Writing Intensive Resources
Humanities
History
These resources provide projects, assignments, and resources related to each of the five criteria and two student learning outcomes required for a writing-intensive class. They also provide opportunities for investigation into social justice issues and engagement with community partners.
By adapting the project ideas below into your course content, your class will meet the requirements for a writing-intensive class. It is recommended that you meet with the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum to discuss the adaptations before submitting a formal request to the Core to have your class designated writing intensive.
Informal Writing
These assignment ideas contribute to course criteria 3 and 4.
Reflection: The purpose of reflection assignments is to help students think about and connect personally with readings to explore the themes and ideas presented.
Integration between Course Criteria, SLOs 3 and 4, and Projects/ Assignments
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Criteria: Students will be able to write effectively for specific purposes and audiences.
Purpose: The purpose of student writing in this class is to help students achieve the course learning outcomes while also helping them learn about and reflect on the themes and subject matter found in the history read throughout the semester.
Informal Writing: All informal writing helps students begin the invention process for the formal writing assignments. Students discuss informal writing with classmates through group work and presentations. The informal writing takes students through the writing to learn and writing to engage stages.
Formal Writing: All formal writing helps students describe and analyze the ways in which historical conventions and motifs work within texts and produce analyses of historical events and people. The formal compositions move students to the writing in the disciplines stage, and by the end of the term, students should be writing at the Achieve level.
Audience: The audience for all assignments is the students’ peers and their instructor. If students choose to submit their work for publication, their audience is the reviewers and readers of SLU literary journals or undergraduate journals published outside of the university.
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For the Canvas reading responses and all three formal writing assignments, students analyze and synthesize claims from articles we read for the course (lay audience and peer-reviewed), the books we read for the course, and work they find during their research.
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For the Canvas reading responses and all three formal writing assignments, students analyze, synthesize, and integrate information from articles and books read for the course (lay audience and peer-reviewed) and work they find during their research.
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The process of brainstorming, researching, drafting, and submitting that students follow provides them with many opportunities to engage in the process of invention and revision and enables them to evaluate their own and others’ rhetorical choices in written messages and arguments.
All informal writing in the course helps students synthesize, analyze, and reflect on the works we read and the discussions we have in class.
For the formal writing assignments, students may extend their thoughts from the informal assignments, or they may choose new topics to analyze.
Invention activities include in-class writing (free writing, short answer, etc.), idea maps, and groupwork.
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Teach ethics and using ethical communication in two ways: First, through an ethics chapter and ethical dilemma case study based on the genre pieces; and second, through accurate presentation and attribution of sources.
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Beginning with in-class discussions and writing activities, as well as the reader responses on Canvas, students assess and draw reasoned conclusions based on outside sources and based on the texts we read for the course. The in-class discussion questions and in-class writing prompts, as well as the reader response prompts, ask students to analyze and evaluate the peer-reviewed and lay audience publications that discuss history and its themes. In addition, all the formal writing assignments ask students to assess evidence and draw reasoned conclusions. Major questions that students answer through informal and formal writing include the following:
What is the specific period being discussed?
What conventions do historians use to convey their arguments and meaning in their writing?
What is the context that informs both the historical and how the authors write about it?
How do historians use their writing strategies and sources to reinforce and/or challenge the prevailing ideas surrounding this historical event?
Students use secondary sources, the literary texts themselves, and their sound reasoning to form arguments to answer these questions.
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Through informal writing and through drafting, revising, and finalizing formal assignments, students move through Palmquist’s writing to learn, writing to engage, and writing in the discipline stages to arrive at the Achieve level in their capstone paper at the end of the term.
Based on writing pedagogy best practices, and reinforced through the WI grading rubric, students practice higher order concerns (HOCs), such as responding to specific purposes and audiences, as well as overall organization and the organization of sections and chapters.
Students also practice lower (or later) order concerns (LOCs), such as tone, sentence structure, word choice, active voice, and genre conventions (grammar and punctuation).
By the time students are working on their final paper, they should be writing at the Achieve level; that is, they should be working at the writing in the discipline level where they could, if they chose, submit their capstone to a SLU literary journal or an undergraduate literary journal published outside the university.
Short-Answer: The purpose of short-answer assignments is to help student begin the process of writing to learn more about the specific historical events as well as the process of historical analysis.
Recommendation:
2-3 per semester, 500 words
Canvas Reading Response: The purpose of reading response assignments is to help students begin the process of writing to engage critically with the subject matter. Each response should be about 500 words.
Recommendation:
2-3 per semester, 500 words
Recommendation:
4 per semester, 500 words
Formal Writing
These assignment ideas contribute to course criteria 1 and 2.
Project 1 - Intro to Analyzing History
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The purpose of the first paper assignment is to help students describe and analyze the historical writing strategies that author(s) use to reinforce and/or challenge expectations of the historical period and/or topic being discussed.
Common practices are to have students take one or more of the books/ articles read in the first part of the semester and write an analysis of one or more of the authors engagement with the historical topic.
Questions students could engage with are as follows:
What is the author’s argument about this event/ person/ etc.?
What evidence do they use to make this argument?
Is it convincing? If yes, why? If no, why not?
Compare this author’s argument to other author’s read so far in class. Are they in agreement? Do they differ?
What makes this particular author’s analysis of the historical event/ person/ etc. so important?
How does this work contribute to a better understanding of history?
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2,000-2,500 words
Due around week 5 of the semester
Project 2 - History as Storytelling
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The purpose of the second paper assignment is to help students practice writing as a historian and begin to master some of the skills necessary for writing a compelling story alongside making an argument.
In most cases the topic should flow from the readings of the first half of the semester. Students should be asked to chart the course of a specific event relying on the sources read. They should craft a thesis and conclusion defensible from the materials and utilize a consistent citation system.
This isn’t along writing assignment and so the historical event or person should be relatively short and the emphasis should be on telling an interesting and compelling story,
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750-1,000 words
Due around week 9 of the semester
Project 3 - Historical Research
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The purpose of the third paper is to help students conduct historical research and craft a strong argument using primary sources. This assignment focuses on asking students to engage more deeply with sources and make an interpretative argument from those sources.
Depending upon length of paper and time, you can either have students use sources you provide or require them to conduct their on primary research. In some cases, you may want the subject of the research to be a continuation of their project 2 so they have already had some practice at telling this story.
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2,000-2,500 words
Due final week of the semester with possible first draft due to workshop in class on week 10
Ethical Public Discourse
These assignment ideas contribute to course criteria 5.
Because ethics and ethical dilemmas appear across all areas of history, it is recommended to integrate a good deal of time and discussion to this topic. One way to introduce this is by using the chapter on Ethics from Technical Communication Today (2017) by Richard Johnson-Sheehan. Ideally, you would want to set aside two class periods to engage directly with this topic.
Ask the students to discuss a historical event and/ or person who faced an ethical dilemma. Have them walk through what that person did and reflect upon the pressures in the specific situation that may have influenced that person’s decision. Encourage the students to apply their ethical lens to the situation and also to reflect on the challenges of presentism in historical work.
Ethics Project - Decision-Making in the Past
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Use an example from one of the works read. Ask the students to decide how they would work through one of the ethical dilemmas faced by one of the historical persons from one of the readings.
The goal is that students learn from the ethical dilemmas that historical people have faced to help students improve their decision-making skills.
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Students identify the ethical system(s) in which the dilemma resides:
personal ethics
social ethics, and/or
conservation ethics.
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If the dilemma resides within or overlaps with social ethics, students next identify the ethical situation(s) based on Manuel Velasquez’s (2002) categories: rights, justice, utility, and care.
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Students move through a list of questions that will help them decide how they would handle the ethical dilemma from the reading:
Do any laws or rules govern my decision?
Do any corporate or professional codes of ethics offer guidance?
Are there any historical records to learn from?
What do my friends and/or colleagues think?
What would moral leaders do?
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Step 4: Students decide what they will do and explain why they would make the choice to take the same or a difference path of action than the characters in the story. The choice is tailored to the textual situation, but some general categories they can choose from include the following:
Persuade through costs and benefits
Seek legal advice
Seek mediation
Write a memo to file
Become a whistleblower
Resources
Moral Problems in American Life: New Perspectives on Cultural History, edited by Karen Halttunen and Lewis Perry (Cornell University Press, 2018)
Silvia Edling, Heather Sharp, Jan Löfström & Niklas Ammert (2020) Why is ethics important in history education? A dialogue between the various ways of understanding the relationship between ethics and historical consciousness, Ethics and Education, 15:3, 336-354, DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2020.1780899
Löfström, J., Ammert, N., Edling, S. et al. Advances in ethics education in the history classroom: after intersections of moral and historical consciousness. International Journal of Ethics Education 6, 239–252 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-020-00116-w
Social Justice
For ways to highlight diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice as well as to connect your class to the local community, consider some of the following suggestions:
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As your students are working on their own writing, this may be an excellent opportunity to provide them with the ability to tutor local elementary school students in writing. SLU has many partnerships with local schools. For more information, please visit: https://www.slu.edu/center-for-social-action/service-learning/integrating-service-curriculum.php
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Use the informal writing exercises as ways to ask students to reflect on DEIJ issues within the history being studied. Some question for them to respond to could be:
What is the role of women? How are they approached/ treated?
How are traditionally underrepresented populations treated?
From what perspective has the historical event been told? Who has been left out?
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What local historians or historical organizations can you engage to be part of the class discussions and readings?
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Engage the class in a discussion around local historical events and how they relate to ethics and the public good.
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If any of your students wish to write any of their reports on a local author, this work can be published on The Saint Louis Story under the community section. Please email allen.brizee@slu.edu to have the work considered for inclusion.