Additional Instructions for Assignment 1 Assignment 1 consists of three parts: 1) Topic Exploration; Each of these has a separate link in the Week 3 Canvas Module. You must turn in each part of the assignment using the correct link. Let’s talk about what you need to do for this part of the assignment.

1. Topic Exploration: You will write about two sources for two potential topics. This means that you will need to find a total of four sources (two per topic). This part of the assignment should be 4 paragraphs – Take a look at the course syllabus. The first topic should be related to material from the first 5 weeks in class, and the second topic should be related to the last 5 weeks of class. Your topic can deviate from what’s listed on the syllabus, but it should fall within the course’s chronology (1200-1750 CE.) It should be related to this topic found in the link below Keith Jenkins, "What History Is"

• Secret History of the Mongols • Ibn Khaldun, "Bedouin civilization, savage nations and tribes and their

conditions of life" from The Muqadimmah • Marco Polo, The Book of Wonder (excerpts) • Ibn Battuta, Travels (excerpts)

You have a lot of freedom when deciding on what to write about in MMW13! The goal is to write a research paper on a historical topic, but virtually anything can be a historical topic. Be creative! I’ve had students write about the history of mental illness, magic, Vlad the Impaler, and the Mongol legal system. Choosing a topic you are passionate about (or at least find interesting) really helps with the writing process. The sources you use must be articles from peer-reviewed academic journals. Peer review essentially means that a bunch of professors got together and looked over someone’s article and critiqued it. You can find peer-reviewed articles on the UCSD Library website. Go to “advanced search” and try searching for something. When the results pop up, there will be a menu on the left-hand side of your screen. You can use that menu to narrow your search results to only include Peer-reviewed journals. You can also narrow your search to only include articles. (Make sure you do this. I’ve had many students mistake book reviews for peer-reviewed articles. While book reviews are in peer-reviewed journals, they are not articles.)

Visual reference for using the library search function:

For Assignment 1, make absolutely sure your sources are articles. For Assignments 2-4 you may use primary sources and monographs (history books). You may not use book reviews or articles of dubious origins not found through the library database. When describing your sources, try to identify the author’s argument. All academic sources are argumentative (such is the nature of academia), and a major part of this research paper will involve responding to these arguments. You are not writing an informational report on a topic. Instead, you are responding to an existing historical debate. We will discuss this in greater detail in the coming weeks. You also need to include an MLA-style Works Cited page at the end of Assignment 1. Yu can find information on how to format essays and the Works Cited page on the MLA Template Paper.

Select these when looking for secondary sources

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