Historiographical Comparison Essay
At-a-glance:
Two pages
12 pt. Times New Roman font
Double-spaced
1” margins
At least one source must be a monograph. The other can be a scholarly article or a book.
Chicago style
The goal: the goal of this assignment is to begin working with secondary sources in a way that could be useful for your final project.
Basic assignment: take one monograph book and one article (or another monograph) and compare them on points that you think may be relevant to your final project.
Avoid simply summarizing the things that the historians have said. You should be finding how your paper will fit into the larger historiography.
This is not a traditional essay assignment. I do not expect there to be a thesis. Rather, I want to see you compare the sources as you might in your final project.
Some questions you may consider:
• Do the historians embrace a particular school of historical thought (Marxist, cultural, postmodern,
• What are the historians’ main arguments? Is one of them more convincing than the other? Why?
• What are the primary points of agreement and/or disagreement?
• Are they asking fundamentally different or similar questions?
• What kinds of evidence do the authors use, and how might that affect their arguments?
Use an appropriate academic style and citations. Again, the hope is that you will be able to reuse at least some of this material in your final project.
