Requirements
The Group 1A essay is expected to be a significant piece of work. It is worth half a unit -- so you are expected to put as much effort in as you would for a Group 4 course. Officially, this translates as 130 hours of effort. As you can imagine, the idea is that you produce a piece of work that is significantly more sophisticated, especially in relation to the use of primary sources but also in terms of its familiarity with the historiography, than a conventional Group 1 coursework essay would be. It must be no longer than -- and probably not much less than -- 5000 words in length.

Deadlines
I would like to see a 200 word proposal from you by Monday December 10. The proposal should largely consist of a series of key questions – what is the problem that your essay is going to explore? You should also mention the primary sources you are going to look at. YOU MUST ALSO INCLUDE A BIBLIOGRAPHY of secondary sources. You do NOT need to anticipate your conclusions, it is enough to lay out the terrain you’re going to explore and to show that you are aware of what has already been written on the subject.

By 18 January you need to have a final title sorted out so that it can be submitted to the Board of Examiners for approval. This is an official, departmental deadline.

The final thing must be completed by Monday 21 April.

Deciding on a topic
Obviously you need to start thinking about what kind of thing you might want to write about straight away.

You can, if you wish, select an essay question from the list in the course handbook/website, so long as it does not overlap with your Group 1 coursework. If you take that option, we will need to discuss how you can narrow the question down and what primary sources you can use.

An alternative option would be to pick your own topic, something that you think interests you enough to keep you going in what must be an independent and self-motivated study.

On a practical level this means that you MUST READ. Go and find out some more about the subject you think you are interested in. Find out what has already been said and what the key debates are. Spend some time over this. Enjoy it. Think hard about it.

The range of topics is potentially vast but when thinking about what you would like to do perhaps you might consider the following issues:

1. You could try to frame your issue in terms of a problem that is left unresolved by historians, something where there is lively on-going debate (such as "how and why did the New Deal coalition break down?" or "What was the impact of the Civil Rights movement on black women?" or "what accounts for the rise of McCarthyism?" or "why did the Great Depression occur?" or "what accounts for the rise of the right in American politics since the 1970s?" or "what was the impact of the anti-Vietnam war movement on the civil rights movement?")

2. It may help, especially if you are interested in a big question, to identify a smaller window on the larger issue. For example, if you want to understand the relationship between the grassroots and the leadership in the Civil Rights movement, you could examine that issue by focusing on a single state or a single town. The advantages of this approach is that you can be more focused and delve deeper into the sources. You need to be sure that you have the requisite sources to do this well, though. And never forget that in order to understand any historical event you must contextualise it: how significant, how unique, how special is it? So working on a small part of a larger problem does not absolve you of the need to understand the question as broadly as possible.

3. Try to work out a question that is challenging enough to be interesting but manageable in the time you have available. A question like "Describe and explain American foreign policy since 1945" sounds on the face of it to be far too broad a question to sensibly manage. You could, however, address an issue in the historiography of US foreign policy, such as: "What was the impact of the opening up of the Soviet archives on the New Left, the liberal and the conservative explanations for the origins of the Cold War?"

4. Above all, work out what will get you excited. There is a fantastic literature out there, and the US in the twentieth century is full of extraordinary possibilities for this kind of extended study. So enjoy it!!!!

When you have a vague idea of the kind of thing you might like to do, you might also think about the concepts you will be using: race, racism, partisanship, nationalism, community, religion etc etc etc -- and we will need to discuss what these terms might mean in the context of your question.

You will also need to start compiling a bibliography -- and working out which of the books and articles in the field are the most important. Of course I am always here to help you with that process, but you need to make a start on it yourself.

Supervision
I will arrange individual tutorials with you in the first term to discuss your ideas, and then again in the second term to discuss your research as it progresses. I am always available via email.

Although I am allowed to read a draft of the essay, I am not allowed to give you detailed feedback.

But the most important stage in any project -- be it a PhD or a Group 1A essay -- is in the planning stage. Defining your terms, focusing your research questions and working out how to structure your thinking and your writing are by far the most important things to worry about. In a sense, by the time you get to write the thing up in March or April, you are a prisoner of the topic you have defined. So it pays to get it right. We will discuss all this together in a tutorial.. But first you need some ideas….