In-Class Work for 11/19

1) If you're reading the handout of Ehrhart, pick up a copy of page 161 to add to the packet for Monday. Make a note that this text is Passing Time, by W.D. Ehrhart in case you need to refer to it in your exit exam.

2) Print and turn in your annotated bibliography, even if it's incomplete. I'll respond to them during class. In the meantime, keep looking for more sources, reading, and taking notes on more sources if you need to.

3) Looking at Part II of the Essay outline, write a thesis paragraph that presents your answer to the central question, "Does the example of this country support the idea that the U.S. is an imperial power?" Post this thesis paragraph on your blog AND bring a hard copy to class on Monday. Note that for this essay, the thesis paragraph will not come right at the start.

4) Using your sources, begin to work on some supporting paragraphs (also in Part II).

In-Class work for 11/12

1) If you haven't yet completed or posted your research brainstorming, finish and post it.

2) Keep looking for sources - periodicals and academic articles. Use the tools we talked about it determine if they're useful before reading the whole thing and/or priting it out, especially for long or academic sources.

3) Read your sources and take notes to start work on your annotated bibliographies.

In-Class work for 11/5

1) Complete last weeks' posts about Our Brand is Crisis and Mark Engler's "Latin America in Revolt." Add on some questions you'd like to ask Engler about Latin America and its response to U.S. power. You can read a full description of his book and see more about his writing on his website here

2) If you haven't yet posted it, complete and post your research prewriting. (See part II of assignment handout).

3) Look at some of your colleagues' blogs along the right hand side. Read their entries and leave a comment: ask for clarification, add a follow up question, tell them what else they might look for in their research, etc.

4) Take a look at the 'finding sources' (stage 3) of your research assignment. In addition to the course text, you'll want to start by looking for periodical sources. I'd suggest starting with The Nation, a magazine that does a good job reporting on America's relationship with the world. Go to www.thenation.com and search your country, either for recent articles (2003-present) or in the archives. You'll find the full text of recent articles and summaries of older articles. For the older articles, copy or write down the relevant information and search for articles in Lexis-Nexis via the library website. Print articles you think will be useful. Then you can begin to look for related material throught the Lexis/Nexis database. Try to bring in an article or two for next week.