Undergraduate Thesis Tutorial

This class is established for exchange students. Designing and writing a thesis entails "doing" history and allows you to explore, in depth, a topic of your choice. The class helps you discover how the historian conducts research and transforms discrete information into a coherent analysis. In the process of conducting research, you will develop analytical skills and gain a basic understanding of historical method. Successful history theses, like the best works of academic scholarship in general, come in many different forms. Some are strongly narrative in design, while others are more overtly framed in relation to specific perspectives or concepts. Whatever form the thesis ultimately takes, the author poses a significant historical problem or question and sets out to address it by examining and analyzing primary sources. The class requires and rewards a much greater level of student initiative. It consists of two sub-courses. The first focuses on historiography and the second on writing a thesis within the parameters of academic form requirements.