Backgrounder (15 points)
Once (1 time) during the semester, each of you will create an in-depth study tool (a.k.a., a “backgrounder”) for the class, offering us some insight into the text, tradition, movement, or geography of historical investigation that day. (We will assign each of you a date during our first class meeting.)
Your backgrounder may include glosses, tables, timelines, and/or even maps, and you are encouraged to draw heavily on our assigned readings for that day, as well as peer-reviewed encyclopedias, reference, material, and/or other secondary scholarship if you feel those sources would help you construct it. To that end, please include a works cited list at the end of the backgrounder, for those of us who might want to delve further into the material (MLA or Chicago style, preferred).
You are encouraged to take interpretive risks, even as you strive to provide some concrete historical, cultural, geographical, or linguistic context for what we read that day. Sometimes, the best backgrounders combine factual or reference information with a schema, pattern, or outline of ideas/claims in the particular assigned reading you are helping to contextualize. When in doubt about how to create it, please be as thorough as possible, knowing that we will take seriously its dual purpose to be both a viable reference tool and a tool for generating discussion.
