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I'm Roberts Scafe
and I'm a lecturer in expository writing program here at the University of
Oklahoma.
In this tutorial I'm going to discuss the very first step in the process of
writing the essays for this class. Reading and taking notes on the
documents you'll be writing about.
Both the essays you write for this class will be based mainly on primary
texts
that is, documents written by people at the time of the events you're studying.
Unlike a history textbook for example, primary sources don't come with the road
map of what
important historical issues you're supposed to be noticing
while you read them. So to get something
out have primary sources, to discover
the historical problems in them that are worth writing about you have to read
them
in an especially attentive way. In particular
you want to read actively, taking notes
and asking questions of the document as you go. You have to read
contextually considering where the document came from
and how that influences its meaning. And most importantly
you have to read interpretively going beyond the surface meaning of the text
to reveal the underlying themes and assumptions
that really make it a window into the past. Let's start with reading actively
and taking notes. The first step toward getting more out of your primary sources
is to read with a pen in your hand. You need to be ready to write down your
immediate responses to what you're reading
and to annotate the text in the margins without stopping.
At the very least your pen is a reminder that your
you're not reading passively that your thoughts about what you're reading it
will eventually make their way into your own writing.
But of course holding the pen is not enough
you also need to use it. So what sorts of notes
should you right when you annotate in the margins?
First, you want to an annotate conversationally,
in other words when you're taking notes on your document, imagine you're
actually talking back to the author. Briefly rephrase
or pose questions about what they've written. "In other words"
and "but" and "why"
should always be on your mind when you're reading,
prompting you to briefly record your reactions.
Veteran annotators also develop symbols
and systems shorthand that they use to quickly note
key ideas and connections in the text for example you can use numbers to
outline an author's points
when their listing. You can draw circles
around key terms that the author repeats
and you can connect these related terms: with arrows
and lines. Go ahead and experiment as you develop your own habits
of active annotation.
There is one mistake to avoid however. When you're taking notes
refrain from underlining or highlighting large chunks of text.
When you do that you're basically telling yourself
"this is important and later
all say something about why it's important", in other words,
underlining by itself can kinda excuse you from thinking
and these kinds of notes won't be very helpful to you,
four weeks down the road, when you're writing your paper.
So instead of simply underlining a lengthy passage
ask yourself why he thought it was important
and write a few words representing that thought in the margins.
Think of these brief annotations as memory triggers
destined to be read by yourself four weeks later when you composing your
final draft.
So you write just what you need to your future self
so that you'll remember what you were thinking when you first read the
document.
One more caveat, you can't always annotate
by using a pen to write in the margins of course,
but that doesn't mean that you can't or should it actively take notes.
You can use post-its to stick notes to a book that you can't mark-up
and programs like Adobe Reader and
Microsoft Word have comment functions that allow you to annotate
or insert comment bubbles using your keyboard.
Now that you know the virtues that actively taking notes while you read,
let's look in more detail the kinds of questions historians ask to tease meaning
out of their primary sources. In order to grasp the significance of a text
in its time, you first have to familiarize yourself with all the
circumstances
that gave birth to the document. Who wrote it,
when did they write it and where?
Why did they write it and who is there intended audience?
Asking these questions before you read the main body of the text is important,
and not only so that you get the
bibliographic information right. It's important because the circumstances
surrounding the creation of the text
give us the first clues about what it meant,
and how it influenced its own time.
Let me give you an example. Let's say
you're writing about the American Women's Movement in the nineteenth
century
and what are your sources is Elizabeth Katie Stanton's
speech at the first women's rights convention, which was held at Seneca
Falls in 1848.
Now, like many of the primary sources you'll be using in this class
Stanton's speech has been edited and introduced by a modern historian.
The editor has done a lot of the work for you, grouping the contextual information
in italicized paragraph before the start
Stanton's in speech proper.
Now, many other sources will have these editors introductions
and so don't skip them. They're full of the information you'll want
to put the text in its original context. So using our best active reading skills
we're gonna see what questions arise from the context of this document.
We learn, right off the bat, that Stanton was not only a woman's rights
advocate;
she was also an Abolitionist, indeed her discovery that women were not allowed to
speak
at an English anti-slavery convention seems to have been what sparked her
interest in women's rights in the first place.
So I'm gonna put a memory trigger here, asking about
how the Abolitionist Movement might have influenced the women's movement.
We also learned that the Seneca Falls Conference took place in 1848.
So I'm going to pause to consider what I've been learning in class about this period.
So in 1848 this is the year the Mexican,
American war ends. It's also the tail end up the so called, Second Great Awakening,
a religious revival which saw rapid growth of
Evangelical Protestant churches. Particularly due to female converts,
and so seeing that the convention included that quote "religious conditions
of women",
among its concerns, I'm going to connect that with my observations about the
Second Great
Awakening, perhaps we'll have a theme here.
Finally, the editor informs us that the convention
was composed of three hundred women and forty men.
So a mainly female audience, that may help to explain
the arguments that stance and chose to make in the speech
and what she chose to leave out.
Now that we familiarized ourself
the context that the document, we're ready to start interpreting the main body of
the text.
If your text is making an explicit argument as ours is,
you certainly want to start by identifying what the author is trying to
accomplish.
In our case, Stanton makes her purpose very clear from the beginning.
"We are assembled to protest against a form of government
existing without the consent of the governed - to declare our right to be free,
as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support".
But with many primary sources, most have your interpretation won't be about
explicitly stated arguments like this one. Instead it will be focused on
themes or assumptions that emerged implicitly
in the texts. You can think of themes as
"implied arguments". Their important ideas
that aren't declared explicitly, but that emerge from the authors
repeated use of terms that are related to one another.
Sometimes it can be tricky to discover these themes,
but the key is recognizing that, interpretation begins with a l"eap of
faith".
To recognize that a pattern is emerging in a text,
you have to notice the first time the author uses the idea,
and you have to ask questions about what it means. If you don't permit yourself to
guess,
that this idea, may become important,
you may never notice with it later develops into a theme.
Let's put this into practice and examine a theme
that develops in Stanton's case for women's rights.
This is the fifth paragraph of Stanton's speech at Seneca Falls
and immediately follows her reiteration of
quote "The great truth that no just government can be formed without the gut
consent of the governed."
Having echoed that political principle Stanton suddenly switches gears,
to speak about the moral situation up the nation.
"There seems now to be a kind of moral stagnation in our midst" she declares,
Philanthropists have done their utmost to rouse the nation
to a sense of its sins." Now I'm gonna circle sins here
because it seems like a particularly strong way to talk about the moral
failings at the country.
And I have a hunch it may become important. Stanton's
sudden shift a moral and religious themes was surprising
and it's always a good idea to remark and ideas that
surprise, or that seem out of place, at first reading.
Let's see if our hunch pays off. "War,
slavery, drunkenness, licentiousness, gluttony,
have been dragged naked before the people and all their abominations and
deformities,
fully brought to light, yet with idiotic laugh, we hug these monsters to our
***,
and rush on, to destruction. Here are contextual pre-reading
is going to pay off a bit, because it prepared as to notice the Stanton's not
just talking about
war in general, she's referring to the Mexican-American War
of 1848. We probably would have learned a lecture that
many in the anti-slavery movement also opposed the Mexican-American War
and moreover that many of the anti-slavery Crusaders also worked in
the temperance movement
against the evils of alcohol. So are contextual thinking has prepared us
to understand that Stanton sees war slavery and drunkenness,
not a separate problems but as having a common source.
What's that source? Well, now that we've asked the question let's read on.
"Our churches are multiplying on all sides, our missionary societies,
Sunday schools and prayer meetings and innumerable charitable and reform
organizations
are all in operation but still the title vice
is swelling, and threatens the destruction of everything
and the battlements of righteousness are weak
against the raging elements of sin and death". Wow, so
Stanton's repetition of sin here confirms that we do have a pattern.
A religious theme of sin and now it also seems
likely that Stanton is in a very biblical way,
pairing sin with death and destruction
in a kinda ultimate battle between good and evil.
So I'm going to put another memory trigger here so I won't forget what I was
thinking later on.
Sin seems to be the common source
of the nation's problems and
sin is related to a view of history as a battle,
between righteousness and sin, or death.
Let's see how these things play out.
"Verily the world waits the coming of some new
element, some purifying power, some spirit mercy and love.
The voice of woman has been silenced in the state,
the church, and the home, but man cannot fulfill his destiny
alone, he cannot redeem his race unaided.
There are deep and tender cords of sympathy and
love in the hearts of the downfall and oppressed
that woman can touch more skillfully that man."
Again let's isolate some of the religious terms,
now that we've identified this theme. Why did she use these words,
"the world awaits the coming some new element,
spirit, mercy, love,"
and "redeem." Well given that we've just notice that Stanton and portrays
American politics as a kind of cosmic battle between sin and death
we're prepared to see the Stanton is comparing women's role
in society and politics to the Second Coming
of the Christian savior at the end times. Her use of
the word "coming" hints at this interpretation
and also the language a "purification" and
"redemption" seems to confirm it. And so
she concludes, women if they're allowed
to fully participate in society and politics, will be a powerful force of
mercy and love
that will help men redeem the nation from its sins,
and from the destruction that will follow in their wake.
So at this point, just by noticing how these religious terms
work together to support Stanton's argument
we've done some great close reading. Now
later as you start analyzing your notes and writing your essay,
themes like these national redemption
or women's Christian capacity for mercy,
these themes will help you to create a topic for your essay.
You might ask for example, how women's roles in churches help them argue their
political rights.
You might ask conversely, how associating women's public role with Christian
charity
might have conditioned, or limited the argument for full political equality.
Again these are the sort of questions that will emerge
as you go over your notes and as you work the evidence
in the weeks after your initial reading these texts.
The point now is that such critical questions
presuppose that you've already taken the trouble
to attentively read and to identify such themes in the first place.
To summarize then there are three keys to identifying important themes in your
primary sources.
First, reading actively,
mark-up the tax with your thoughts and your questions
even when you're not sure, yet whether they're right.
Allow yourself to follow your hunches or you'll never notice the patterns of
repeated language
when they start to emerge. Two
reading contextually, use contextual materials like
title pages, prefaces and those editor's introductions
to answer the who, when, where, and why questions.
Putting the text in its own time will help you connect your reading to the larger
themes that you're discovering your course lectures,
and in your readings for the class. And finally
reading interpretively. In addition to noting what the author is saying
explicitly,
dig deeper to what they're implying or to what they're assuming.
Put this kind of close active reading into practice from the very first weeks
of this course
and your future self will thank you for all those
memory triggers you so helpfully left in the margins have your sources.