For this assignment, students will put two sets of primary sources in dialogue: letters sent to President Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and other government officials during the Great Depression; and photographs taken by photographers working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the impact of the Depression on communities across the country. In so doing, students will analyze what these two sets of sources convey about the social experience of the Great Depression and will consider how different kinds of sources can provide diverse perspectives on an historical era.
The paper should compare/contrast what, and how, the letters and the photos tell us about life during the Great Depression. Students should choose preferably one theme, and at most two themes, (either from the list above or of their choosing) and assess areas of overlap and divergence in what these documents communicate about this theme(s). *Papers should NOT address all the letters and the photographs.* Rather, students should select from the samples provided and focus in on one to three letters and one to three photos in their analysis.
The paper should make a claim about what these sources communicate to us about life during the Great Depression. Textual support must be provided to support the paper’s central claim. This support should take the form not merely of summarizing what is in the texts, but interpreting what and how they convey about the paper’s theme.
Papers should be approximately four pages long. Please use the following format for your paper: 12 point Times New Roman font; one-inch margins; double-spaced. Please be sure to staple your paper together. Please provide an original title for your essay.