Who in your family was the first person to come to the United States? Why did he or she come here? When? Are these stories still a part of your family, or is yours a family that says they have "always" been in the United States? This research project asks you to think about these and related questions in order to better understand your family history—and thus, perhaps, your sense of how you fit into that history. Ultimately, this research project may become an essay in which you explore, discuss, and define your own cultural/ethnic identity.
There are several components to this project, which you can choose to combine and discuss as you deem appropriate. These components are listed below. As you research this paper, we will be working in class on the various skills needed to put together a long paper: developing a thesis, formulating an outline, using electronic and print resources to their fullest extent, utilizing secondary sources smoothly and eloquently, and so forth.
Components:
Research one of your countries of origin–if one of your great-grandparents
was German and the other Irish, for instance, you should choose either
Germany or Ireland to research. You may decide that instead of a country,
you would like to focus on a particular cultural or ethnic group—the Amish,
for instance, or Parsis, or Orthodox Jews—if that is more relevant to your
family’s history. There are a number of ways to approach this research:
Family member interview
After you have begun researching your country of origin, you should
interview a family member from an older generation (parent, grandparent,
uncle, aunt, etc). Your interview questions should include questions about
the history of the country, about when the first members of the family
came to America, what happened when those family members first arrived
in America, and other questions that seem pertinent to your family’s history.
If you are exploring Native American history, you should find out where
the tribe originated, where (or if) there is a reservation, and so forth.
We will work on developing interview questions in class; the results of
the interview can be incorporated into the research project. You will also
turn in a transcript (a written record) of the interview.
Requirements
The final draft of the research paper will be 10-12 pages long and
should incorporate your research about the country/culture of origin and
the family member interview. Please note that you will need to turn in
the interview, your notes, a works cited page—all the support materials—with
the final draft. Also note that you need to use a variety of sources, and
that your sources should be timely and relevant to your subject (we will
discuss this more in class). The first draft of the research paper is due
Monday, November 1. The last day to turn in the final draft is December
3.
Thesis statements for a paper of this type can be difficult to formulate; we will talk in detail about formulating a thesis statement but generally speaking you should remember that a good thesis statement/main idea is a debatable point: it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to write an entire paper focused around a statement of fact.