Primary and Secondary Source Analysis

Due January 27th via Blackboard.

Purpose and Overview

This part of the final project is to kickstart your research and provide a foundation from which it can develop. As history projects are based on the analysis of primary and secondary sources, this assignment is designed to help you examine ONE primary source and ONE secondary source related to your broader topic. 

NOTE: Given the due date for this project, you will need to start on it as soon as possible in order to find appropriate resources AND obtain them in time (likely through Interlibrary Loan) to complete your analysis.

The structure of this assignment is not essay format, but rather completing the components below. Please answer the questions posed to the fullest extent possible. Make sure to provide citations to indicate where the information you are presenting is from. You can use parenthetical author, date of publication for this assignment.

For a Google Doc version of this assignment, see: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X7FqSPlDOJxmU6SnS9mr93XIjTiv3BXqXT7v89z_GM8/edit?usp=sharing

Please make sure to DOWNLOAD this document first before editing it.

If you are following the ungrading system of assessment for this class, please also download and submit the form below. To download, click on “file” “download” and then you can download it as a word document. Alternatively, you can click “file” and “make a copy” to create a new google doc that only you can access.

Source Analysis self-assessment

Primary Source

  1. Provide a full reference for your source according to the Chicago manual of style.
  2. What is your source about?
  3. Who is the author of this source? What is his/her background? If you don’t know the specific author, what type of person (gender, social status, religion etc.) do you think wrote it? 
  4. When and where was it written? What is the historical context for this source? Do you think this context impacted the creation of the your source and the perspective it presents? How?
  5. Why was your source written? What was its intended purpose? Do you think that purpose affects how the source was created?
  6. What kind of source is it? Does this affect how it was created? How?
  7. What can this source tell us about the witch hunts in early modern Europe?
  8. What perspective does your source come from? How does that perspective impact our understanding and analysis of the source?

Secondary Source

For this part of this assignment, choose a book or article related to your potential topic and analyze it using the following questions.

  1. Provide a reference for your source following the Chicago Manual of Style.
  2. What is the author’s central thesis or argument? Is it clearly articulated or hard to figure out?
  3. What are the main points the author uses to develop their argument? Are they clearly connected to the main argument or not?
  4. What types of primary sources do they use? Indicate what some of these primary sources are.
  5. What types of secondary sources are used? Is the author responding to articles/books by other authors? If so, which ones? 
  6. Do the primary and secondary sources help support the author’s main argument? Do they contradict it? Do you agree with their interpretation of this evidence? Why or why not?
  7. Does the author prove their point? Were you convinced by their arguments and the evidence presented?

Overall

  1. What did you learn about your topic from these sources?
  2. Has your research helped to narrow down your potential topic? If so, how?
  3. What do you plan to focus on for your final project based on this analysis? (Note: at this point, you can present potential ideas but you are not required to follow them! Your ideas might change as you do more research.)