Week 8

Writing Assignment:

There are two parts to this week’s assignment.

First, write an outline for the paper topic you have chosen for the second paper. Outlines for the first two paper topics should contain the following:

1. a thesis statement

2. placeholders for where you will place your historical background and source introduction(s)

3. subsections that each contain the following elements:

• • • a claim you will make supporting your argument
    • evidence from our primary source(s) to support that claim
    • a placeholder for your analysis (in the paper, the analysis portion of each body paragraph is where you will explain what the evidence means and how it supports your argument)

4. a placeholder for a conclusion (this will usually be a reiteration of your argument/thesis)

Outlines for the other three paper topics will have different content depending on which topic you choose, but they should also contain the following elements:

1. a thesis statement

2. placeholder for where you will provide historical background for your topic

3. placeholder for where you will provide details about the "charity refused model", the new theory about what happened to Edward V and an assessment of the Missing Princes Project, or a description of Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard III

4. Body paragraphs:

For topic 3, you will need to provide a description and assessment of evidence from the Chelmsford witch trials determining whether it matches the "charity refused" model

For topic 4, you will need to assess the plausibility of the new theory about the princes and determine what other evidence could help prove the theory (or at least make it highly likely)

For topic 5 you will be rewriting scenes from Richard III

In general, body paragraphs should contain the following elements (however, you will not need to follow the claim/evidence/analysis pattern for the Richard III topic since you will be rewriting scenes from the play):

• • • a claim you will make supporting your argument
    • evidence from a primary or secondary source to support that claim
    • a placeholder for your analysis (in the paper, the analysis portion of each body paragraph is where you will explain what the evidence means and how it supports your argument)

5. a placeholder for a conclusion (this will usually be a reiteration of your argument/thesis)

These outlines don't have to be incredibly long or detailed (a page of bullet points will do), but you want to think about what points you want to make and how to logically arrange them so that your reader can easily follow your argument. You will peer review your outlines in section, so bring this with you on Friday in addition to submitting it online.

For the writing assignment proper (250-300 words), give an example of how Sharpe uses evidence to support his argument in Witchcraft in Early Modern England. What piece of evidence have you chosen, what claim is Sharpe supporting with this evidence, and how does this claim fit into Sharpe's overall argument?

Answers should be 250-300 words and include specific details and page numbers from the reading.

Grading:

The purpose of these assignments is to demonstrate that you've done the reading and learned something from it. You should make sure to address all parts of the question and provide specifics like names, places, context, and page numbers in your answers.

For example, if you say that someone gave a speech before a battle, I'm going to want to know who gave the speech (names), which battle it was (context), and where it was (places). I also want to know what page(s) this material is on. Although these are short writing assignments, you still want to provide details (history is all about the details).

100% - addresses all parts of the question and provides details like names, places, context, and page numbers.

90% - addresses all parts of the question, but may lack some detail -OR- provides great detail but does not answer part of the question.

80% - answer is correct, but vague, one or more parts of the question may be unanswered.

70% - answer is very vague and multiple parts of the question are unanswered.

50% - I suspect that you read the source, but your answer totally lacks detail and doesn't demonstrate that you learned anything from the reading.

0% - It's clear that you didn't read the source, or you didn't turn in a writing assignment.