Analyze a non-textual primary source: an image, video, song, or other artifact that does not depend primarily upon the written word for its meaning. Make an argument about the source in context that helps us piece together historical knowledge.

Assignment Question

In this assignment, you will do exactly what professional historians do.

Analyze a non-textual primary source: an image, video, song, or other artifact that does not depend primarily upon the written word for its meaning. Make an argument about the source in context that helps us piece together historical knowledge.

There are no right answers for these papers (though it is possible to get facts wrong!), just like the work of historical analysis and understanding is never done. What you write will use the source to help us understand history better, and/or use history to help us understand the source better. This is your chance to argue for your own understanding of what happened, why, and why it matters.

Choosing Your Source You may use any non-textual primary source assigned, presented, or discussed in class for this assignment. The major categories of non-textual sources we’ve discussed include images (photographs and cartoons), music videos, songs, and video footage. A primary source provides first-hand information: it illuminates an event, experience, time period, idea, or personal point of view. We examine primary sources to understand what the world was like when that source was created. In this context, “non-textual” means not predominantly written. As a rule of thumb, if you can copy and paste at least 95% of a source into a Word doc, it does not count for this assignment. If you use a song, you must substantially address non-lyrical elements, such as the beat, instrumentation, and/or music video. If you choose to use an audio or video version of a speech, you will need to foreground the non-textual elements of it significantly. You may use an image or video that appeared only on lecture slides, which are all available on Canvas.

How to Survive a Plague. If you really want to discuss How to Survive a Plague, you may use an unedited chunk of archival footage that appears in the film, but please clear your timestamps with me first.

Requirements Write a cohesive, thorough, and argumentative analysis of your primary source. Your essay should include a brief summary, but should mostly be focused on proving an arguable thesis. Each paragraph should lay out a specific sub-argument and then provide evidence for that argument. Together, the paragraphs prove the full thesis. This kind of argument-writing is where historical knowledge comes from. To brainstorm for this assignment, you may want to use the exact same prompts you used for the annotation of a textual source, but with an expanded definition of a “word.” What aspects or moments in your source do you notice? What strikes you? What seems illuminating, or confusing, or important, or weird? How does the source connect to themes or events we’ve discussed in class—or how might your source challenge, complicate, deepen, or extend the things we’ve already learned?

The annotation assignment’s closing prompts were meant to help you find an arguable thesis, and they can be applied to this type of source too. Those prompts also indicate the kinds of arguments that work well in historical scholarship. The goal of this paper is not to paint a source as “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong,” but to use it to understand the past better. Tips and Advice What does it mean to understand the past better? Think about the ways your understanding of history has been complicated or deepened since you started this class, and think about the discussions we have in class, where people don’t always agree. Think, too, about how the secondary source you analyzed used primary sources to illuminate the past.

Logistics This essay should be in a standard font, 10- or 12-point, 1.5- or double-spaced, with 1-inch margins. You may use any professional citation style. The preference of professional historians, is Chicago.