Roots of the Witchcraft Craze - Essay

A little late with this post.  Truth be told, I hated writing this paper!  I managed an A- though, so I'm happy!

Read it here.

AE

Amerindian Domination - Grade

Phew!  I managed to pull off a good grade on this paper.  I got a late start on this essay and ended up having to squeeze proofreading and final revisions into one day.  That week was definitely long and stressful; I had way too much going on.  I wasn't happy with it when I turned it in, but I got a nice surprise when the grades were posted.

 

Grade:  A-

 

AE

Slave Trade: An Economic Cause - Grade

Round 2 with my Historical Interpretation professor was a success, although I actually struggled with this paper.  It had to be 7-9 pages in length, but there was so much information to pick from that I had a hard time making decisions about what was most relevant.  Here's what my prof had to say:

"This is a very polished, well considered essay.  You show a firm grasp of several of the essays we've read for this unit, and you draw on them well to support your viewpoint.  You don't have a really explicit thesis statement, which you should have, yet fairly early on I see what point of view you are taking.  This is a very well written paper that considers alternative points of view fairly. You lean heavily on the preexisting presence of a slave trade in Africa, which at first blush might not seem to advance (or retard) your argument, but you make sense of it (even though, as I've indicated, I don't think all forms of slavery were the same).  Overall this is a very good job and suggests you can write excellent papers for this class."

Grade:  A-

Phew!  This was the day-brightener that I needed!  I wish I could bottle up the feeling you get when you receive good praise from a professor for an essay, it would make staying motivated while writing them a lot easier.  Maybe this blog will be a valuable tool while writing papers after all!

One of his bits of constructive criticism is aimed at a seemingly missing thesis statement.  I have to disagree with him on that point; I believe the last sentence in my opening paragraph sums up my argument pretty clearly.  Everyone looks at a paper differently though, so I'll try to improve on that in my next paper.

AE

The Art of History - Grade

Well, I got my first grade today at University X.  I managed a "B" on a paper that I didn't feel that comfortable with.  I guess I can stomach it.  Here is the feedback from Historical Interpretation Professor:

 

"Dear Eric,

 

Your position is very clear here - admirably so - and you are vigorous in defending your view that history is dramatically different in method from the natural sciences.  Your emphasis on the historian's biases and subjectivity, and on the ultimate unknowability of the past, are well taken and support your view.  On the other hand, the scientific method isn't totally alien to historical scholarship.  "Testing" an historical "law" would involve observing unfolding events and seeing whether they conform to general hypotheses about how societies operate, hypotheses based on study of the past.  You might think there's little point to doing this kind of thing, but it could be done.

 

Overall this is a good brief effort to come to terms with a large question.  If you continue your good use of the assigned readings and stick pretty closely to them in future assignments, you'll be writing very good papers.

 

Grade: B"

 

A couple things jumped out to me in his response:

 

1) He talks about how the "scientific method isn't totally alien to historical scholarship," and provides an example.  The problem I have is that I agreed with that in my paper, which is why I stated early on that there are indeed many similarities between science and history, but it's the major differences that remove it from a scientific "scholarship."

 

2) In his example he talks about the study of societies by basing certain hypotheses on the study of the past.  He's right, this could be done (see my argument 1 above), but I would also consider that to be the work of a sociologist, not an historian.  The sociologist would just draw on an historian's work to generate their hypothesis.  Now does that make sociology a science?  I'm not about to open that can of worms...

 

I haven't received my actual paper back yet, but I'm hoping that he will provide insight as to what he was exactly looking for that I missed in order to have received an "A."  Trust me, I'm not complaining about a "B," but as John Arnold said, "historians pride themselves on their ability to question everything."  And that's what I do.

 

AE