Essays
The final paper will be an argumentative essay, 6-8 pages long, based on one of the key questions in class. There will be two pre-selected topics or you may choose an independent topic. You will need to submit an outline, thesis and bibliography to me for feedback by November 13.
Use at least 4-5 sources for these papers. If you use independent sources, these will need to be a primary source or a book or article
written by an academic or historian
published by an academic press
For primary sources, I will expect you to do a plausible source criticism of the source you are using within your analysis.
The essays should be analytical and set up to contain an intro, background, argumentative body, and conclusion.
They should be cited using Chicago Manual of Style-footnotes, double-spaced, regular margins, font 11 or 12 Times New Roman, spell-checked and checked for grammar.
Topics:
Discuss women’s lives during the war. Address concerns, positive and negative changes in their situation, and formulate a thesis about the most important impact WWI had on their lives.
Sources:
Hanna
Empires, Soldiers, Citizens
Yashka
One outside source:
Examples: Rilla of Ingleside, Lucy Maud Montgomery
Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet
Discuss correspondences and linkages between home front and front using memoirs, correspondences, fictional correspondences and retellings of the war experience. What were the most important function of such correspondences to people at home as well as soldiers, and in which instances did correspondences fail and cause stress for family members at home as well as on the front? Which were the most important ways in which correspondences influenced the relations between family members once the war was over in your estimation?
Sources:
Hanna
Empires, Soldiers, and Citizens
One outside source – examples:
Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside
Brittain, Letters of a Lost Generation
Use two films and three novels to discuss the ways in which the officers were portrayed in World War I, using specific examples.
Examples of sources:
Empires, Soldiers
Remarque, All Quiet
Outside sources:
Ernst Junger, Storm of Steel
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
Movies:
Gallipoli
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Trench
The Lost Battalion
Sergeant Yorke
Black Adder, 4th season
Discuss shell-shock and other trauma from the war. What were the legacies of World War I on medical treatment of trauma and psychological war injuries?
Sources:
Empires, Soldiers, and Citizens
Chickering
Njung
One outside source – examples:
Leese, Shell shock: Traumatic Neuroses
Reid, Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain, 1914-1930
Holden, Shell Shock. The Psychological Impact of War
Other examples:
Come talk to me about plausible sources if you decide to write on one of these topics.
Artists during World War I. The impact of the war on art.
The Social Democrats/socialists and World War I
African-American Soldiers in World War I
The Voluntary Aide Department in World War I
Indian soldiers (Sepoys) in World War I
The use of cavalry and the role of horses in World War I
The Southern Front
21st century Memories of World War I (use commemorations, clips from the 2000s and memory literature to address how WWI is remembered in light of current day political debates and political developments)