John S. Ott
Department of History
Portland State University
HST 453/553 - The Medieval City
ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES: FINAL REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Due Wednesday, December 7, by 5:00 in my office
Guidelines -- Undergraduates only
- Essays should be 3-4 pages, typewritten, and have a title and pagination. In order to encourage consistent application of the latter two specifications, papers lacking a title and page numbers will be deducted 2 points (-2/100) per infraction.
- Please double-space your essays and use 12-point font.
- References and quotations should be parenthetical and give the page number(s) of the text you are citing.
- You do not need to append a bibliography or works cited page.
Late papers
Late papers will receive a deduction of 3 points per day late (our of 100), including weekend days. No later papers will be accepted after Monday, December 12.
Assignment
This assignment is your opportunity to reflect on what you've learned this term. For your reflective essay, I'd like you to choose two assigned readings from the course. One must be a secondary source (article, book chapter, or book extract), and the other must be a primary source we've read, either from the Medieval Towns reader or elsewhere. (You may also use Galbert.) Your criteria for choosing your sources should be based on one or more of the following conditions:
Your sources may be in conversation with one another (i.e., a secondary source on guilds and a primary source on the same), or wholly different in nature. Your paper should detail those assumptions that the sources challenged, modified, or augmented, i.e., you must explain why you chose the sources you did. Finally, your paper should address the following key question: What light do your sources shed on how historians of medieval cities have approached, or continue to approach, their field? What do your sources reveal about the kinds of questions historians have asked about the subject of medieval urban communities and urban spaces? How do they help (or, perhaps, in some cases, hinder) us understand how historical fields are defined, shaped, and contested by historical scholarship? Make sure you give several examples from your chosen texts that support your observations.
- The sources enriched your understanding of medieval cities (and their residents!) in a specific way, or challenged your preconceptions about them in some way; and/or
- Was a source you wanted to engage with more deeply / thoroughly than you had the opportunity to do during the term, and/or
- The source employed an analytical or methodological approach (for secondary sources) or offered a novel or unusual perspective on the medieval city and its people, spaces, culture, economy, etc.
Papers will be graded according to the following criteria: (1) quality of writing, analysis, and proofreading/editing; (2) engagement with your source material, as demonstrated by your command of the materials contents, argument, evidence, and, where appropriate, contribution to the field/historical subject area.