From Katharine...

Primary Source Analysis, Part 1 – Finding and analyzing a source                                              

Primary sources are the “raw materials” of historical narratives. They are the surviving fragments of the past that historians use to understand and interpret for present-day readers. Your task is to work as a historian to analyze the primary source of your choice.  You will need to know what type of primary source you have and how historians critically “read” documents and images to better understand and represent the past. Your primary source could be a written source (a newspaper article, government report, memoir, etc.), a visual source (a photograph or video clip), or an audio source (a radio clip, for example).

What evidence do these documents/images provide? How should they be interpreted? What other information do you need in order to understand what they are saying?

Once you have selected a primary source, use Bethany Kilcrease’s CRAAP test to analyze it. As you consider the source’s currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose, you must also introduce and describe the source briefly. Keep in mind that every source has a perspective – all sources are biased. Your task is to describe and understand the source’s perspective and how it could fit within a particular historical narrative.

Your primary source analysis should be 500-750 words in length and include a bibliography that cites your primary source using the Chicago Manual of Style. It is due Thursday, February 7 by 11:59 pm. Please upload your assignment as a .docx or .pdf file to the Assignment Folder on VIULearn.

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Primary Source Analysis, Part 2 – Contextualizing and Interpreting a source                        

Building on the skills you practiced in the first primary source analysis, this second assignment requires you to do some secondary research to help you understand a primary source more fully. You need to select a different primary source than the one you used for your first assignment. You also need to find at least three scholarly secondary sources that are related to your primary source. These could be historical journal articles, book chapters, or books that cover the same time period, events, and themes as the primary source.

You will use the secondary sources you find to conduct a deeper analysis of the primary source you’ve chosen. After reading your secondary sources carefully, you’ll need to determine the significance of your primary source. How does it fit within this existing scholarship? Your analysis must:

Present an argument about how this particular source fits within existing historical knowledge. What is its impact? Does it represent a majority view of the events in question? Does it reinforce or support the arguments that historians have made (in the secondary sources) about this topic? Or does it contradict, challenge, or raise questions about their arguments?
Introduce the topic and the primary source – assume your reader is someone with only a basic understanding of the history of Canada post-1945.
Describe the broader historical context in which your source was created and which help to explain the content, purpose, and audience of the source.
Consider questions that arise for you when you contrast and compare the primary source with the arguments presented in the secondary literature. What questions does this raise for you?
Use Chicago Style

Your second primary source analysis should be 1200-1500 words in length and include footnotes or endnotes, as well as a bibliography, in which all sources are cited in Chicago Style.  It is due Thursday, March 23 by 11:59. Please upload your assignment as a .docx or .pdf file to the Assignment Folder on VIULearn.

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Group Presentation: “Canadian Prime Ministers in 10 Words”                                             

For this assignment, groups of three students will select or be assigned a prime minister from the period between 1945 and 2015. After careful research, each group will choose 10 words that are significant to that Prime Minister and his/her time in office. During the presentation, each group will write these words on the board and explain why these words are significant in understanding this particular prime minister and their time in office. Each presentation should be 5 minutes in length. There is no written component for this assignment, and a written submission cannot be submitted in place of participation.

Use the VIU Library database to find credible historical sources about this Prime Minister. This isn’t a biographical assignment – you want to focus on their time in office, not their early lives or other careers. You can start with encyclopedic sources (like the Canadian Dictionary of Biography, online), but you will need to find and read book chapters and journal articles to get a deeper sense of the most significant events, policies, and ideas of the specific time they were in office. Select 10 words that are significant to the Prime Minister, and prepare explanations to justify each word choice.