You’ll complete this assignment at the beginning of Week 3, September 28, 9:00 a.m. Central Standard (Minnesota) Time.
Analyzing a primary source is one of the most important tasks for historians and anyone engaged in serious research. It is a historian’s raw data, material from the period you want to examine. Reading the words or interpreting of individuals from the past in journals, music, novels, artworks, or autobiographies is one of the best ways to understand the past.
This assignment offers an opportunity to analyze a primary source from a chronicler of the ancient Mali empire. Write a 3-page analysis of a primary source by first identifying the historical subject and context as well as author, audience, and argument or claims of the source. Then be explicit about what you see as the benefits and limits of the source as a historical record. Next, note a distinctive feature or particularly interesting, puzzling, controversial, or illuminating passage. Ultimately, the analysis should have at least two dimensions: it should explore how the historical context in which the author wrote it impacts or informs the contents of the source; and it should interrogate the extent to which the source tells us more about the author’s own background, experience, and preoccupation than about the past. To put it simply, make an argument about what the source reveals about gender and/or sex in African history.
Keep in mind notions of gender and memory on the syllabus and Trouillot’s work on the positivist versus constructivist approaches to history.
Your analysis should move away from description to critical judgment. Begin by identifying the documents you are using. Who wrote them and what is the basic content of each? Second, an analytical, section of your essay should dig beneath the surface. Why was the document written? Think about historical context. What events or issues does it refer to, and what perspective does it offer on these events? This means moving beyond literal description—I’m less interested in WHAT the document says, in other words, that WHY you think the author included particular information.
What follows it a template that serves as a model; it is not the only model.
Template
· In the first sentence identify the author of the source.
· In the second sentence indicate what kind of text the author produced.
· Then indicate the content of the sources (meaning the themes or topics covered). At this point you are still at the level of description.
· No later than the fourth sentence articulate a hypothesis about what the source reveals. Now are you are the level of analysis. The perspective that a source offers or why you think the author chose to talk about the subject in a particular way is what you can include here. Consider an analysis that includes what this genre of writing reveals.
· Second paragraph should discuss the historical context in which the source was created as well as a little background about the author and the context that shaped him and arguably his/her writing.
· In the third paragraph note the relationship between the way it describes slavery (or the slave trade) and how scholars (like Black) approach the subject of slavery (African, Arab, or European); feel free to define slavery as needed to demonstrate the resonances or gaps in how your source and the scholarship discusses slavery. Provide evidence to support your claims.
· Last paragraph should offer some concluding thoughts and implications for understanding the history and memory of slavery in African.
*Provide a title page with the title, your name, Primary Source # 1, date. Also include a bibliography, sources listed in alphabetical order by the author’s last name.
All papers should be double-spaced and typed in 12-point and Times New Roman font with one-inch top, bottom, left and right margins. Use the Chicago Manual of Style citation format with footnotes or endnotes. Papers that do not adhere to this format will not be graded.
Use the How to write a primary source study guide website for further assistance. https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/history/resources/study/primary/
