewhat Exceeds

Satisfy Satisfies Satisfies Exceeds Expectations
Expectations Expectations Expectations Expectations

Relevancy & Thoroughness

Does your DA appropriately
fulfill all the required elements?

Clarity
Is your DA clearly written?
(According to the conventions
of English grammar?)
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Textual Support
Is your DA textually
supported? Does it provide
specific support from the
primary document (s), and is it
cited with page numbers and
paragraphs?
Depth of Analysis
Does your DA demonstrate
thoughtful analysis and insight?

Example Documents Assignment (Just an EXAMPLE from Last Semester)

Documents Assignment #1, Spring Semester 2017

A. Read the document attached, and answer both questions below in ONE essay:
1) Why does Margaret Sanger believe women have a right to birth control (i.e., what are the
chief elements of her argument)?
2) Do you find her argument persuasive? Why, or why not? Explain.

MARGARET SANGER
The Need for Birth Control (1922)
During the 1920s New Yorker Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) became the crusading champion for
a woman's right to birth control devices. Her mother was a devout Roman Catholic who went
through eighteen pregnancies before dying of tuberculosis, and Margaret was determined to give
women access to contraceptives to free them from such childbearing burdens. Her tireless efforts
ignited fierce opposition from the Catholic Church and other religious organizations.

From The Pivot of Civilization (New York, 1922), pp. 196- 219:

Religious propaganda against Birth Control is crammed with contradiction and fallacy. It refutes itself. Yet it brings the
opposing views into vivid contrast. In stating these differences we should make clear that advocates of Birth Control are not
seeking to attack the Catholic Church. We quarrel with that church, however, when it seeks to assume authority over non-
Catholics and to dub their behavior immoral because they do not conform to the dictatorship of Rome. The question of bearing
and rearing children we hold is the concern of the mother and the potential mother. If she delegates the responsibility, the ethical
education, to an external authority, that is her affair. We object, however, to the State or the Church which appoints itself as
arbiter and dictator in this sphere and attempts to force unwilling women into compulsory maternity....

The sex instinct in the human race is too strong to be bound by the dictates of any church. The Church's failure, its century after
century of failure, is now evident on every side: for, having convinced men and women that only in its baldly propagative phase is
sexual expression legitimate, the teachings of the Church have driven sex underground, into secret channels, strengthened the
conspiracy of silence, concentrated men's thoughts upon the "lusts of the body;' have sown, cultivated and reaped a crop of
bodily and mental diseases, and developed a society congenitally and almost hopelessly unbalanced. How is any progress to be
made, how is any human expression or education possible when women and men are taught to combat and resist their natural
impulses and to despise their bodily functions? ...