HST 491/591 : Medieval Church and Reform
Department of History
Portland State University
Winter 2023
(c) John S. Ott

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General guidelines

• Papers should be typed in 11- or 12-point font, double-spaced, and about 5 pp.  Please number the pages, and include a title and your name on the first page.
• Beneath the title and before the text of your review, please give a full bibliographic citation of the article you are reviewing, including author's name, article title, name of journal, volume and number, year of publication, and page number range, according to Chicago, APA, or MLA style guidelines. Overviews of these guidelines may be found at the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab).
  
• When referring to the article and its contents, please cite parenthetically by page number -- e.g., (165). (In other words, there's no need to re-type the title, etc., every time you cite the work.).
  
• The article should come from a peer-reviewed academic journal or, in some cases, an essay in a peer-reviewed anthology of collected essays. A list of peer-reviewed journals may be found in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, to which PSU subscribes. It is located in the 'Databases & Articles' section of the library's website. Entering words in the search field should generate a list of journals matching the description you enter. Other sites, like ProjectMuse, J-Stor, and Cambridge Journals Online -- all PSU databases -- have large selections of journals and full-text articles to choose from as well.

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Late paper guidelines

Please refer to the "Submission of late work" section of the syllabus. I accept late papers, but with penalties attached. Penalty guidelines are as follows, and include weekends:

• Late papers will be deducted 4 points / day (on a scale of 100; thus 4% of the total grade for each day the paper is late)
  

Students may request an extension. Mitigating circumstances such as a demonstrable, documented medical condition or acute personal crisis may be grounds for an extension, but only if requests are made in advance of the paper due date. Extensions will not be granted on the day the paper is due, or afterward. The instructor will arrange with the student an appropriate date on which the work will be turned in.

Late papers will be graded last in order and may not receive the same level of comments and feedback as on-time papers.

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Assignment

Review an article germane to both your own historical interests (broadly construed) and the class subject matter/content -- anything related to the medieval Church and / or religious history, with preference given to the period covered by the course, that is, 800-1250 -- published in a peer-reviewed academic journal or anthology of essays.  It may make sense to select something that is pertinent to the research topic you would like to pursue in the seminar, and which could feature in the historiographical review essay you are submitting at the end of the term.

You should cite from, paraphrase, and otherwise incorporate the article throughout your review. Always indicate pages for your references.

Reviews should contain:

• a summation of the article's contents/argument: Who is the author, what are they writing about, and what is their argument?  Does the author locate the article within a wider scholarly debate or historiographical discussion?  If so, what does that debate center on?  What are the author's reasons for writing the article? Does the journal in which its appears have a particular "profile" in terms of the content it publishes, or does it profess or seem to profess any methodological, philosophical, confessional, or other preferencess? (This can sometimes be discerned by identifying who edits the journal and where it is published.)
  
• a statement detailing the author's approach to the subject matter. Is the article primarily descriptive, or does the author foreground analysis of the historical subject?  Does the author appear to be using one or more theoretical or critical approaches to understanding the historical phenomena they describe? How would you assess the quality, skill, and persuasiveness of the analysis?
  
• an assessment of the kinds of evidence and sources the author employs to make their argument. Are they archival, documentary (eyewitness, second-hand, third-hand, contemporary, later), philological, archaeological, visual, or other written and non-written authorities? Does the type of source the author uses affect or direct the outcome of the argument? Are they explicit about this? To what degree does the author rely on secondary source material?
  
• an assessment of whether the author's conclusions are (or are not) persuasive. If so, how?  If not, why not?
• an assessment of whether the article appears to make a contribution to the field in which it is published, and if so, what kind of contribution.
  
• a determination of whether the article is well written, clear, organized, concise, or, conversely, full of jargon, poorly organized, muddled in its argument.
  

Try to be as precise as possible in your criticisms, and justify your conclusions about the article itself. Good luck!