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hi I'm prof T and welcome to I heart

academia this video is about how to

write a research paper specifically a

research paper in history this is a

video for students who have never

written a research paper and it's also a

video meant to help students who have

written papers before but hope to

improve on the next research paper that

they are writing first you will need a

research paper topic and the topic can

be as broad as religion in 15th century

England then you will need a question to

be asked about this topic that can be

answered using a specific set of primary

sources oftentimes you will be drawing

on sources that your professor has

already assigned you in class like the

life of Marjorie Kemp other times you

may have to go out and find your own

primary sources in original research a

research question could be something

like this how does Marjorie camp and

deal with the theme of persecution in

her writings this question would lead

you to read what Marjorie Kemp has

written but you can also go out there

and find more information that was not

assigned by your professor may be

information about the Lollard movement

or other contextualization

that can help you understand who

Marjorie camp was to want to read what

others have already written on the topic

before setting out to write a research

paper and that's why students often turn

to Wikipedia now the reason I don't

recommend Wikipedia is that Wikipedia

can be edited by anyone for any reason

like them hating or loving the person

that they are writing about that's not

the same thing as scholarship it has at

least an eye

EAL of being even-handed a much better

place to start would be with your

lecture notes from class your textbook

and any primary source that the

professor has assigned you during the

semester those readings those primary

sources often have introductions written

by scholars who are experts in their

field and experts on that particular

author or topic so reading that

introduction to the life of Marjorie

Kemp would be a great place to start in

addition to going to your library and

finding other books written by

historians on this topic and going

online and looking for articles written

by historians on this topic what do I

mean by a scholarly article I mean an

article in an academic journal which has

been peer reviewed and is written by an

expert reviewed by other experts and

approved as a piece of good scholarly

writing and good research every field

will have a variety of scholarly

journals to search for articles on a

particular topic JSTOR is a great

database to use that you can find by

going to your library's website project

Muse is another one and there are many

others that you will be able to search

for scholarly articles bad authorities

to turn to at the beginning of a

research project would be the simply

Google your research topic or to go to a

Wikipedia page or just the internet in

general to expect the Internet to give

you good information unless you find a

page that is run by scholars and

professors or a YouTube video also

uploaded by a scholar or a professor

these are not good places to start

because they are not peer-reviewed

ideally your professor hopes that you

will be looking at primary sources a

primary source will be from the time

period that you are studying so if

you're studying 15th century England

that's when your primary source was

written

it could be translated from another

language like Latin or French that it

was originally written in and it can be

of multiple genres like a primary source

can be a poem of romance a chronicle the

Saints life religious treatises advice

books memoirs letters etc many

professional historians depending on the

time period in place that they study use

our Chi ville sources which are the

bureaucratic detritus What's Left Behind

from institutions for instance like a

state or government

these can be royal documents official

papers bureaucratic documents letters

from one person to another or to the

king himself archival sources can be a

vast variety of genres they can be wills

requests for favors or positions and

jobs at court contracts criminal cases

lawsuits Inquisition cases etc depending

on what time period and place that you

are studying some archival manuscripts

have been digitized which has really

helped scholarship advances across the

world here is an example of a website

created by the Dominican Studies

Institute at Kuni to help people

understand paleography the writing the

handwriting from the early modern period

so the first step in analyzing an

archival source is to transcribe it to

type out what are the words in Spanish

that are written on the page for anyone

hoping to do archival research in

Spanish whether for a master's thesis

dissertation or otherwise I highly

recommend using this paleography tool

created by Cooney now the information

that you have found say about the life

of Marjorie Kemp in the primary sources

and secondary sources that you have read

this information and the notes you have

taken on that information it becomes

evidence when you use it to prove an

argument and the argument is the thesis

of your research paper it is what you

are trying to show and prove with all

the evidence that you list between your

introduction and conclusion basically

out of any research paper is as follows

you have an introductory paragraph that

includes a thesis statement which is the

argument of your paper as a whole then

the body paragraphs that include

citations to primary sources and perhaps

also cite secondary sources and then

finally a conclusion that restates your

argument and mentions the evidence that

you have brought in to prove it when

setting off on any research paper

project to have a way of organizing your

materials some students use the notecard

method which means any fact or piece of

information that you find that you think

is interesting or noteworthy you write

it on a note card with the entire

bibliographic citation of the book

you got it from on the other side of the

note card another method would be using

a moleskin notebook or other notebook to

take notes on any source or book that

you are reading throughout your project

this works very well for dissertations

or masters theses because you can see in

chronological order where you have

looked for information and can follow

your research project as it progresses

you can also use a word document or

excel sheet method for gathering your

information as well as you gather this

information you should ask yourself

questions what does my evidence proof

what can I argue based on the evidence

that I have or do I need other

information before I can be confident in

the answer to my question a research

question how can I scale the confidence

of my statements to the quality of the

evidence I have many student papers that

I read have the problem of arguing too

much from a small amount of evidence for

instance say you've researched Marjorie

Kemp's life can you use her life to tell

something about the entire 15th century

in England maybe not it's important to

make sure that you're only arguing what

you can based on the evidence that you

actually have in front of you you can

ask yourself would this be enough to

bring charges in court with the evidence

that I have gathered convinced the jury

or would an editor publish this

journalistic piece do I have enough

corroborating evidence do I have

multiple independent sources on the

record telling me all the same thing

there are multiple ways to build a case

you could build a case by the sheer

amount of evidence or number of examples

that you provide or by the variety of

types of sources of different of

different genres like for instance

telling the history of chivalry using

romances military manuals writings of

clerics archival sources etc another

thing to do would be to analyze sources

which have not been analyzed before this

is usually in archival research or you

could ask a new question of sources that

have already been analyzed by others

you could also analyze your sources

using different methods than others have

used for instance economic historians

create graphs of their data to share

with within their papers and cultural

historians may draw on methods from

anthropology like stick description

there are many methods you can draw on

in writing history including social

history political history etc your

professor is hoping that you produce a

piece of original research in history

whether at the undergraduate or graduate

level original means it's with primary

sources that you analyze on your own

it's your contribution to historical

scholarship making a contribution to

scholarship makes you a part of the

scholarly community and communities

treat each other with respect so you

must acknowledge your debts to say where

you found any information to say where

you heard a scholarly argument and give

other scholars credit for all of their

hard work this means that you are

avoiding plagiarizing your work which is

so important to avoid plagiarism you

provide a complete citation of every

book or article that you have read in

the course of your research this is an

example using Chicago Manual of style

some scholars will and professors will

ask you to use other methods like

MLA or APA but this is Chicago manual

and you can find it online by googling

Chicago Manual of style in addition to

including a bibliography at the end of

your paper you will need to cite sources

throughout your paper using footnotes

here are footnotes 461 and 462 from

something that I have written you can

see that one source is an archival

document and the other is a published

source this is also using Chicago Manual

of style I also highly recommend that

you look at Mary Lynn Rand polas pocket

guide to writing in history because she

provides models of many different types

of citations and she also provides

advice on how to write research papers

so there you have it a brief guide on

how to write a research paper I hope

that you will go see your professor who

has assigned you this and you will ask

them for help in office hours and you

will plan your time well so that you

have all the time you need to complete

this assignment I'm sure you'll do great

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