Good morning, historians of East Asia!
Writing tip! I hope the writing is going smoothly! If it isn’t, here is an important task you should check in your assignments for my courses (and for other courses, too), that will get you to make contact with your writing without having to do any intellectual heavy lifting: check your references have page numbers! (And if not: add the page numbers).
References to sources in footnotes in the Chicago Notes and Bibliography style require a page number for the exact point of information. Imagine you find some useful information in a book that’s 354 pages long. You refer to it twice, in two different chapter. A reader finds the things you mention interesting, and wants to learn a bit more, so she looks at the book you refer to in the note. If you give the page number, she can find the right spot in a matter of minutes. If you don’t give a page number… well, wish her good luck!
Some sources do not have page numbers. When referring to movies and documentaries, you can add an approximate timestamp. For websites, there is not. Let’s hope there is a useful keyword our reader can look for.
Important! Not providing references (“citations”) constitutes a violation of the Academic Integrity Code, as plagiarism. If you’re in doubt about when and what to cite, check the handy FAQ on plagiarism on the College website. A good rule of thumb is: cite when you quote directly, when you paraphrase, and when you rely on specific information or ideas from a source, in other words: not only when you see quotation marks.
Added bonus: usually, after a few minutes fiddling around with the page numbers in the footnotes, you get in the mood for the writing part of the project, and you can begin composing or rewriting. Congrats, you’ve moved out of “Park” and you are moving again!
Schedule
Drop in tutorials: 1-2PM, follow the green link in your Canvas Homepage
HST107: Keep working on your projects! Nothing with a deadline on the schedule for today.
HST259: Zoom at 11.30am. Our final session together! Please try to be there, so we can wrap up the course. Some questions I’d like to play with: What are the top 3 texts you think everybody should read? Which texts can you live without? What was missing? Do you have tips for finding materials about that topic? Keep the textbook (Seth) or do without, or find a different one?
HST267: Keep working on your final assignments! Nothing with a deadline scheduled for today.