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Guidelines - essay (150 points)

• Essays should be around 4-5 pp. long, typed, double-spaced, paginated, with your name and title of the essay on the first page. Please use 12-point font.
  
• For purposes of citation, in-text, parenthetical references (or footnotes) are fine.  Citation may consist of author name or title and page number(s) set off in parentheses.
• I do not accept electronic copies of papers; however, if you will miss class you may send me the paper as an e-mail attachment to validate that it has been completed and bring me a hard copy the following class or at the earliest possible date.
• Students may use up to five sources in addition to the primary source they've selected to assist them in their analysis of the text.  These should be encyclopedic sources, author biographies, or, in some cases, editors' or translators' introductions from published editions and translations, including that of Mommsen and Morrison.  They may also include, in some cases, periodical literature or monographs, but in general this assignment does not depend upon the use of secondary source criticism.  Secondary or tertiary sources that you employ should simply assist you in contextualizing your selected source and its author.
  
• For students whose research paper is likely to incorporate visual sources, I would be willing to permit a visual analysis in lieu of textual one, with prior permission and consultation.
  

Guidelines - oral presentation (50 points)

• Presentations to the class should last no more than 5 minutes. You should identify the source, author(s) or compilers, the date and historical significance of the source, the format in which it has been edited and/or translated (that is, year or edition, aspects of translation [abridged, complete, annotated, etc.]), diffusion of manuscripts containing the text, if known, and aspects of its content designed to convey, in the briefest amount of time, what it says, what is interesting or unsual about it, and its importance to historians.  The idea behind the presentation is to familiarize your fellow students with the range of source materials to work with and their historical and interpretive value.  You may use Powerpoint if you feel this would assist you.  Very often, digital images of manuscript copies of text are available on-line, so it would be worth using Google Images, for example, to check.
• Be concise.
  
• The assignment's final grade will be based on both paper quality and the clarity of oral presentation (150/50 points).

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Assignment

In this assignment, students should select a primary source, in most cases textual, that is in some way associated with the period and subject matter covered in the class.  It should then be subjected to a thorough analysis and written explication, one that considers its author, audience, purpose, tone, style, content, and its author(s)' sources (textual, biblical, patristic, legal, etc.).  Ideally, this primary source may be pertinent to your chosen research topic, but it is not required to be.  Students may, if interested, also assess the known manuscript tradition of the source and its transmission through various print and pre-print materials.  The source need not be lengthy--indeed, one may easily analyze very brief primary sources at great length.  It may be, for instance, a single letter, a fragment of a chronicle, a collection of canons, a treatise, a poem, and so forth.  As you consider the document, ask yourself: What do I learn from it?  What does it say, and how does it say it?  What may I speculate about its audience, purpose, author, and his/her agenda?

If you would like assistance in identifying an appropriate source, please consult with me. This can often be a daunting process, so the simplest place to begin may be to ask yourself what kind of source *type* might interest you. Do you like letters? chronciles? charters? legal sources? If so, then that's the place to start.

You can/should feel free to utilize both the IMB and Iter databases (which I will introduce), as well as the extensive collection of academic encyclopedias owned by PSU, including those specific to the medieval papacy, medieval Germany, or other topics.