Lab March 5

This page probably looks a little familiar to you. IF it doesn't, it should. Except for the contents of this box and the historian pictured in the portrait top left, I've copied the lab syllabus for February 27 word for word. I don't think this counts as plagiarism: If there's any doubt, consider this a footnote of acknowledgment.

Last week, we left lab shortly after we began, in order that we could attend en masse the lecture by the former Ambassador from Israel, Daniel Ayalon. The deal was that persons would write about their reactions to the speech in their commonplace books. Some have kept the deal...others can still redeem themselves by keeping it.

This evening I will give further instruction on how to proofread and save one's proofreading results. I will ask everyone to do two pages before they leave the lab, and I will check the work when you have it finished. Raise your hand for difficulties, and raise your hand when you're done. I will come around and give what aid I can.

We now are about to embark on the third major project for History 203 lab, the research paper which will be transformed into a web document.

We will also begin another skill-building project–one which will allow you to make your own contribution to historical scholarship as a way to start paying back the people who have provided so many things for your interest and use. I will use this week’s lab session to introduce both of these to you. The project isn’t glamorous–proofreading never is, but it is absolutely essential as part of the process whereby larger and larger storehouses of information are made available to people. Countless volunteer hours go into making web documents accessible and reliable. You’re going to provide some of those hours–if not exactly as cheerful “volunteers” at least as students of history with a sense of the importance of this project for the scholarly world.

Thoughts on choosing a topic for the research paper.

1.Choose a topic which interests you. This part of the course will be a dead bore if you do otherwise. With nearly 2000 years of English history to cover, and a culture which contains everything from bawdy houses owned by bishops to a great fire, to the blitz, it shouldn’t be too hard to find something of interest.

2.Choose a topic appropriate to the required length of the paper. I expect this paper to include approximately 2000 - 2500 words of text. In other words, about ten typed pages, double spaced. This sounds like more than it is. Depending on what part of the country one is from (New Jerseyites speak faster than everyone else, Iowans slower) this would be between 10 and 15 minutes of oral delivery. What will make this paper difficult is choosing a topic to narrow to discuss at that length or one so broad that deciding what to omit will create a major headache.

3.Whether the focus is a movement, a personality, an event, or an idea, it must have interacted in some way or other with one or more of the members of the interlocking clans whose story forms the skeleton upon which Rutherfurd constructs the story of London.

4.You must be able to locate and use Primary source materials in your investigation. These may be literary materials, objects or facsimiles, maps, photographs or works of art. You should also be able to locate some secondary source materials, using books or online scholarly resources through J-Stor or Lexis-Nexus.

5Phase one, which commences right now, is to select an era and, within that era, two to five topics to begin preliminary investigations upon. Approach these in order of interest. If you strike a goldmine of materials on the first topic, you have no obligation to proceed with further ones. We do not want many papers on the same topic. So we’re instituting an “first come-first served policy” When you have a good idea of what you wish to write about create a title and get it to Professor Mulligan and myself. This will reserve the topic for you.

6.Want help locating an interesting topic? Here’s a hint. TALK TO US.

Visit the Home Page of the Distributed Proofreader’s Project, do the “walkthrough” which is a kind of mini-tutorial, and register for an account. From now until the end of the semester you’ll proofread pages and add them to the books being assembled. You will be accountable for a minimum of 5 pages to receive a C for the exercise, and greater numbers of pages will allow for the bestowing of a higher grade. There will be a prize for the Proofreading Prince (or Princess) at the end of the term.

CHAP. XIX.--The two Britons, Ivor and Ini, in vain attack the nation of the Angles. Athelstan the first king of the Angles.

As soon as Ivor and Ini had got together their ships, they

with all the forces they could raise, arrived in the island, and

for forty-nine years together fiercely attacked the nation of

the Angles, but to little purpose. For the above-mentioned

mortality and famine, together with the inveterate spirit of

faction that was among them, had made this proud people so

much degenerate, that they were not able to gain any advantage

of the enemy. And being now also overrun with barbarism,

they were no longer called Britons, but Gualenses,

Welshmen; a word derived either from Gualo their leader,

or Guales their queen, or from their barbarism. But the

Saxons managed affairs with more prudence, maintained

peace and concord among themselves, tilled their grounds,

rebuilt their cities and towns, and so throwing off the dominion

of the Britons, bore sway over all Loegria, under their

leader Athelstan, who first wore a crown amongst them.

But the Welshmen, being very much degenerated from the

nobility of the Britons, never after recovered the monarchy

of the island; on the contrary, by quarrels among themselves,

and wars with the Saxons, their country was a perpetual

scene of misery and slaughter.

CHAP. XX.--Geoffrey of Monmouth's conclusion.

BUT as for the kings that have succeeded among them in

Wales, since that time, I leave the history of them to Caradoc

of Lancarvan, my contemporary; as I do also the kings

of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury, and Henry of

Huntingdon. But I advise them to be silent concerning the

kings of the Britons,[*] since they have not that book written

* This advice might be thought judicious, if we could be persuaded of

the authenticity of Geoffrey's cherished discovery, but there are lamentable

defects, of a grave character, attending upon this British volume.

1. It was first made known six hundred years after the events which it

relates.

2. No MS. copy is now in existence, nor any record of its ever having

been multiplied by transcription.

3. It relates stories utterly at variance with acknowledged history.

4. It abounds in miraculous stories, which, like leaven, ferment and corrupt

the whole mass.