Project Proposal and Annotated Bibliography

Project Proposal and Annotated Bibliography

Colonial Latin America (1492-1825)

First, you must choose an appropriate topic (on the history of colonial Latin America) that allows you to engage in historical research and trace change over time in a 5-page analytical research historical essay.

• The purpose of an analytical history paper is to provide an argument that proves a specific thesis (argument).
• This argument should demonstrate insight by employing secondary sources to prove the essay’s basic claim.
• The success of an analytical history paper rests on the author’s ability to present information in a clear and concise manner so that the reader may easily follow the analysis.

Remember, this is colonial Latin America so the topic you choose should take place any time between 1492 and 1825, that is, between the encounter, conquest, colonization and the wars of independence that led to the end of the Spanish Colonial Empire in the Americas.

Possible Topics:

The legacy of Spanish rule in the Americas.

Transculturation in Colonial Spanish America and the Caribbean.

Hegemony in Colonial Spanish America and the Caribbean.

Causes of the Wars of independence in Colonial Spanish America.

Were the wars of independence in colonial Spanish America revolutionary?

Nature of Spanish rule in the Americas.

Race and ethnicity in the making of Spanish colonial America.

Gender and patriarchy in Colonial Spanish America.

The economy of colonial Spanish America.

Landholding patterns in CSA.

The Catholic Church/inquisition in CSA.

The caste system in CSA.

The Haitian Revolution’s impact on CSA.

The proposal should be one-two pages long and should include:

1. a brief paragraph (200-250 words) describing the subject and its importance,
   1. it must include your thesis statement
2. 3 to 5 researchable questions in essay (paragraph) form.
3. And a tentative Annotated Bibliography of secondary academic sources.
   1. You must include at least 3 potential SECONDARY sources in the Annotated Bibliography.
4. Follow Chicago Style for bibliography format and style.
5. See UNP Documentation guide on Blackboard
   1. The students must use at least 3 ACADEMIC ARTICLES as sources from the Library Databases Site– JSTOR.
   2. Once in JSTOR;
      1. Click on advanced search
      2. Perform a keyword search
      3. Limit your sources to work produced since 1990 to 2022.
      4. Limit results to “journals” and “works available to me”
      5. Limit results to “History” and “Latin American Studies”

• Encyclopedias, dictionaries and blogs and websites do not count as sources.

1. However, both encyclopedias and dictionaries can be used as references to define terms or identify people.
2. If you use them, you must quote and cite them.

These 5 elements must be in your proposal

1. The precise question you will address in your research
   1. What is your topic? Describe it briefly.
   2. What is your hypothesis? What question(s) drive (s) your research?

2. How your question relates to issues raised/discussed by other historians who have worked on similar/related topics (what do the secondary sources say?)
   1. What will your readers learn from this project- or will you be interpreting commonplace knowledge in a new way?

3. Why this question is worth answering (from an historian’s viewpoint)
   1. Why is your project significant or interesting? Discuss how your project relates to broader issues in history.

4. What sources you will use to answer this question
   1. Give short bibliography

5. What methods of analysis will you use to draw answers out of the secondary sources?
   1. Will you be reading library books, archival material, objects, paintings? Are any of your sources in a language other than English? Will you be using methods from other disciplines?

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Failure to be concise.
  • being “all over the map” without a clear sense of purpose.
• Failure to cite landmark works in your discussion of the literature on the topic.
  • A bibliography at this level.
• Failure to delimit the contextual boundaries of your research
  • [e.g., time-when, place-where, people-who, and what.].
• Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research.
• Failure to stay focused on the research problem, going off on unrelated tangents.
• Sloppy or imprecise writing, or poor grammar.
• Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues.

1. Formatting

1. • DO NOT create a cover page.

• The left top corner of your paper should be left indented and contain the following information:
  • Your name
  • Professors name
  • Class name and number
  • Date

2. Text Style and Guidelines

1. • Give your work a title that let the reader know what your project’s main inquiry or argument is.
   • The tile of your paper will be above the text, Centered, and in Bold.
   • The tile must be creative and descriptive of the paper’s main argument or subject

• “The tile of your paper will be above the text, Centered, and in Bold.”[1]

• The main text must be “double-spaced and aligned left.”[2]
• Papers should have 1-inch margins and use Times New Roman, “12-point font or equivalent.”[3]
  • The whole paper should have the same font and size.
• You must set up the page by going to “paragraph” and selecting “No extra space between paragraphs of the same style”.
• Number pages at the bottom, using Arabic/Indian numeral (1,2,3) Select “
  • Insert/ Page Number/Bottom of Page/Plain Number 3 – click on “different page number”.

3. Citations are required.
   • When you take material directly from the source you should use quotation marks and provide a reference.[4] This does not apply to the bibliography.
   • You must provide a reference when you paraphrase a source or use an author’s argument.
   • You will use Chicago Style to format citations. (See UNP documentation from blackboard)
     • http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
   • You will use footnotes for your citations. (Do not cite in-text- use endnotes or footnotes.)
     • Place cursor after period ending a sentence. Click on References, Insert Footnote/or endnote (pick on and stick to it). Type the required information in the footnote or endnote.
       1. Use Arabic/Indian Numerals for citations (1, 2, 3).

4. • Your paper should be free of typos, grammar, and sentence structure mistakes, and use vocabulary correctly. You must thoroughly proofread your work before submitting it.
   • Use the spell and grammar check embedded in your word processor (MS Word or Google Docs) to do the initial proofreading.
   • Then- Visit the Course Project folder on Blackboard. Use the documents found in Writing Guidelines and Samples, in particular:
   • You must use these two documents to make sure that your paper conforms to college writing standards.

5. • Separate page for the Annotated Bibliography. (Does not count for minimum page number)
   • Title that page: Annotated Bibliography– in bold and centered.
   • List sources alphabetically based on author’s last name.
   • Do not number the bibliographical entries.
   • Follow Chicago style (See UNP documentation from blackboard) to format entries.
   • Choose “First line hanging” for Bibliography’s paragraph style.

Annotated Bibliography Assignment

What is an annotated bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents.

Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation.

For your Annotated Bibliography:

• Write a concise annotation that summarizes the central theme and scope of the book or article.
• Include three or more sentences that:
  1. summary of the source,
     1. and identify what kind of expertise the author(s) has. Degree, title, profession, books published…
  2. descriptive: list the significant topics included,
  3. compare or contrast this work with another you have cited, or/and
  4. explain how this work illuminates your bibliography topic
     1. explain how this work illuminates (informs) your bibliography topic . Are there aspects of your thesis that this source does not cover?
  5. evaluate the sources strengths and weaknesses.
     1. What kind of evidence does the author use?
     2. If this is a secondary source, does the author use primary sources to convince the reader of his/her position?
     3. What kind of data is used?
     4. How/why was this article/book/website/video produced and how does that effect its trustworthiness?
  6. Your annotated bibliography should be organized using the above criteria.
  7. You need to list at least 3 secondary sources (academic journal articles)
  8. Sources appear in alphabetical order by author’s last name.
  9. Provide a full bibliographical entry followed by the annotation (in paragraph form).

See example below.

Annotated Bibliography

Guerra, Lilian. Popular Expression and National Identity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.

Historian Lilian Guerra argues that the figure of the jíbaro is key to understanding the development of national identities in early twentieth-century Puerto Rico. Local elites tried to construct the figure of the jíbaro (and hence that of the popular classes) as a less threatening “other.” In general, the elites imagined the jíbaro as their racial equal (white due to European ancestry) but still subordinated to them. Guerra identifies this approach as an attempt to control popular classes that were “everywhere asserting their dissent” and their own identities.

Hawkins, Michael C. Making Moros: Imperial Historicism and American Military Rule in the Philippines’ Muslim South. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013.

Historian Michael C. Hawkins argues that imperial historicism was the “fundamental philosophy of American colonialism in the Philippines” and guided the metropolis’s attempts at social and ethnological engineering. Further, no other period was as transformative and crucial for the Moros of the southern Philippine islands of Sulu and Mindanao’s self-awareness and “ascent into homogenous modernity” as the fourteen years under American military rule. Hawkins claims that “American discourse and policy during military rule shaped the Moros’ concept of themselves and the emergent postcolonial state in modernity.” The Moros, however, “established the parameters of their own modern selves,” as the new identity that emerged from that “collaborative colonial encounter” was negotiated, and the Moros both resisted and embraced American attempts at reimagining them.

Washington, George and Nathaniel Greene. Military Strategies: On a Limited Budget Boston: Colonial Press, 1799.

Geared for both a broad audience and professional military historians, this book provides an insight into the financial crises involved in the war. The authors show the importance and reliance on foreign currency and support in the prosecuting of the war. The authors share their firsthand experience of deprivation and include a list of books that they used in planning military strategy. By common consensus, the authors were the best American generals in the Revolutionary War and so their book is a valuable resource in understanding the relationship between economics and strategy. Chapter Two of the book is particularly useful since it contains Washington’s and Greene’s plans for the Battle of Manhattan.

[1] Robert L. McGrath, “The Endless Trail of the End of the Trail.” Journal of the West 40, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 8–10.

[2] Aaron S. Klieman, “Israeli Diplomacy in the Thirtieth Year of Statehood: Constants and Discontinuities,” in Israel: A Developing Society, ed. Asher Arian (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1980), 33–58.

[3] McGrath, “The Endless Trail,” 9.

[4] This is how a footnote looks. You only need to type the reference’s information here. Create the footnote by going to “References” “Insert Footnote”- and then typing the needed information when the footnote appears.