Choosing a Topic

For your second paper you will be required to do original historical research on a topic of your own design.  This might seem a little daunting at first.  You may ask yourself, how in the world am I going to come up with a topic, let alone find a primary source that I can use to develop my argument?  This exercise is meant to help you to begin to answer this question. 

Follow the three steps below and come to section next week prepared to discuss what you’ve come up with.  Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions. Use all the resources available to you: myself, the Teaching Assistants  and the librarians.  Above all, be creative. Think about the subjects that interest you the most. Begin to formulate questions about what you want to understand better about the past.

1) Identify the broad historical topic that you want to write about.  Don’t be afraid to think big! 

Your topic can be taken from any number of the themes, events, or concepts that we have read about or discussed in-class, or that we will be discussing or reading about in the future.  For example, you might explore an issue we have discussed, in greater depth, such as racial segregation in the military, the meaning of anti-communism, the conservative response to the New Deal, or the uses of popular culture in American politics. 
You might explore a “new angle,” or a specific instance of a particular historical event, for example, the left’s response to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, labor’s response to the Taft-Hartley Bill, local responses to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the impact of McCarthyism in Seattle, or at the University of Washington. 
Finally, you might explore subjects that we haven’t yet touched upon in great detail, for example, the changing role of women in WWII, the persecution of gays and lesbians in cold war America, the F.B.I.’s investigation of the civil rights movement, or the role of music in 60s protest movements.

These are just examples that should give you ideas. The point is to develop your own!

2) Using the library, find one or more primary sources that you will use to develop your argument.

I have used many primary sources at different points in my lectures.  Primary sources can be drawn from visual media, such as paintings, cartoons, films, and advertisements. They can also be written documents, such as newspapers and magazines, as well as letters, memoirs, diaries and government files. 
In lecture we have looked at film clips from WWII movies, cartoons from the black press, magazine covers illustrating the Four Freedoms, and paintings of the black migration.  We have also considered or read articles or speeches written to justify the use of the atomic bomb, to define the meaning of America’s entry into WWII, to warn of leftist “subversion” within the US government, and to criticize growing US antagonism to the Soviet Union.

What you must do is choose a source around which you can develop a historical argument.  Ask yourself what kinds sources might help to illuminate my topic? Once you’ve found a source or several sources, ask yourself:  what does the source reveal about my topic?  Why is this source significant or interesting?  What does it say to me and what can I say about it?

3) Write a short thesis statement that gets you started. 

The thesis statement is the argument that you want to make, using the primary source(s) you have found.  Your thesis statement should not simply be a restatement of the broad topic you have chosen.  Rather it should be a much narrower explanation of what you propose to say about the topic you have chosen.  What angle are you going to pursue?  What hypothesis about the past will attempt to prove or demonstrate? How are you going to prove it?

Your thesis statement might change as you proceed.  The point is to get started; nothing ventured nothing gained.