history assignment

Proposal Rubric: Please submit a Project Proposal of 250 words that includes the following:

1) The project needs to be as focused as possible on a narrow topic:
Suggestions for narrowing the theme: 
– consider the span of time you are covering and do your best to limit it to 25 years,  
– center it on a single event or period in a the History of BioMedicine from 1800-1980,
– base your investigation on a limited set (or single) primary source (e.g. publication, map, scientific documents, personal papers)

2) A thesis statement in the form of a question that reflects the aims of your research project.

3) A short Bibliography that includes:

– Primary Source(s) – At least one source that was produced during the time of, or by one of the people involved in your project. 
– Secondary Sources – At least two scholarly works (essays, books) written by historians that help you to provide the social, intellectual, cultural context for the primary source.
– Formatting of sources: Use Chicago Style to format your bibliography.  Do not include URLs.

Here is a brief and useful webpage:http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

4) Descriptive Title.  Think of writing titles as a poetic challenge and write one that reflects the project thesis (or question).  Avoid writing titles like: “History Proposal”

5) Makes sure to include your name, course info, date.

Essay Length: 1500 words.

Goal: Examine the development of one or two aspects of History of BioMedicine during a narrow time period (limit it to 25 years, e.g. 1900-1925).  Do not tell the history of an entire epoch (like the history of the Hospital), but rather be selective and more focused.

Some ideas: 
– A specific type of medical research (surgery, vaccines, public health, medical genetics etc, but then focused a single experiment/program/person/institution).
– Biography–pick an ‘scientist or natural philosopher (Pasteur, Bernard, Budd and more obscure figures) and talk about some aspect of their work (writings).
– Focus on the medical practices of a certain area (Philadelphia nurses)
– Or on a single scientific institution (University, Academy, Laboratory)

Sources:
1) one or more primary historical sources (documents written during the time you are focusing on and by physicians, or medical administrators).  Sometimes students get confused about this, so I  will assess these in your proposal.  But if you are writing a short biographical essay about a single scientist, then a primary source would be one of his/her writings.
2) at least two secondary historical sources that place the primary sources in their historical context (works written by contemporary historians), 
3) If you want, a Map from the time period.