The outline is to be submitted in class of the due date. 

Please read below "PART 2 Essay" to ensure your proposal meets the essay requirements for sources and subject matter.

PART 2 ESSAY:

Provide a clear and comprehensive essay on your topic, covering 1945 - 2001.  Each topic will vary, but the idea is to stick within the 1945-2001 timeframe as best as possible. Of course some countries or events will necessitate going beyond these dates, or may not include that entire 1945-2001 time span.  Do not attempt a general history “since the beginning of time”.  You should be very clear on what timeline and events you intend to cover. Provide the necessary background to your topic, discuss key events and people, and assess how your topic impacted on international relations.  While your essay may occasionally include relevant internal events, its overall focus must be on international relations.

Provide suitable references and bibliographies.  The essay bibliography unlike the proposal, does not need to be annotated.  Keep in mind any comments or suggestions made on your outlines.

Essays must be based on a minimum of six sources (not including course text book but seminar readings are acceptable), and should not include, encyclopedias, textbooks, guide books,  or general or popular histories, or unacceptable websites which do not provide full citations to academic sources for the claims they make. (2 marks deducted for every Wikipedia or like citation) etc.

Academic journal articles are highly recommended as sources for anyone seeking to earn an essay mark above a B- grade.  If you have never searched for academic articles, hundreds of thousands of which are available for you to download for free from the Ryerson Library website, see: Ryerson Library History Resources Guide for some of the historical databases like JSTOR.  You will need to learn how to use this service for downloading course seminar articles anyway.  Check on the Ryerson library website for further information on how to search journal databases (there are many different databases), You can start with instructions on my website “How to find and download seminar articles” (http://www.petervronsky.org/HST603/how_to_journals_online.htm )  or go in and ask a librarian for help.

• Essays will be approximately 2,500 words in length (10-12 pages not including your title page and bibliography and appendix if any. Essays going over the word length by more than ten percent (apx 250 words - or one page) will be severely penalized. 
• Standard 12 pt font, cursive or non-cursive, double spaced text, standard 2.5 cm margins, 11” X 8 ½” paper. 
• Pages must be stapled (no binders of any kind or paperclips), paginated, and submitted with a cover page containing no art or decorative elements. Do not attempt to submit unstapled pages and no, I do not bring a stapler with me to lecture. Unstapled or paper clipped or folded essays will be turned away and late penalties applied until submitted per requirements.
• Unless quoting original American sources, essays will be written in Canadian English not American. ("centre" not "center"; "armour" not "armor"; "labour" not "labor"; "colour" not "color", the "Second World War" not "World War II or WWII", etc.)--set your dictionary to "English (Canada)" in your spell checkers.   
• The cover page must have:  your name, student number, course number, and essay title.  
  

Essays not conforming to any one or more of these above standards will either have marks withheld or not be accepted at all and late penalties imposed until resubmitted in the required format.

Any relevant images, maps, graphs included in the essay are to be placed into an appendix at the back. 

The essay should have a single descriptive title or a creative title with a descriptive subtitle.  For example:  Explosive Challenge: Diplomatic Triangles, the United Nations, and the Problem of French Nuclear Testing, 1959–1960; Allied Relations in Iran, 1941-1947: The Origins of a Cold War Crisis; Public Diplomacy during the Cold War: The Record and Its Implications.   “History Essay” is not a title.  Marks will be withheld from essays submitted without a title and/or title page. 

Reference Citations (read carefully)

A history essay is like a courtroom argument—it is based on the presentation of proof conforming with the rules of evidence in an expositive argument.  The way hearsay is not admissible in court, Wikipedia for example, is likewise not admissible as evidence in historical discourse.  Just as court evidence is presented in a disciplined system: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C, etc, in the written historical argument, the Chicago Style footnoted citation is used to lead and guide the reader through the evidence backing the persuasive discourse of the text above it.

Why Chicago Style Footnotes?   http://ctl.yale.edu/writing/using-sources/why-are-there-different-citation-styles

Some of the journal readings for seminars will have been pointed out to you as appropriate models for the citation style required for your essay.

Essays must have a bibliography and have footnoted citations in the Chicago style (at the bottom of the page).  Parenthetic in-text or inline style citations (APA for example) are not acceptable for a history essay.   A well researched essay integrating multiple sources into its argument contains on average five to six citations per page -- approximately 50 to 70 citations per essay - 'as rule of thumb.'

As a general rule, references should be given for direct quotations, summaries or your own paraphrases of other people’s work or points of view, and for material that is factual, statistical, controversial, assertive or obscure.  You must cite more than just direct quotes.  WHEN IN DOUBT, IT IS BETTER TO PROVIDE A REFERENCE.  You do not need to cite items of general knowledge like, for example:  water is wet, fire is hot, the sun rises in the east or Elizabeth II is the Queen of England.  

Essays submitted without specific page references in each citation will be automatically failed without any further opportunity to resubmit. 

Basically, the first citation of a source should have the full bibliographical data in it, while in subsequent references to that source, just the name of the author and page number(s) will suffice.  (If more than one source by the same author is used, then include the title as well.) This is an example of the basic required style for citations which are to inserted at the bottom of each page:
 
¹ Jane Doe, The ABC's of History (Toronto: Ontario Publishers, 1997), pp. 20-21
² Jane Doe, p. 43

To create numerically sequential footnotes in current MS WORD go to the “References” ribbon and select [Insert Footnote]; in earlier version of MS WORD, go to the “Insert” menu and then select [Footnote].  The citations should be formatted to “Arabic numerals (1,2,3, etc.)”

It is not necessary to use archaic citation terms like ibid or op cit. and they are even discouraged as word processing drag or cut-and-paste editing can easily displace the logic of these citation terms as you edit your work.

Titles of books are to be put into italics or underlined. Journal article titles are put in “quotation marks” while the journal titles are in italics or underlined.   See the below webpages for further details and formats as to how to cite journals, multiple authors, collections, etc. or search “Chicago style footnotes” on Google.

Essay Style and Footnote Examples

http://www.okanagan.bc.ca/Assets/Departments+(Administration)/Library/PDFs/chicago.pdf

Chicago Manual of Style

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

Chicago Manual Of Style

http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/StyleGuideChicago(1).pdf

See Also

http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c10_s1.html

http://www.douglascollege.ca/library/chicago.html

Bibliographies

Essays MUST provide alphabetically ordered by author’s surname, bibliographies of all works consulted, whether or not they have been quoted directly in the citations. An adequate bibliography for this assignment will contain no less than six books or journal articles related to the topic.  General books, dictionaries, atlases, textbooks and/or encyclopedias DO NOT count towards this minimum number of sources, and their inclusion in citations will NOT be considered as constituting research.  Seminar readings are acceptable as citable sources.  Essay bibliographies, unlike the proposal, do not need to be annotated.

An example of a bibliographic entry is as follows:

Smith, John.  History of Canada  (Toronto: Ontario Publishers, 1997).

Helpful Websites on How to Write History Essays

The History Student's Handbook on Essay

http://hist.ucalgary.ca/macmillk/sites/hist.ucalgary.ca.macmillk/files/Handbook.pdf

How To Write A Good History Essay

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/haywardp/hist213/writing.htm

What is A Good Essay

http://history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Brilliant/Keys%20to%20a%20Good%20Essay.pdf

How To Write History Essays

http://historyprofessor.org/organization/how-to-write-an-essay/

History Essay

http://coun.uvic.ca/learning/exams/history-essays.html

History Essay Guide

http://www.history.uottawa.ca/pdf/history_essay_guide.pdf

Submission of Essays

Essays are to be submitted to the instructor on the due date in lecture in hardcopy with pages stapled together.

Electronic Submission of Assignments

IMPORTANT: If you find it necessary to submit an essay by e-mail, the following naming protocol is to be used for naming your attached file and should be repeated in the subject line:

 
"Last Name_First Name_CourseNumber_SectionNumber _Proposal [or essay, etc]"

Any attached file not using this exact naming protocol will not be accepted and a penalty of a three percent mark deduction will be applied for every instance I have to request that an e-mailed assignment be resubmitted as per instructions herein.

Only MS Word files (preferred) in .doc or .docx format or PDF files will be accepted.  No WordPerfect or other files immediately compatible with MS Word or PDF will be accepted.

The submission of files by e-mail will be usually acknowledged within three days. It is your responsibility to ensure I have received your assignment.

A hard copy of the e-mailed essay is to be submitted at the next opportunity either directly to me.  Indicate on the front of the hardcopy the date you had e-mailed the essay to me previously.  The e-mailed essay will secure your submission date.  Obviously the hard copy is to be exactly identical with the e-mailed copy.  Hard copies of previously e-mailed essays not indicating the e-mail date on the cover will be assigned the date of the submission of the hard copy with stipulated mark deductions with no appeal. It is your responsibility to indicate to me on a hardcopy assignment being submitted late to me, when the electronic version was e-mailed to me.

Late Penalties and Extensions

Extensions may be granted on medical or compassionate grounds. Students requesting an extension should submit an e-mailed request to me before the deadline specifying precisely the date to which they are requesting the extension.  After the due date, students need to provide appropriate documentation relating to the extension request (i.e. doctor’s note, death certificate of relative, police report on their stolen laptop, repair bills for their crashed hard disc, veterinary reports on the contents of Fluffy’s stomach, etc).  Essays submitted under an extension must have my written response to the extension request attached to the front of the essay or they will be treated as late with no appeal. E-mailed submissions are to be attached as a ‘reply’ to my earlier response to the extension request.  No late work will be accepted after the last day of lecture or extensions granted beyond the last lecture day.  

Hard disk failure, theft, damage or loss of your computer is not an acceptable cause for an extension.  All assignments must be backed-up regularly to a safe storage area on the cloud or physically away from your main computer.   

Three (3) percentile marks per/day are deducted from your essay mark for late submissions, weekends included, until the day the essay is submitted to me.  If I do not acknowledge the receipt of your e-mailed essay within a few days, it is your responsibility to ensure I have received it.  Keep copies of all work, including marked assignments returned to you and e-mails of your submissions until your final course mark is released.  Re-submissions of earlier e-mailed essays “lost” in transmission, should such an unlikely scenario occur, will only be accepted in the form of a forwarded copy of the original e-mail.  There are no exceptions to this.

No late assignments will be accepted or missed midterm exams allowed to be scheduled for make-up after the last day of lecture.   No passing course grade will be issued without the completion of all assignments and exams.  No exceptions.   

Earning Marks

The evaluation of your research, content, evidence, originality and argumentation is of primary concern in marking as is the quality of your sources as described above. Equally important is the syntax, style and structure of your work. Marks will be deducted from work containing excessive grammatical/spelling mistakes, typographical errors, from essays that are excessively long or inadequately short, or which fail  to provide properly formatted footnoting/bibliography as specified above. Essays that consist of a frequently quoted passages or sentences, even if footnoted, will be severely penalized.  Be selective in direct quotations.  Ask yourself, “can this be said in my own words and then cited?” Is there a stylistic or argumentative reason for quoting the source directly? Be sure to edit and check your work carefully. Do not simply rely on your computer’s spelling or grammar checker.

Grounds for Assignment Failure

Essays which do not supply proper and adequate references with specific page numbers and bibliographies as specified above or submitted after the final day of lecture will be failed.  Essays based entirely on websites without the instructor’s permission, will be failed.  Any written work that quotes directly from other material without attribution, or which paraphrases extensive tracts from the works of others without accurate citations, is plagiarized and will be failed with no opportunity to re-submit and will result in additional severe academic consequences. Please consult the Ryerson academic calendar for further information on plagiarism. If you have any questions or doubts about how to cite material, please feel free to contact me.

Essay Progressive Creation History File Requirements

As I do not use Turnitin, students must “save as” a minimum of ten different progressive versions of their essay as they research, write, and edit their work and save all their research notes as well.  I recommend that you use the “save as” command every time you finish a new page and for every subsequent edit of your finished essay.  If there is any doubt to the authorship of any submitted essay, you will be asked to submit all the copies of your essay files as you saved them through the research, writing, and editing phases. Failure to submit upon request the minimum number of progressive files will constitute evidence of plagiarism with all its consequences. Retain all your research notes and drafts until you receive your final course grade.  DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR PROGRESSIVE CREATION FILE HISTORY UNLESS REQUESTED. Create safe back-ups of your progressive files.

SUGGESTED ESSAY AND TOPICS

Essay topics must focus on international relations and not on internal issues.  Any internal issues touched upon in the essay must have a direct impact on international relations.

1.  An episode, conflict or issue that occurred since 1945 in the foreign relations of Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Belorussia, Brazil, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Columbia, Czechoslovakia (for the log, Czech Republic or Slovakia), Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Laos, Liberia, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Sudan, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe or any other nation other than the United States and Canada. 

OR

2.  An issue or  organization:  the drug trade, international human smuggling, an ongoing border dispute, slavery, genocide, Group of Seven/Eight summits, environmental issues, the European Union (Economic Community (EEC)), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), nuclear arms control, international terrorism, maritime development and the Law of the Sea, international war crimes tribunals, or international human rights issues.

Trace the main developments related to your topic since 1945 and explain why it has become an issue or trouble spot.  What outside forces have played a part and how has it affected the world? What are the significant academic arguments surrounding your topic? What do major scholarly sources say about it? Give a critical assessment of whatever you choose to study. This is an academic exercise: you are NOT being asked to “pick a side” and argue it or prove some theory.

Other Topics

You are strongly encouraged to develop a topic of your own choosing. However, you must receive permission from me before undertaking the assignment. This is to ensure that the topic is feasible, and that appropriate resources are available to you.  Please note that the United States, People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union (Russia) and Canada will not be approved as topics given their centrality, if not dominance, in your course.  (But specific issue topics related to those countries are acceptable, for example START negotiations.) Please also note that any assignment on a topic that has not been approved will receive a grade of zero, without any chance of re-submission. 

Guidelines for All Assignments 

Assume that you have been asked by someone who does not know a great deal about your topic to explain why a particular problem exists, or what are the most important things to know about a particular issue or country.  Ask yourself what the current situation is.  Is there a crisis?  If so, what does it consist of and why is it occurring?  If, for example, someone asks you for a briefing on why Kosovo is such a troubled area, what sort of information and analysis would you need to provide? To give a good answer, you must not only explain the main issues and/or questions involved at present but the reasons why things have unfolded as they have.  That means explaining the historical background.  In some cases you might need to go back briefly before 1945. In all cases you must explore developments since 1945.  Depending on the subject you have chosen, you may or may not need to provide statistics of such things as population or economic indicators.  

Finding Material

1.  Consult the bibliography in the textbook.

2.  Look for a recent work on your topic and consult its bibliography.

3.  Use the Library On-Line Catalogue to search by subject.

4.  Follow directions on the Library Home Page to search databases for articles or books.

5.  Search the Internet WARNING: web sources are often not scholarly: be careful. It is one thing to use them in your log, but entirely different as a citable essay source. 

6.  Search other library catalogues (i.e. university libraries, public libraries, Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library). Remember that both the Ryerson and public libraries can order books for you through inter-library loan.

Finding reputable, factual sources is part of the exercise, and it will greatly enhance your work.  Be exhaustive and be critical.  You are certainly encouraged to use your facility in any language while doing research, provided that you indicate any translations (including by you) and use them with the same rules regarding academic honesty discussed above. 

CONTACTING YOUR PROFESSOR:  The best way to contact me is by e-mail: pwronsky@ryerson.ca. Indicate your course code in the subject line.   It usually takes 24 to 72 hours for me to respond depending upon how busy e-mail traffic is, and I do not review e-mails on the weekend.  It gets busier near deadline dates. Obviously e-mails regarding next-day issues are not going to be processed in time.   In accordance with Policy 157, only Ryerson e-mail accounts are to be used for communication between faculty and students.    

Missed Classes and/or Evaluations

Students are required to inform their instructors of any situation which arises during the semester which may have an adverse effect upon their academic performance, and must request any considerations and accommodations according to the relevant policies and well in advance.  Failure to do so will jeopardize any academic appeals.

• Medical certificates – If a student misses the deadline for submitting an assignment, or the date of an exam or other evaluation component because of illness, he or she must submit a Ryerson Student Medical Certificate AND an Academic Consideration form within 3 working days of the missed date.  Both documents are available at www.ryerson.ca/senate/forms/medical.pdf. If you are a full-time or part-time degree student, then you submit your forms to your own program department or school. If you are a certificate or non-certificate student, then you submit your forms to the staff at the front desk of the Chang School. 
• Religious observance – If a student needs accommodation because of religious observance, he or she must submit a Request for Accommodation of Student Religious, Aboriginal and Spiritual Observance AND an Academic Consideration form within the first 2 weeks of the class or, for a final examination, within 2 weeks of the posting of the examination schedule.  If the required absence occurs within the first 2 weeks of classes, or the dates are not known well in advance as they are linked to other conditions, these forms should be submitted with as much lead time as possible in advance of the required absence.  Both documents are available at http://www.ryerson.ca/senate/forms/relobservforminstr.pdf.  If you are a full-time or part-time degree student, then you submit the forms to your own program department or school.  If you are a certificate or non-certificate student, then you submit the forms to the staff at the front desk of the Chang School. 
• Students who need academic accommodation support  should register with the Academic Accommodation Support office (formerly called the Access Centre).  Before the first graded work is due, registered students should inform their instructors through an “Accommodation Form for Professors” that they are registered with Academic Accommodation Support and what accommodations are required.

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism

Ryerson’s Policy 60 (now called the Academic Integrity policy) applies to all students at the University.  The policy and its procedures are triggered in the event that the there is a suspicion that a student has engaged in a form of academic misconduct. 

Forms of academic misconduct include plagiarism, cheating, supplying false information to the University, and other acts.  The most common form of academic misconduct is plagiarism.  Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and penalties can be severe.  In any academic exercise, plagiarism occurs when one offers as one’s own work the words, data, ideas, arguments, calculations, designs or productions of another without appropriate attribution or when one allows one’s work to be copied.

 All academic work must be submitted using the citation style approved by the instructor. Students may refer to the Ryerson Library’s list of Citations and Style Guides for more information.

 It is assumed that all examinations and work submitted for evaluation and course credit will be the product of individual effort, except in the case of group projects arranged for and approved by the course instructor.  Submitting the same work to more than one course, without instructor approval, is also considered a form of plagiarism. 

 Students are advised that suspicions of academic misconduct may be referred to the Academic Integrity Office (AIO).  Students who are found to have committed academic misconduct will have a Disciplinary Notation (DN) placed on their academic record (not on their transcript) and will be assigned one or more of the following penalties:

·         A grade reduction for the work, include a grade of zero for the work.

·         A grade reduction in the course greater than a zero on the work.  (Note that this penalty can only be applied to course components worth 10% or less, that any additional penalty cannot exceed 10% of the final course grade, and that information explaining that such a penalty will be assigned must be included on the course outline.) 

·         An F in the course

·         More serious penalties up to and including expulsion from the University

 For more detailed information on these issues, please refer to the full online text for the Academic Integrity policy and to the Academic Integrity website.