So you have to write a research paper, part III: peer review and secondary sources

SECONDARY SOURCES
Secondary sources are very valuable to historians, especially for seeing what other writers, especially other scholars, have already written about a topic. But secondary sources can be good or bad. Some writers may not have expertise about an area in which they are writing. Some writers can have expertise but their ideas that are not yet “up to snuff.” This can reduce the credibility of a source. For this reason, you should try your best in your research to find secondary sources that are “peer reviewed.”

So you have to write a research paper, part II: finding primary sources in an archive

Primary sources are, to put it simply, the stuff of history. They are what other disciplines might call the “raw data.” Without them, we can know nothing about the past. They’re the proof there even was a past!

Primary sources can be found in any number of places, but one of the more common places to find them is in an archive.

So you have to write a research paper, part I: intro to primary and secondary sources

This post is for the benefit of students taking History 102 or 102W with Liam O’Flaherty at SFU or FIC

In this course, one or more of your assignments will be research-based. See your syllabus and specific assignment instructions for details (as I change the assignments every semester).

The purpose of this post is to explain what kinds of sources you will encounter, how historians classify them, and also which ones are more credible than others.

In university level History, sources come in two forms: primary sources and secondary sources.

Participation rubric

This post is for the benefit of students taking History 102 – Canada Since Confederation from 2018 to 2020. It may be updated as time goes on.

Participation

History is a subject that combines elements of theory (independently arrived at and objective ideas about the causation of events — i.e. why events happen and in the order in which they happen), analysis (systematic and empirical interrogation of a research question), narrative (story-telling), and, most importantly argument (developing a subjective position on an issue and using the art of persuasion to convince others).

Your ability, as a student, to fashion high quality historical thinking in the form of written and verbal argument, informed by theory, analysis, and narrative, will be assessed. As such, there is a participation portion of class where you will be expected to discuss the topics we are talking about with your peers in small groups, as a whole class, in debates, presentations, and other formats.

You may be wondering, however: “How is the instructor going to calculate my ‘Participation’ grade?”

Camillien Houde’s speeches on the eve of war

Camillien Houde (Photo Archives of La Presse)

On September 11, 1939, a day after Canada officially declared war against Germany, an editorial in Canada’s biggest newspaper—the Globe and Mail—proudly proclaimed that “Canada Has Decided”! [Link]

The editorial, while happy about Canada’s declaration of war, was unhappy about the handful of opponents in parliament. It identified the only two French-Canadian opponents of the war as being “unworthy” of their people and their country, and mocked J.S. Woodsworth, and English-Canadian opponent of the war, for being an “aged socialist.”

Welcome

My name is Liam O’Flaherty. Originally hailing from Newfoundland, I currently live in British Columbia. My personal blog is located at newfenian.wordpress.com.

This blog is intended to offer fellow history teachers but also history students with important links, as well as my own writing, about history, pedagogy, historiography, and methodology. Some of the posts provided here are intended for use as instructional materials in introductory, survey history courses that I occasionally teach at the post-secondary level. Enjoy!