Assignment Instructions: While reading, please take notes by addressing the following questions for primary and secondary sources, respectively. Primary sources are sources produced during the period of interest. Secondary sources are those produced a later date about the period of interest. They make use of primary sources and other secondary sources.
These questions will allow you to practice reading comprehension, a skill that takes time and energy to develop. The questions are designed to help you reflect on what you do, and do not, understand. While I expect you to try your best, I do not expect you to immediately understand the major points of every reading. (Even identifying what is and what is not a major point takes practice.) To the contrary, a partial understanding of something is often a good starting point for a rich, fruitful discussion, which along with the lecture, should help advance your understanding. In other words, your notes do not have to accurately answer each question. As notes, they are merely a way to prepare for our discussion periods in class and begin to prepare for the two essays. To receive full credit, they should show some genuine attempt to address most of the questions. Responses do not need to take the form of complete sentences, but they should be clear. Please make sure to avoid anachronism, the act of imposing knowledge of the present onto that of the past.
Primary sources:
1. Who is the author? What is their profession? When was the source written? What kind of primary source is it?
2. What are the key assumptions the author is making?
3. What is the overall purpose, or point, of the source?
4. Which details do you not understand? What is confusing about them? Which details did you find surprising and why?
Secondary sources:
1. Who is (are) the author(s)? What is their profession? When was the source written?
What kind of secondary source is it (journal article, book chapter, etc.)?
2. Which topic is the source about?
3. If there are multiple sections, what is the main claim of each section?
4. What is the overall argument of its author(s)?