Choosing your own topic

The question whether you are free to choose your own topic has come up, thought I'd write a few words. The suggested paper topics are there because you will start with a number of advantages. You will have a ready-made problem to work on, one that isn't artificial but that is one of the central questions of the discipline. You will also know what secondary sources to use and in most cases will have access to them through learn@uw.

We don't want to discourage you from developing topics on your own should there be something you are particularly interested in. There are a few things we will expect before you set off: a problem to work on and a tentative bibliography of the scholarship you will be using and addressing. In studying any premodern society there will always be more interesting questions than good scholarship that deals with them. This is particularly true for this field which while relatively old is nonetheless small, with only a few active historians in the various sub-fields each generation. It will not be enough to have a general interest in a subject: you will have to be able to turn your subject into a problem or question and defend why the scholarship you are reading on it is the best available. There is a lot of good material on turning subjects or topics into problems in the two books I've put on learn@uw, the ones covered in a previous post.

If you want to develop your own topic the first thing to do is to come up with a list of the scholarly studies you plan to work on, together with a preliminary statement of a problem. Once you've reached that point email your TA or me with a proposal and make an appointment to go over it. We will then have the chance to look for scholarship you may have missed and to assess the quality of the scholarship you plan to read. During our meeting we can go over problems you may encounter and make sure you are on track.

Our goal is to have everyone write an A paper, though of course it rarely works out that way. Much of your work in section for the weeks before the paper is due will be devoted to helping you write the best paper you can. If you can give us a first draft up to but not beyond seven days before the paper is due all the better: having a second pair of eyes go over a project is something everyone in the profession tries to do.

A word on papers using primary sources. I would advise against it unless you can read Arabic or Persian, as most sources have not been translated. But if you want to try it anyway be sure to consult with us frequently, as primary source research raises more problems than the historiographical essay. Not to say it is impossible, but it is harder, and your options narrow down to the relatively small body of sources available in translation. It is not enough to cull facts out of primary sources: you will also want to use the library and JSTOR to read all the scholarship you can find on the primary sources themselves. Our goal in an advanced course such as this is to have you write a professional paper rather than a meaningless academic exercise, hard to do unless you can read all the sources on a particular problem.

A final thing I'd like to add is to suggest that if you get stuck at any point get in touch with John, Terry, or me right away. The last thing you want to do is get stuck and put off dealing with the paper until the last moment. You can also use the discussion thread below to ask for advice from others who are working on similar topics. I was impressed at the quality of advice offered in the midterm thread and hope this one turns out to be equally useful.

Now keep those questions coming...