SYNOPSIS: The principal objective for this course is to learn develop an ability to analyze, explain, and historically contextualize primary sources, as well as to learn to engage critically with diverging historiographical perspectives. Students will acquire or consolidate skills in pursuing independent research by writing an essay of significant length subject to peer-review and feedback from the instructor throughout the process of research and writing. These skills include shaping a meaningful and realistic research project by identifying a environmental problem in a specific place; building, expanding, and refining a bibliography that permits to address such problem in a historical way; finding pertinent primary sources and analyzing them; convincingly presenting a solid argument; and using cartographical language to synthesize the argument.
READER REQUIREMENTS: Professional background in Latin American studies and environmental policy; historians; ecologists with experience in Latin American countries.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT: By the end of the semester, each student will have produced a paper in the style of a magazine article that presents the place, the current environmental situation and the historical processes that shaped it. It will be comprised of:
● a presentation of the place and the environmental problem that affects it (1000 words)
● a historical analysis of the situation (2000-2500 words)
● a map that illustrates the processes described
● and at least one written source and one visual source that was key to their argument
The project will be assessed based on the following criteria: the clarity of presentation and organization, the depth of analysis, demonstrating insight and intellectual creativity, the ability to locate and interpret evidence, the ability to use evidence effectively to support an argument, the attribution of all sources, including online sources.
IMPORTANT COURSE DEADLINES: Students will inform their reader of the deadlines.
SYLLABUS: HST222_Goldin_Syllabus
