The blog is your chance to develop a specific expertise on a general topic for the class and share it with the rest of the class - and potentially with others if you wish to do so as a public history project!
Your task:
Select a specific theme that relates to the class and research it. Choose a narrow focus - instead of politics, look at politics of an era, or of a political figure, or a movement (etc.). For your particular case study or theme that you have chosen, construct a well-organized, well-labeled blog. I recommend Wix, Weebly, or Jumla, as these are free and seem to cause the fewest problems. Free is important: don't spend any money on this project
Your blog will have four parts.
1. an overview of the topic on the first page, which will serve as an introduction for your blog. (use secondary sources to support your analysis)
2. an analysis of a primary source pertaining to that topic that reveals something important about that issue. For this, you must use additional secondary sources to support your analysis
3. a complexity analysis wherein you talk about practical or conceptual nuances of the topic, or why it's difficult to analyze it (are there few sources? Do Orientalists or biased historians muck up the topic? is it controversial?)
4. A bibliography
The three main sections should add up to 1500 words, but some sections may be longer than others. You may decorate it with whatever you feel fits the topic. Stylistically, you can be less formal than if you were writing an essay, but don't go so informal that you undermine your authority with readers.
Regarding Citations: you MUST cite and/or hyperlink in the text using parenthetical citations. Use an in-text citation method like APA, which works well for blogs (footnotes don't work all that well). List the sources you for each section at the end of each post in bibliographic format (this is not included in the word count), AND include a bibliography section at the end.
Assessment:
1. You will primarily be assessed on your content and your analysis. Grammatical and spelling conventions must be respected.
2. This will require that you engage with secondary sources in order to contextualize your primary sources, so you MUST have a small bibliographic list at the end of each entry and should refer to some secondary sources within your entries.
3. Your primary sources may be of any sort. Photos, videos, quotes, newspaper articles, book excerpts, etc. You can illustrate your entries with your sources, as well as any other visual effects you would like.
4. Visual flair will be appreciated, but will not be a deciding factor in your grade.
The final Blog will be due November 17.
Upload the link to the assessment portal attached to this prompt, and I will use it to find your site. Make sure you make your site public before you share the link!