Proposal Rubric: Please submit a Project Proposal of 250 words that includes the following:
1) The project needs to be as focused as possible on a narrow topic:
Suggestions for narrowing the theme:
- consider the span of time you are covering and do your best to limit it to 25 years,
- center it on a single event or period in a the History of BioMedicine from 1800-1980,
- base your investigation on a limited set (or single) primary source (e.g. publication, map, scientific documents, personal papers)
2) A thesis statement in the form of a question that reflects the aims of your research project.
3) A short Bibliography that includes:
- Primary Source(s) - At least one source that was produced during the time of, or by one of the people involved in your project.
- Secondary Sources - At least two scholarly works (essays, books) written by historians that help you to provide the social, intellectual, cultural context for the primary source.
- Formatting of sources: Use Chicago Style to format your bibliography. Do not include URLs.
Here is a brief and useful webpage:
4) Descriptive Title. Think of writing titles as a poetic challenge and write one that reflects the project thesis (or question). Avoid writing titles like: "History Proposal"
5) Makes sure to include your name, course info, date.
Essay Length: 1500 words.
Goal: Examine the development of one or two aspects of History of BioMedicine during a narrow time period (limit it to 25 years, e.g. 1900-1925). Do not tell the history of an entire epoch (like the history of the Hospital), but rather be selective and more focused.
Some ideas:
- A specific type of medical research (surgery, vaccines, public health, medical genetics etc, but then focused a single experiment/program/person/institution).
- Biography--pick an 'scientist or natural philosopher (Pasteur, Bernard, Budd and more obscure figures) and talk about some aspect of their work (writings).
- Focus on the medical practices of a certain area (Philadelphia nurses)
- Or on a single scientific institution (University, Academy, Laboratory)
Sources:
1) one or more primary historical sources (documents written during the time you are focusing on and by physicians, or medical administrators). Sometimes students get confused about this, so I will assess these in your proposal. But if you are writing a short biographical essay about a single scientist, then a primary source would be one of his/her writings.
2) at least two secondary historical sources that place the primary sources in their historical context (works written by contemporary historians),
3) If you want, a Map from the time period.
For the topic: Focus on one narrow aspect of biomedicine, maybe focused on the NIH. Here is a good chapter to get you going; use the sources listed in there for more on the topic.