Make Your Own Constitution

We've spent two class sessions discussing the challenges involved in creating a governing document that satisfied everyone. If you could talk to the framers of the Constitution in 1787, what advice would you give them?

This post will be available for comments until Friday, October 17.

Schedule changes

Hi Everyone,

I have updated the reading/quiz schedule to reflect that we do not meet on Friday, October 3. My apologies for the confusion.

Please complete the following readings for our next meeting on Tuesday, October 7:

Give Me Liberty! Chapter 7 pg 263-281
Chapter 7 quiz due
Address to the People of New York by the Hon. John Jay and Elbridge Gerry's Reasons for Not Signing the Federal Constitution

--Mariel 

Finding Sources

Finding good, relevant sources is an important early step in the research process. By this point in the semester, you should have some idea of a topic that you are interested in for your research essay and you should be starting to collect sources. 

Post the author’s name, book or article title, journal title (if applicable) and publisher for 3 sources that you have already found in the comments below. 

ETA: A previous post asked you to think of a topic you are interested in regardless of whether or not it was related to the course. This post is asking you to find sources related to your research topic which must fall within the scope of this course: roughly 1500-1865, North America. Please make sure your sources (and research topic) are related to the course.

This post will be available for new comments until Tuesday September 30. 

Primary Texts

We have looked at several different types of primary documents—images, letters, governing agreements—in the last two class meetings. What unique information do the primary sources provide? What additional information do we need to make sense of the primary materials? 

This post will be available for new comments until Friday September 19.

Searching and Researching

In today’s class, we discussed the difference between “searching”— looking for information that already exists and “researching”—compiling a variety of sources to examine and use as the basis of your own analysis. 

What is one thing—it does not have to be related to this course—that you would like to know more about? Will it require searching or researching? If your topic of choice is not directly related to the course, is there a possible connection that you could consider? How would you investigate this? 

This post will be available for new comments until Friday September 12.