Posted: April 8th, 2015

1. Historiographic Essay:

1. Historiographic Essay:

Material: The Word document “End of the Cold War, Historiographic Debate” on V-Space.

Task: In the Word document, you will find three essays that make an argument about Ronald Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War. Your task is to analyze what the three arguments presented by the three authors are and how their interpretations of history differ from each other.

You should take the three essays one by one, briefly summarize their content, and then discuss differences (or any similarities) of their interpretations. For each essay, quote at least three examples from the text that illustrate the author’s interpretation of history.

Format: You essay should be about 1,200 words in length (double-spaced, font 12, 1-inch margin, stapled). You need to use footnotes formatted in Chicago Manual of Style (see chapter 7 in Rampolla).

Grading: Your essay will be graded according to the following criteria:

–Focus: Does your essay fulfill the assignment and stay focused on the question at hand?

–Evidence: Does the essay use the required amount of relevant quotes?

–Presentation: Is the essay free of typos, clearly written and structured?

Please note: The finished historiographic paper will become part of your final paper that you turn in at the end of the semester.

Worth 10 points.

2. Primary Source Bibliography: From the Appendix of Documents in the book How the Cold War Ended, pick five documents that consider useful for understanding the history you outline in the main body of your paper (see below). List the five sources in a one-page bibliography. See Rampolla, chapter 7. Please include the original citation given to you from Prados (in other words, list tell me the original location where John Prados found the document when he prepared his book). Worth 5 points.

3. Introduction and Outline: Before you write the final paper, you need to inform me about what your ideas are and how you plan to execute your ideas. To that end, you need to write a draft introduction and an outline with topic sentences for the different paragraphs you plan to include (see Rampolla, chapter 4). As to the content of your introduction and outline, see the instructions below. Worth 5 points.

4. Complete Final Paper: Having written the historiographical essay, you now have a better understanding of what is at stake when addressing the question how the cold war ended. Many Americans frame the issue around Ronald Reagan’s role in these events. Having read John Lewis Gaddis and John Prados, you now also understand that individual people in history cannot be independent variables and that other factors must be considered to account for distant causes, intermediate necessary causes, and the tipping point, which often is an unforeseeable “small event.”
Therefore, your final paper should discuss a variety of other causes that explain how the cold war ended. For each category of causes, pick the one that you consider most important and justify your decision.
Your material here should come from the John Prados book:
–Pick one individual other than Ronald Reagan or Michael Gorbachev and briefly explain his/her contribution to the end of the cold war.
–Pick one event that illustrates the role that bureaucratic institutions/mid-level policy entrepreneurs played in the events that led to the end of the cold war.
–Pick one popular movement of citizens and explain its role in the end of the cold war.
–Pick one structural force in the Soviet Union that contributed to the end of the cold war.
–Pick one element of the history of espionage and covert action and explain its role in the end of the cold war.
–Explain how the fall of the Berlin Wall came about.
–Make sure to apply Gaddis’s concepts of causation to your discussion.
–Make sure to incorporate five primary documents as evidence into your discussion.

You will be graded according to the following criteria:
Focus: Does your paper answer the question you set out to answer? Does it address the relevant material? Does the essay stay on point?
Evidence: Does your paper make sufficient use of evidence? Does your essay make effective use of the sources consulted (in other words, does the evidence support a claim you make, or does the essay mainly use quotes to fill pages)?
Presentation: Is your essay clearly organized? Does it avoid confusing grammar and other problems of presentation? Did you format the paper according to Chicago Manual of Style? The final paper is worth 30 points.