1 History 407/507: Seminar on Oregon History Fall 2013 Glenn Anthony May ([email protected]) T 14:00-16:50 Office: 381 McKenzie Classroom: 373 McKenzie Off. hrs: MW 10:00-11:30 (381 McKenzie) Objective: This course has one basic objective: to require each student to produce a well-written, well-organized (20-25 page) research paper on some aspect of Oregon history. Procedure: Following the introductory session, each student, with my assistance, will define a paper topic, identify key primary sources and secondary literature, and begin to generate a description of the paper topic. By the third week of classes, each student must have identified a topic and received my approval of that topic. Before 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 19, each student will be required to Email all classmates and me a single-spaced, one-page description (MS Word format) of her/his research project. Students should read all of those documents carefully before class on Oct. 22 and be ready to discuss them. Be sure to bring to class copies of all those texts in some format—either electronic copies on your computer or hard copies. In the paper-topic description, students are expected to do the following: to describe the historical subject to be examined in the research paper and the paper’s chronological parameters; to discuss the larger historical questions to be raised in the paper; and to provide a brief description of the principal primary sources to be used. Over the next six weeks, as students are working on the papers, I will provide guidance in class meetings and tutorials about the nature of the historical paper and the challenges of writing one. Along the way, several assignments will be due. For our Nov. 12 class session, each student will prepare a 1-page paper outline (and bring 11 hard copies of it to class). By Nov. 22, before 4 p.m., all students are to turn in to me (via Email) 2-3 pages of text, taken from the body of the paper. I will discuss those pages with students in tutorials during the following week. In the last class session of the quarter (Dec. 3), students will provide brief (5-7 minute) oral presentations about their research findings. Papers (hard copies only) are due on or before 4 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 9, 2013, at my office, 381 McKenzie Hall. Students who submit late papers will be penalized. Required book purchases: (Books are available at the U of O Bookstore.) Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (7th ed.) Glenn Anthony May, Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon2 Calculation of Final Grades: I have no absolutely scientific system of determining final grades. The principal requirement of this course is, of course, the completed research paper. Hence, it will constitute the principal component of the final grade. But I will also grade you on your paper description and any other written exercises, participation in class discussions (discussion of assigned readings, comments on papers, etc.), and performance in tutorials. You are expected to attend and be prepared for all classes and tutorial sessions. Paper Topics: All papers will deal with some aspect of the history of Oregon. Students are required to choose a topic that allows them to do research in primary sources. The Knight LIbrary has extensive collections of relevant published primary materials--memoirs, microfilmed newspapers, legislative compilations, magazines, etc. The Department of Special Collections at the library has extremely rich holdings of manuscript records. In the past, students in the seminar have also done research at the Oregon State Archives (Salem), the Oregon Historical Society (Portland), even at a document repository in Seattle. The identification of a viable paper topic is a very difficult task for most students in the seminar, and my many years of teaching it lead me to believe that students who flounder in the topic-identification stage often do poorly in the course. Some of you may already have a viable subject in mind and may have located a substantial corpus of relevant primary sources. Others haven’t a clue where to begin. To assist students, I have drawn up a list of suggested topics, derived primarily from my own survey of materials available in the library. (The topics provided here would have to be refined and narrowed.) Obviously, the list is far from exhaustive. I include it merely to steer you toward some primary source collections that will potentially provide enough material for a research paper. 1. Oregon Woman’s Christian Temperance Union activities. Special Collections materials are strongest on period 1885-1917. Possible areas of focus: 1a. prison reform 1b. temperance education 2. Walter Pierce--some aspect of his career. Pierce was a cattleman, later governor and congressman. His papers are in Special Collections. 3. Richard Neuberger. Senator from Oregon. One possible area of focus: public health. Some of his papers are in Special Collections. 4. Maurine Neuberger. Senator from Oregon. Her papers are in Special Collections. Much material in the collection concerns her anti-tobacco campaign.3 5. Wayne Morse. Politician from Oregon. His papers are in Special Collections. Much of the collection focuses on US foreign relations (and hence much of it does offer viable paper topics for a seminar on Oregon history), but there is also much material on Morse’s tenure as dean of the UO law school. 6. Albert Ullman. Congressman, 1957-81. Huge collection of papers in Special Collections, some of it on environmental matters. 7. Charles Porter. Maverick Congressman, 1954-61. Resident of Eugene. His papers are also in Special Collections. 8. Jonathan Bourne. Senator, 1906-12. Papers in Special Collections. Important figure in the Progressive Movement. 9. Education in Oregon, an understudied subject perhaps because sources are difficult to locate. But see the very impressive 407 seminar paper written by Scott Montanaro: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/5910 10. Jackson Country Records—catalogued by Special Collections 11. African-Americans in Oregon; civil rights in Oregon. Much information in microfilmed newspapers--Advocate; Clarion Defender; Skanner--all available in the microfilm section of the Knight Library; also see the Stella Maris House manuscripts, Oregon Historical Society; also Oregon NAACP records, Knight Library, Special