Final Assignment = 30% percent of grade

Instruction: Write a TEN-page critique on Jeanne Theoharis’ The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

DUE DATE: Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Book Review should cover the following points:

1. Author’s maintain contention / argument

2. Synopsis / Summary of each chapter

3. Does the author offer a convincing argument?

4. Your thoughts on the book. Did you agree or disagree with the author’s main contention? Explain your position.

5. Describe how Theoharis reconfigures black women’s role within the Modern-Day civil rights and Black Power movements and how Theoharis situates the northern / midwest black freedom struggle?

Guidelines: Your essay should be 10 pages, doubled-space, and stapled and 12 font. When citing sources, please refer to Chicago Manual Style of writing.

OPTIONAL IF YOU WANT TO USE SECONDARY SOURCES: Sources You Can Use: Required Class Text (s); Electronic Database Sources such as JSTOR, Project Muse, which can be found on the MSU library page; and Scholarly Books and Journal Articles. DO NOT USE INTERNET SOURCES.

Paper Format: Cover Page: Your cover page should have the following information: Name, Title of Course, Instructor and Date. This information should be placed in the bottom right corner. Your cover page should have the title of the book, and should be placed in the center of the page.

1. Pages: With the exception of the Cover Page, all pages should be numbered. Numbers should be placed in center of the page at the top.

2. Body: Essay should be typed in 12 font / Times New Roman

3. Final submission should be stapled before submitting to me

Properly Citing Primary and Secondary Sources:

The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers. 15th Edition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

1. Do not use in-text citations. Use Footnotes

2. Footnotes appear at the foot / bottom of a page. On your computer the footnote option should be located in the “Insert” tab of your toolbox.

a. Example: James Daley. Great Speeches by African Americans. (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 15.

3. If you are having difficulty, please consult The Chicago Manual of Style

Paper Rubric: Based on 4.0 grading scale.

A. Format:

1. Page length is 10: Less than 10 pages deduct 1.0

2. 12 Font: Less than 12 Font deduct. 20

B. Content & Grammar

1. Grammar: Frequent grammatical errors: deduct .50 total (not for every infraction)

C. Analysis:

1. No Analysis (which can be in your conclusion): Deduct 1.0

D. Sources

1. Internet Sources: deduct 1.0

A Few General Tips to Consider When Writing College-Level Essay Exams

1. Things to include:

• A thesis statement in the introduction, which in a short essay should be the first paragraph. This establishes a contract between you and the reader; you promise that everything that follows will support that statement.

• Topic sentences. This is the first sentence of every paragraph except the introduction and conclusion. It announces the topic of that paragraph, and so everything that follows in that paragraph should support it. A frequent mistake is to write a simple fact, such as “Lincoln died in April, 1865,” instead of an idea, such as “Lincoln’s death in April, 1865 forced Congress to rethink Reconstruction.” The first sentence does not draw the reader in; the second does.

• Evidence. This can be an example, a statistic, a quote, a fact, a name, a date… Every paragraph following the introduction should normally have a few items of evidence. Your purpose in essays is to explain reality, to connect ideas (that exist in your head) with pieces of evidence (that exist outside your head).

• Transitions between paragraphs. These are a few words, maybe even just one, that explain why you started a new paragraph. After a paragraph about Congress rethinking Reconstruction, for example the next paragraph might begin, “Forces outside Congress, however, were bent on destroying Reconstruction.” “However” is the transitional word here. Assume that your reader is intelligent but needs to be told how your ideas are connected.

• The active voice rather than the passive voice. This forces you to assign responsibility to whomever it belongs. For instance, to say “The victim was beaten to death” is less informative than “An angry white mob beat the victim to death.” Even if you say “The victim was beaten to death by an angry whit mob,” the passive style is not as engaging.

• Typically use the past tense in a history paper.

Components of a Book Review:

First of all, a “book review” and a “book report” are not the same. While the purpose of a book reports is primarily to summarizes a given text, the purpose of a book review is to analyze and/or evaluate a text. Book reviews contain 5 primary parts:

1. Introduction—Use the first paragraph to state the topic of the book, its scope, and the book’s purpose (i.e. what is the major question the author is asking and/or why did the author write the book), and perhaps to offer some commentary of the reviewer’s general appreciation of the text.

2. Thesis & Arguments—Use the following paragraph(s) to state the author’s thesis and explain how the author attempts to prove his/her thesis. In some ways, this portion of the review should be used to briefly summarize the text.

3. Historiography—Students should comment on what the text adds to our understanding of the event, individual, ideal, or era the book comments on. What does the author argue that previous authors had not?

4. Evaluation—Students should use this portion of the review to state their criticism (positive and/or negative) of their books. In this section, students will have to think hard about the merits of the author’s internal logic, use of evidence, writing style, organization, and so on.

5. Conclusion—This final paragraph should be used to (re)state the reviewer’s overall assessments of the text and to discuss what type of readers might benefit from reading the narrative, and perhaps to ask questions about where the study of the topic of the book might now go.