PART 2 ESSAY:

Provide a clear and comprehensive background essay on your topic, covering 1945 - 2001.  Each topic will vary, but the idea is to stick within the 1945-2001 timeframe as best as possible. Of course some countries or events will necessitate going beyond these dates, or may not include that entire 1945-2001 time span.  Do not attempt a general history “since the beginning of time”.  You should be very clear on what timeline and events you intend to cover. Provide the necessary background to your topic, discuss key events and people, and assess how your topic impacted on international relations.  While your essay may include relevant internal events, its overall focus must be on international relations.

Provide suitable references and bibliographies.  Keep in mind any comments or suggestions made on your outlines. The essay is worth 25% of your overall grade.

Essays must be based on a minimum of six sources (not including course text book but seminar readings are acceptable), and should not include, encyclopedias, textbooks, or general or popular histories, or unapproved websites, (2 marks deducted for every Wikipedia or like citation) etc.

Academic journal articles are highly recommended as sources for anyone seeking to earn an essay mark above a B- grade.  If you have never searched for academic articles, hundreds of thousands of which are available for you to download for free from the Ryerson Library website, start with instructions on my website “How to find and download seminar articles” (http://www.petervronsky.com/HST603/how_to_journals_online.htm)  You will need to learn how to use this service for downloading course seminar articles anyway.  Check on the Ryerson library website for further information on how to search journal databases (there are many different databases) or go in and ask a librarian for help.

• Essays will be approximately 2,500 words in length (10-12 pages not including your title page and bibliography and appendix if any.) 

• Standard 12 pt font, cursive or non-cursive, double spaced text, standard 2.5 cm margins, 11” X 8 ½” paper. 

• Pages must be stapled (no binders of any kind or paperclips), paginated, and submitted with a cover page containing no art or decorative elements. Do not attempt to submit unstapled pages and no, I do not bring a stapler with me to lecture. Unstapled or paper clipped or folded essays will be turned away and late penalties applied until submitted per requirements.

• Unless quoting original American sources, essays will be written in Canadian English not American. ("centre" not "center"; "armour" not "armor"; "labour" not "labor"; "colour" not "color" etc.)--set your dictionary to "English (Canada)" in your spell checkers.  

• The cover page must have:  your name, student number, course number, section number, and essay title.  
  Any assignment submitted without your correct section number indicated will be returned unmarked and subject to late penalties.

Essays not conforming to any one or more of these above standards will either have marks deducted or not be accepted and late penalties imposed until resubmitted in the required format.

Paragraphs are to be indented without any additional spaces between paragraphs, unlike in this course outline, for example.  Any relevant images, maps, graphs included in the essay are to be placed into an appendix at the back. 

The essay should have a single descriptive title or a creative title with a descriptive subtitle.  For example:  Generals in Blue:  Lives of the Union Commanders or The Architect of Genocide:  Himmler and the Final Solution or Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison,etc.   “History Essay” is not a title.  Marks will be deducted for essays submitted without a title and/or title page. 

Any paper not conforming to the above standards will be penalized.

Reference Citations (read carefully)

A history essay is like a courtroom argument—it is based on the presentation of proof conforming with the rules of evidence in an expositive argument.  The way hearsay is not admissible in court, Wikipedia for example, is likewise not admissible as evidence in historical discourse.  Just as court evidence is presented in a disciplined system: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C, etc, in the written historical argument, the Chicago Style footnoted citation is used to lead and guide the reader through the evidence backing the persuasive discourse of the text above it.

Why Chicago Style Footnotes? http://www.yale.edu/bass/writing/sources/kinds/principles/why.html 

Some of the journal readings for seminars will have been pointed out to you as appropriate models for the citation style required for your essay.

Essays must have a bibliography and have footnoted citations in the Chicago style (at the bottom of the page).  Parenthetic in-text or inline style citations (APA for example) are not unacceptable for a history essay.   A well researched essay integrating multiple sources into its argument contains on average five to six citations per page -- approximately 50 to 70 citations per essay.

As a general rule, references should be given for direct quotations, summaries or your own paraphrases of other people’s work or points of view, and for material that is factual, statistical, controversial, assertive or obscure.  You must cite more than just direct quotes.  WHEN IN DOUBT, IT IS BETTER TO PROVIDE A REFERENCE.  You do not need to cite items of general knowledge like, for example:  water is wet, fire is hot, the sun rises in the east or Elizabeth II is the Queen of England.  

Essays submitted without specific page references in each citation will be automatically failed without any further opportunity to resubmit. 

Basically, the first citation of a source should have the full bibliographical data in it, while in subsequent references to that source, just the name of the author and page number(s) will suffice.  (If more than one source by the same author is used, then include the title as well.) This is an example of the basic required style for citations which are to inserted at the bottom of each page:
 
¹ Jane Doe, The ABC's of History (Toronto: Ontario Publishers, 1997), pp. 20-21
² Jane Doe, p. 43

To create numerically sequential footnotes in MS WORD 2007 go to the “References” ribbon and select [Insert Footnote]; in earlier version of MS WORD, go to the “Insert” menu and then select [Footnote].  The citations should be formatted to “Arabic numerals (1,2,3, etc.)”

It is not necessary to use archaic citation terms like ibid or op cit. and they are even discouraged as word processing drag or cut-and-paste editing can easily displace the logic of these citation terms as you edit your work.

Titles of books are to be put into italics or underlined. Journal article titles are put in “quotation marks” while the journal titles are in italics or underlined.   See the below webpages for further details and formats as to how to cite journals, multiple authors, collections, etc. or search “Chicago style footnotes” on Google.

http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c10_s1.html

http://www.douglascollege.ca/library/chicago.html

Bibliographies

Essays MUST provide alphabetically ordered by author’s surname, bibliographies of all works consulted, whether or not they have been quoted directly in the citations. An adequate bibliography for this assignment will contain no less than six books or journal articles related to the topic.  General books, dictionaries, atlases, textbooks and/or encyclopedias DO NOT count towards this minimum number of sources, and their inclusion in citations will NOT be considered as constituting research.  Seminar readings are acceptable as citable sources.

An example of a bibliographic entry is as follows:

Smith, John.  History of Canada  (Toronto: Ontario Publishers, 1997).

Submission of Essays

Essays are to be submitted to the instructor on the due date in lecture in hardcopy with pages stapled together.

Electronic Submission of Assignments

If you find it necessary to submit an essay by e-mail, the following file naming protocol is to be used:

 
"Last Name_First Name_CourseNumber_SectionNumber _Proposal [or essay, etc]"

Any attached file not using this exact naming protocol will not be accepted and late penalties will continue to accrue until submitted in the required format.

Only MS Word files (preferred) in .doc or .docx format or PDF files will be accepted. 

The submission of files by e-mail will be usually acknowledged within two days.

A hard copy of the essay is to be submitted at the next opportunity.  Indicate on the front of the hardcopy the date you had e-mailed the essay to me previously.  The e-mailed essay will secure your submission date.  Obviously the hard copy is to be exactly identical with the e-mailed copy.  Hard copies of previously e-mailed essays not indicating the e-mail date on the cover will be assigned the date of the submission of the hard copy with no appeal.

Hardcopy Submission of Essays  

Do not slip essays under my door or into my mail-box.  Hard copies may be submitted to the Essay Drop-Off Box in the History Department (JOR500). Do not leave essays at the Chang School. 

I will guarantee essay returns with comments by the day of the exam only to those essays submitted to me on the due date, in hard copy, in required format, in lecture.  All other essays will be marked after the exam and arrangements may be made to get your essay mark after the final marks have been submitted.

Late Penalties and Extensions

Extensions may be granted on medical or compassionate grounds but will be automatically penalized three (3) marks regardless. Students requesting an extension should submit an e-mailed request to me before the deadline specifying precisely the date to which they are requesting the extension.  After the due date, students need to provide appropriate documentation relating to the extension request (i.e. doctor’s note, death certificate of relative, police report on their stolen laptop, repair bills for their crashed hard disc, veterinary reports on the contents of Fluffy’s stomach, etc).  Essays submitted under an extension must have my written response to the extension request attached to the front of the essay.  E-mailed submissions are to be attached as a ‘reply’ to my earlier response to the extension request.  Submissions without my extension approval attached to their front will be penalized as late with no opportunity of appeal afterward. No late work will be accepted after the last day of lecture or extensions granted beyond the last lecture day.  

Two (2) marks per/day are deducted from your essay mark for late submissions, weekends included, until the day the essay is submitted to me.  If I do not acknowledge the receipt of your e-mailed essay within a few days, it is your responsibility to ensure I have received it.  Keep copies of all work, including marked assignments returned to you and e-mails of your submissions until your final course mark is released.  Re-submissions of earlier e-mailed essays “lost” in transmission, should such an unlikely scenario occur, will only be accepted in the form of a forwarded copy of the original e-mail.  There are no exceptions to this. 

No late assignments will be accepted after the last day of lecture.

Only those essays submitted on the due date, in hardcopy, in lecture, will be guaranteed a return with comments, if any, by the day of the final exam.

Earning Marks

The evaluation of your research, content, evidence, originality and argumentation is of primary concern in marking as is the quality of your sources as described above. Equally important is the syntax, style and structure of your work. Marks will be deducted from work containing excessive grammatical/spelling mistakes, typographical errors, from essays that are excessively long or inadequately short, or which fail  to provide properly formatted footnoting/bibliography as specified above. Essays that consist of a frequently quoted passages or sentences, even if footnoted, will be severely penalized.  Be selective in direct quotations.  Ask yourself, “can this be said in my own words and then cited?” Is there a stylistic or argumentative reason for quoting the source directly? Be sure to edit and check your work carefully. Do not simply rely on your computer’s spelling or grammar checker.

Grounds for Assignment Failure

Essays which do not supply proper and adequate references and bibliographies as specified above or submitted after the final day of lecture will be failed.  Essays based entirely on websites without the instructor’s permission, will be failed.  Any written work that quotes directly from other material without attribution, or which paraphrases extensive tracts from the works of others without citations, is plagiarized and will be failed with no opportunity to re-submit and will result in additional severe academic consequences. Please consult the Ryerson academic calendar for further information on plagiarism. If you have any questions or doubts about how to cite material, please feel free to contact me.

NEWEssay Progressive Creation History File Requirements

As I do not use Turnitin, students must "save as" a minimum of ten different progressive versions of their essay as they research, write, and edit their work and save all their research notes as well.  I recommend that you use the "save as" command every time you finish a new page and for every subsequent edit of your finished essay.  If there is any doubt to the authorship of any submitted essay, you will be asked to submit all the copies of your essay files as you saved them through the research, writing, and editing phases. Failure to submit upon request the minimum number of progressive files will constitute evidence of plagiarism with all its consequences.  DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR PROGRESSIVE CREATION FILE HISTORY UNLESS REQUESTED. 

PART 3: LOG  (YOU MUST BEGIN THIS PART IN THE FIRST WEEK OF TERM.)

Once you have picked a topic you must follow it for the rest of the term by keeping a log. A log is a record of events over a period of time.  Yours will cover the entire term. Whereas your essay covers the historical period from 1945 to roughly 2001, the log covers JUST the 12 weeks of the semester. This assignment is designed to achieve three primary goals for students:

1)      to develop your skills managing and producing information projects/reports 

2)      to develop your research skills

3)      to gain an understanding of what shapes contemporary international relations and how countries, people, and events are shaped by them

The log will include 12 “packages” or “collections” of media reports with brief one or two page weekly summary of their significance to your subject – 12 summaries, one for each week.  It will conclude with a 1500-word  “master summary” of the 12 week’s progress or conclusion of your topic – a sort of master update and wrap-up commentary, assessment, critical analysis or conclusion on the collective significance and meaning of all the weekly summaries you were completing as events were occurring.    

Begin your log by seeking out information on your topic from any number of media: newspapers, magazines, journals, TV, the web, radio etc. A starting list of sources for your search is attached to this outline. You are strongly encouraged to come up with more on your own, but should clear news sources other than those listed on the course bibliography with me first. You are also strongly encouraged to use your language skills: if you have a facility in another language, you can use sources in that language. Just remember – provide accurate translations and be objective.

Your entries should include major developments relevant to your topic. You can use clippings, photocopies, printouts, or your own summaries of stories/events. The design and layout of your log is entirely up to you. However, you must make sure to fully reference your sources for each entry. You must also include a comprehensive list of all sources used.

The absolute minimum number of entries for your log is three per week. However, given the incredible access to information at your disposal, you are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED to do more: there is no set maximum, but it is not unreasonable to expect between 5-10 weekly entries for some topics.  

The key is QUALITY. What you choose to collect every week depends of course on your topic. However, it also depends on your choice of RESEARCH and your own ANALYSIS of what’s important to international relations. For example, there is no shortage of information on Iraq today. Logically, if you were covering this topic, your entries would reflect the difficult process of reconstructing Iraq after the war. You would also cover the American occupation and the problems it faces in Iraq, at home, and internationally. The challenge would be in deciding which of the many stories and developments are most important. On the other hand, some countries like Norway or Paraguay may not be in the news much. Your task would then be focused on finding good sources for information on the country, and then deciding what is most important for Norwegians right now. In all cases the principal factor will be RESEARCH. . Be varied and be critical of your sources: think about where they get the information, if they have any obvious biases or factors affecting their interpretations, and if they have particular political agendas or objectives. News on North Korea from Kim Jong Il’s fan club is NOT critical research. Conversely, taking everything from one or two good sources, like BBC, is also NOT critical research.  Balance of sources is the key. Your log should be well detailed, and include any commentary you consider worthwhile. However, try to avoid overly subjective commentary. Be objective and scholarly.

You will be graded on the breadth and variety of your sources, their relevance to your topic, your analysis of the data and evidence you collected, and the quality and organization of your presentation of your log. 

Style and presentation are up to you, but naturally will reflect upon your work. In past years students have varied widely in their submissions. Some assemble binders with maps, chronologies, indexes, and other information. Others prefer the more business-like report.  Please note that while I have no particular expectation regarding the format you choose, well-organized and well-presented logs tend to do better. Many students include the stories clipped from newspapers or printed off the web. Others will include only the by-line with their own analysis accompanying it. Either way is fine. The key is to make it professional – and make it your own. You may submit either hard copy logs or ones on disk, memory stick, blog, or your own website.  

It may be useful to approach this assignment as a business or professional proposition. Imagine that you, as a consultant, have been asked by a government ministry, an intelligence agency or a mysterious multinational corporation – to develop a contemporary (i.e. 12 week) analysis or risk assessment of a country or topic/issue. You don’t need to know fully why - just to present an accurate and hopefully exhaustive summary of contemporary developments pertinent to that subject. Whereas your essay is an historical analysis of that subject, the log is exclusively contemporary. The two halves will make up your “report” to your client.

Other Topics

You are strongly encouraged to develop a topic of your own choosing. However, you must receive permission from me before undertaking the assignment. This is to ensure that the topic is feasible, and that appropriate resources are available to you.  Please note that the United States, People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union (Russia) and Canada will not be sanctioned as topics given their centrality, if not dominance, in your course.  (But specific issue topics related to those countries are acceptable, for example START negotiations.) Please also note that any assignment on a topic that has not been approved will receive a grade of zero, without any chance of re-submission. 

Possible Problems:  In rare cases, you may not be able to find an item for each week for your story; in that case please provide a list of sources consulted.  If I find that you have made a reasonable search among possible sources, you will not be penalised. You may find that your story develops in different directions from those outlined in the first article.  Be prepared to follow the different threads in your story.  WARNING: Do not clip library material for these logs.

Assume that you have been asked by someone who does not know a great deal about your topic to explain why a particular problem exists, or what are the most important things to know about a particular issue or country.  Ask yourself what the current situation is.  Is there a crisis?  If so, what does it consist of and why is it occurring?  If, for example, someone asks you for a briefing on why Kosovo is such a troubled area, what sort of information and analysis would you need to provide? To give a good answer, you must not only explain the main issues and/or questions involved at present but the reasons why things have unfolded as they have.  That means explaining the historical background.  In some cases you will need to go back before 1945. In all cases you must explore developments since 1945.  Depending on the story you have chosen, you may or may not need to provide statistics of such things as population or economic indicators.  You will need to consult books and/or articles, and the names of all works consulted must appear in a bibliography.  The report must provide proper references (see below).

1.  Consult the bibliography in the textbook.

2.  Look for a recent work on your topic and consult its bibliography.

3.  Use the Library On-Line Catalogue to search by subject.

4.  Follow directions on the Library Home Page to search databases for articles or books.

5.  Search the Internet WARNING: web sources are not generally scholarly: be careful. 

Washington Week in Review (PBS)

World news on CBC, ABC, NBC, CBS

Just a Few Good Web sites

CNN: www.allpolitics.com/1998/index.html

Cold War History Project: http://cwihp.si.edu

Cuban Missile Crisis: hthttp://hyperion/advanced.org/11046

Financial Post: href="http://www.ft.com/">wwwww.ft.com

H-Diplo: http://h-net2.msu.edu/~diplo/

History Database: www.directnet.com/history

Internet Modern History Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod

Arts and Letters Daily: www.cybereditions.com/aldaily

JournalismNet: www.journalismnet.com

www.tamu-commerce.edu/coas/history/[includes bibliographies and links]

www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/20th.htmspan> [historical documents]

For additional help, Ryerson now offers the Academic Integrity Website at www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity. This offers students a variety of resources to assist in their research, writing, and presentation of all kinds of assignments. It also details all dimensions of Academic Misconduct and how to avoid it. It was put together by a team representing the Vice President Academic, faculty, the library, Digital Media Projects, and Student Services.

NOTE: Every effort will be made to manage the course as stated. However, adjustments may be necessary at the discretion of the instructor. If so, students will be advised and alterations discussed in the class prior to implementation.

MISSED TERM WORK OR EXAMINATIONS

Exemption or deferral of a term test or final examination is not permitted except for a medical or personal emergency. The instructor must be notified by e-mail prior to the test and appropriate documentation submitted. For absence on medical grounds an official student medical certificate must be provided. This may be downloaded from the Ryerson website at www.ryerson.ca/rr or picked up from The Chang School Office, Room JOR100.

Absence from mid-term examination or tests:

§  Instructor must be notified by e-mail before the test

§  Documentation must be presented at the next class

§  Depending on course policy, the instructor may arrange a makeup or re-weigh the course requirements

Absence from final exam:

§  Instructor must be notified by e-mail before the examination.

§  Documentation must be presented at The Chang School Office, Room JOR100, within three working days.

§  If the majority of the course work has been completed with a passing performance, and the documentation is acceptable, an INC grade will be entered by the instructor. An INC grade will not be granted if term work was missed or failed.

§  The final examination must be written within four months after the submission of the incomplete grade. Failure to do this will result in an F grade.

§  It is the student’s responsibility to contact The Chang School Office at least two weeks prior to the end of the following academic term to arrange to write the final exam.

COURSE REPEATS

Academic Council GPA policy prevents students from taking a course more than three times.  For complete GPA policy see Policy #46 at http://www.ryerson.ca/acadcouncil/policies.html.