For this first formal assignment, you will be asked to write an Academic Précis on a piece of scholarship that has been published in an professional academic journal. In other words, you will be doing a critical [non-fiction] literature review and writing your analysis of this according to a certain type of format. Your finished Précis should be between 3-4 (or possibly 5) full pages in length, not counting the cover page and bibliography.
YOUR FIRST STEP will be to find appropriate academic journals that pertain to History–first, go the ‘Library’ link off of the school’s main webpage and navigate to the GALILEO portal
Click on ‘Browse by Subject’–‘History’
Go to ‘Arts & Humanities Database (ProQuest)–this will be your first best option.
Next, try ‘Research Library (hosted by ProQuest)’
The key point is that the journal needs to be about American or United States’ history specifically–for example, The American Historical Association Journal, the Journal of Colonial History, Journal of Native American History, etc.
GALILEO contains a lot of information but is somewhat random on peer-reviewed journals. Your best opportunity to have access to these types of publications will be for you to travel to UNG’s (University of North Georgia) library–either their Oakwood or Dahlonega (main) campus–and obtain a ‘Community Library Card’ (free). With it comes not only book-borrowing privileges (and they have A LOT), but also access to their many expansive database collections and archives such as JSTOR. This database is the ‘go-to’ source for accessing professional academic journals.
YOUR NEXT STEP is to find an article in one of these journals that interests you enough where you can confidently read it thoroughly and craft your précis on it accordingly.
PLEASE AVOID selecting a book review as your article–this simply WILL NOT WORK! Your article must be original [research] scholarship, not a review of someone else’s work.
When you have found a suitable journal article and feel that it is the one you wish to do this first paper on, you are to upload a one page notice of the article and submit it to the drop box in Blackboard in Week 2’s folder NO LATER THAN Wednesday, August 25th. This very first assignment (letting me know of your article) will also be used to satisfy the ‘No-Show’ assignment required by the Registrar to confirm actual attendance in the course. FAILING to complete this assignment will result in being dropped from the course without exception!
For more information on how you are to format this notification of your journal article, please look in Week 2’s folder at the ‘Article Choice’ Drop Box’ and follow the guidance listed there.
It goes without saying that once you have chosen your journal article, START READING IT! When you get done reading this little bit of explanation here, READ the PDF that is attached here which explains what a Précis IS and what is normally discussed in one!
