Every place has a history, and those histories are intimately tied to that place’s relationship to other places,
its transportation links, its resources, and its production, in other words, to its natural and built environment.
A key question to ask is how have humans transformed this particular piece of the natural world.
Purpose of Assignment: To give students some initial practice in thinking about places historically and
geographically and in developing solid historical questions that they can answer.
Assignment: Develop a 2000-2500 word historical sketch about a place of your choosing. Because this is a
research sketch, you may not get to the point where you can develop a sophisticated thesis about your
research, but you should have developed a robust set of information about your place and be able to detail
changes over time.
Choosing a Place: Greenfield Village, Dearborn, MI
Source Material: Historical maps, including historical topographical maps, are likely to be the single most
important sets of sources. Census data, both published and manuscript, might give real clues as to things
like what kinds of productive activity was taking place in this community. Newspapers can be valuable,
particularly if you use them to search certain individuals or company names; you can also search other
published primary materials in the same way. Visiting the place may well be a useful thing to do. Record
what you see. Using satellite maps can take the place of an actual visit, but also reveal patterns
unapparent at ground level. Sources like diaries and letters may be harder to come by and not alwaysworth the effort of locating—a couple of quick searches and then move on. Historical photographs are
actually sometimes easier to find than diaries and letters, and they can be an invaluable source for this
assignment. These projects have a likelihood of being heavily illustrated, with the prose analyzing the
illustrations.
Secondary and tertiary sources are frowned upon in this exercise, although they may be useful in leading
you to primary source material. If you find yourself using mainly secondary sources for your material, you
are doing the assignment wrong. Be particularly careful about using unreliable material found with simple
Google searches – histories published by local governments are particularly problematic.
Conceptualizing the Paper: One way to conceptualize the paper is to think of your place as going through a
distinct set of eras, each with a different primary focus and relationship to the environment, both natural
and human-built. You can then detail how the place changed from era to era, and from there identify the
agent of change.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the use, without proper citation, of words and ideas which are not your own.
Merely paraphrasing somebody else’s words does not relieve you of the obligation to provide a citation.
Original thinking is the best way to avoid charges of plagiarism. Obviously, if you borrow a paper from a
friend, cut-and-paste from the internet, or buy one from some service, that is the ultimate in academic
dishonesty. Plagiarism of any kind will result in failure of this class; it may mean dismissal from the
University.
Notes: Both direct quotations and paraphrases must be cited in notes, following Turabian/Chicago style.
Either footnotes or endnotes are acceptable; footnotes are easier to read, but if they are not technically
feasible for you, use endnotes.
Don’t freak out about the notes and their format. Keep in mind that the point of notes is to guide your
readers to where you’ve found your information. Poorly formatted notes are undesirable, but one of the
points of the format is to remind you of what information should be in the note, as the bigger sin is leaving
essential footnote information out. For more information consult the online citation guide.
Mechanics:
• Papers should be must be in digital form for submission through Canvas.
• The paper must be double-spaced, although footnotes and indented block quotations may be singlespaced. If footnotes are single-spaced, there should be a blank line between each footnote.
• Top and bottom margins should be one inch and each line of type should measure at least six inches
(there are three acceptable combinations: L 1½”, R 1”; L 1¼”, R 1¼”; and L 1”, R 1”).
• For the body of the paper, the font should be 12 point. (Notes can be in 10 point.)
• If technically feasible, italics should be used instead of underlines – don’t use both