History 499 Senior Thesis
Focus: Europe, 1918-1939
Prof. Sackett
Office: COB 2053; phone: 262-4079 (office)
Course goal: completion of a senior thesis (app. 25-30 pp.) by each student, following the steps listed in the schedule below.
Note: Each student will have, in addition to the professor, a student referee responding to each assignment up to and including the rough draft; each student will in turn be assigned as a student referee for another student’s project.
Note: Since the students must keep the schedule in order to succeed in the course, students are referred to p. 4 of the Fall 2001 course schedule for information concerning withdrawal. Also, attendance is mandatory.
Basis for grade: 80% on final paper; 20% on prior assignments (esp. on performance as student referee).
Course book: (for reference – available at bookstore): Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (3rd ed.).
Note: Students will be given a list of possible general topics prepared by the professor including related initial primary documents or collections of documents (see appendix). They will choose one of these topics, or may choose a topic not on the list, but must assure the professor that this will not mean a delay in the completion of assignments.
Schedule
August 24: Introduction
August 31: For acquaintance with this period read and be prepared to discuss McKay, et. al., A History of Western Society (4th ed.), Vol. C, pp. 875-947 (4-hr reserve at the library). Following a general class discussion, each student will state (irrevocably) his/her topic and identify his/her related initial primary document (or collection of documents). Assignment of student referees to follow. Division of students into Group I and Group II.
Note: Students are to have a one-page paper to professor and student referee by Wednesday, September 5, at noon, containing brief answers to the eight questions.
- What is one theme/idea that you found in your primary document?
- What is another theme/idea that you found in your document?
- What is the historical situation or context to which your document refers?
- What is your question about this document? In other words, what would you like to know about it? (For example, who or what influenced its author(s)? Did its author(s) state similar ideas in other documents? Did other author(s) state similar or different ideas? Did this document influence the author(s) of other documents?) Be as general or specific as you care to be.
- What is the title of another primary document, one that would help you answer the question stated in #4, or simply one that refers to the same historical situation or context (if not available in CU-Colorado Springs’ Kraemer Family Library or on Internet, please check with professor)?
- What is the title of a general secondary work covering your topic (must be available)?
- What is the title of a more specific secondary work covering your topic (must be available)?
- Who, by the way, is the author of your document? Be brief.
September 7: Group I students to state their answers to the eight questions briefly; student referees to deliver their responses orally (2-min. maximum).
September 14:
Group II same.
Note: Students are to have one-page preliminary project statement
to professor and student referee by Wednesday, September 19, at noon. This
statement should refer to the initial primary document and to the
other primary document named in answer 5). The statement
should include a refinement of question in answer 4).
September 21: Group I students to present their preliminary project statement (3-min. maximum); student referees to deliver their responses orally (2-min. maximum). Professor and student referees to focus upon project’s coherence, feasibility, and possibilities for enlargement.
September 28: Group II students same.
October 5: No meeting. Students work ahead on annotated bibliography.
Note: Students are to have annotated bibliography, divided into
primary and secondary sources, to professor and student referee by Wednesday,
October 10 at noon.
October 12: Group I students to receive professor’s and student referee’s response (2-min. maximum) to annotated bibliography. The issue is: does the annotated bibliography enable the student to answer the question as refined in the preliminary project statement? Also, are the items on the annotated bibliography available?
October 19: Group II students same.
October 26: No meeting. Students should be reading materials and giving structure to their projects.
November 2: Brief meeting to discuss upcoming 2 pp. Second
project statement with outline. Students should be reading materials,
giving structure to their projects, and preparing second project statement
with outline.
Note: Students are to have 2-pp. Second project statement with outline
to professor and student referee by Wednesday, November 7 at noon.
November 9: Group I and II students to receive professor’s and student referee’s response (1-min. maximum) to second project statement with outline.
November 16: No meeting. Students to be writing rough draft (at least 20 pp.).
November 23: Thanksgiving.
Note: Students to have rough draft to professor and student
referee by Monday, November 26, at noon.
November 30 : Group I and II students to receive professor’s and student referee’s response (1-min. maximum).
December 7: No meeting. Final version to professor by 5 p.m.
History 499 – Sr. Thesis 4
APPENDIX
TOPICS WITH INITIAL PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:
GREAT BRITAIN – POLITICS – BIOGRAPHY
Frances Stevenson, Lord George: A Diary by Frances Stevenson
*Winston Churchill, Step by Step, 1936-1939
FRANCE-POLITICS
Paul Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight
GERMANY-POLITICS BEFORE 1933
*Franz Von Papen, Memoirs
*Harry Kessler, In the twenties; the diaries of Harry Kessler
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS-ECONOMICS
Sir James Headlam Morley, A Memoir of the Paris Peace Conference 1919
Harold Nicolson, Lord Curzon: The Last Phase. A Study in Post-war Diplomacy
Georges Clemenceau, Grandeur and misery of victory
John Maynard Keynes, The economic consequences of the peace
*Andre Francois-Poncet, The fateful years: memoirs of a French ambassadoar in Berlin, 1931-1938
Nevile Henderson, Failure of a mission: Berlin, 1937-1939
GREAT BRITAIN-LITERATURE-WOMEN
N. Nicolson, ed., Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson
The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Victoria Sackville-West, The Edwardians
GREAT BRITAIN-LITERATURE-COMMENTARY
George Orwell, Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol. I: An Age Like This, 1920-1940
*George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
*George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
*H.G. Wells, Experiment in autobiography
*H.G. Wells, The open conspiracy: blue prints for a world revolution
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
H.G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM
Helmut Gruber, ed., Soviet Russia masters in the Comintern
SPAIN-CIVIL WAR
*George Orwell, Homage fo Catalonia (in print)
FASCISM-LEADERS
*Adolf Hitler, The speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939 ed. N.H. Baynes, 2 vols.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
*Alfred Rosenberg, Race and race history, and other essays, ed. Robert Pois
Benito Mussolini, Mussolini as revealed in his political speeches (November 1914-August 1923)
FASCISM-CULTURE
*George L. Mosse, Nazi culture
COMMUNISM-LEADERSHIP-EXILE
*Leon Trotsky, Trotsky’s Diary in Exile, 1935
Leon Trotsky, My Life
Victor Serge, Year one of the Russian revolution
ITALY-FASCISM-COMMUNISM-LITERATURE
*Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine (in print)
PSYCHOLOGY
C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Karen Horney, Feminine Psychology
GERMANY-LITERATURE-COMMENTARY
Alfred Doblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz
*Hans Fallada, Little man, what now?
Hermann Hesse, Demian
*Thomas Mann, Letters of Thomas Mann, 1889-1955
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
FRANCE-LITERATURE-COMMENTARY
Paul Claudel and Andre Gide, The correspondence, 1899-1926
Andre Gide, The counterfeiters
Andre Gide, Return from the U.S.S.R.
PHILOSOPHY-RELIGION
Martin Buber, I and Thou
Jacques Maritain, Integral humanism
MARXISM
Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness
FANTASY LITERATURE
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
POETRY
Stephen Spender, Collected Poems, 1928-1953
HISTORY
Johan Huizinga, The waning of the middle ages
Marc Bloch, Feudal Society
Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians
THEATRE
*V.E. Meierhold, Meyerhold on Theatre, ed. E. Braun
Bertolt Brecht, Mother courage and her children
Bertolt Brecht, Threepenny Opera
VISUAL ART
Kathe Kollwitz, Prints and Drawings
Marc Chagall, The Russian Years 1906-1922
Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years 1915-1933
ANTHROPOLOGY
Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the western pacific
Bronislaw Malinowski, Myth in primitive psychology in Magic, Science and Religion and other essays
FILM
Sergei Eisenstein, Film essays and a lecture
Jean Renoir, My life and my films