You’ll complete this assignment at the end of the term, November 23, 7:00 p.m. Central Standard (Minnesota) Time.
There are two options: a 5- to 7-page creative work of historical fiction or an 8- to 10-page research paper based on 20 or more sources. The creative work requires that you utilize the techniques that you have learned in analyzing primary sources and identifying patterns in the development of scholarship on gender and sex in African history to demonstrate historical imagination, research skills, and creativity. The job is to imagine that the writer is someone from a specific ethno-linguistic group and living in a particular town on the African continent. Write 5-7 pages (of narrative text in addition to the footnotes) in that person’s voice, revealing that person’s living conditions, occupation, status, perspectives, beliefs, values, etc. The paper should be based on the course readings and the student’s own research, and it must include lengthy footnotes that reveal the primary and secondary sources consulted as well as the debates in the historiography that inform the account of this person’s life. Somewhere in the footnotes, the paper should distill an understanding of the following categories of sources with respect to what they reveal about the experiences of Africans during a specific historical era: written primary sources, the visual images, and the oral/ethnographic data. A bibliography should accompany the essay on the final page.
Submit this paper through the Final Paper link on the Moodle site.
