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IF YOU WANT PROOFREADING OR STRUCTURAL GUIDANCE, PLEASE EMAIL ME YOUR MANUSCRIPT AT ANY TIME. EMAIL TO: MAYILONG@UW.EDU.

DROP-IN TIMES FOR MORE EXTENSIVE WORK AND BEGINNING HELP ARE: T, TH 11:30-1:30 and 3:30-6 and F 12-5 DEPENDING ON SCHEDULING NEEDS and/or by appointment (SOME FLEXIBILITY IS POSSIBLE TO MEET YOUR SCHEDULING NEEDS). INDEPENDENT STUDIES AND UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECTS CONTINUE AT USUAL TIMES. (PLEASE SCROLL DOWN)

The History Writing Center offers half-hour, individual appointments with the head writing tutor who is well versed in the special demands of writing history papers. We invite students to use the Writing Center at any stage in the composition process, from thesis development through multiple drafts of an essay. PLEASE SEE THE VERY BOTTOM OF THIS SCREEN FOR GUIDANCE ON HOW TO WRITE A HISTORY PAPER.

Email: mayilong@uw.edu

Phone: Please email for appointments or cancellations.

Office: Smith 020

Friendly Reminders:

WE ARE LOCATED IN SMITH 020

PLEASE SEE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FOR TIPS FOR WRITING A HISTORY PAPER.

Please remember the Center is open to students currently enrolled in History Department courses. Other writing centers can be found at: UWrite.

WHAT WE DO: HELP YOU WITH YOUR THESIS, ORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPING SKILLS FOR EASILY WRITING GOOD HISTORY PAPERS! (writing a history paper can be fun -- we can show you how)

IF YOU CANNOT COME IN, OR BEFORE COMING IN, PLEASE READ THE BROCHURE (BELOW) ABOUT "HOW TO WRITE A HISTORY PAPER"

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WRITING A HISTORY PAPER IN 4 STEPS:

• Brainstorming: THE MOST IMPORTANT PART (DO THIS WELL AND THE PAPER WILL WRITE ITSELF

• most history papers ask you a question and the question has different parts
• for example:
• In what ways has the McDonald’s hamburger appealed to the American public over the past thirty years? Talk about these aspects: political, social, gender, racial.

This means you have one question with four categories.

So, get out four sheets of paper – one for each category in the question. On the top of each piece of paper, write one of the categories.

For example:

Political

Then leave a whole blank sheet of paper for you to fill up. This is called brainstorming. Keep in mind the main question (why has the McDonald’s hamburger appealed to Americans) and then go through your lecture notes, your textbooks and other books, and also your primary sources and find examples that fit with the question and are “political in nature.”

NOTE: In case you don’t know, “primary sources” means, these are the sources that come from the time period being studied. They are things like diaries, newspapers, writings from the time period. These are the most important part of a history paper. These are your building blocks for the paper.

So, let’s say for this class, you have three sources: class lecture notes, a general history book about the American consumer culture, and then some primary sources: interviews that McDonalds did with customers over the years.

We’ll call the first source: “class notes” The second source, we’ll call “text” The third source, we’ll call, “interviews.”

So once you go through all these sources, your 1 st blank piece of paper might look like this (once you’ve filled it in)

Political

“I like the burgers because they’re fast and easy to eat, just like democracy is,” interviews, p. 38

Many Americans, particularly on the East Coast, equated the consistency of burgers with the consistency of government. (text, p.789)

“As long as the McDonalds burger exists, America will exist,” interviews, p. 109.

“I think the burgers look like UFOs. They are a sign that the fabric of our society is falling apart. Who eats them anyway?” interviews, p. 301

50% of Americans got sick from eating McDonalds burgers but over half of those continued to eat them – class notes

“My cousin ate a burger yesterday and then he began to sing, and then he began to dance and then he began to lift up his eyes to heaven and pray,” interviews, p. 1008.

“Burgers are American. China has its rice. We have our hamburgers. Don’t try to change anything or we’ll end up being Reds,” interviews, p. 15.

McDonalds originally was founded in an English pub by a man who hadn’t bathed in 30 days while deciding if it was more important to eat or to think. He decided eating was more important. Lecture notes, p. 5

“I ate at a McDonald’s hamburger yesterday, in fact that’s the first thing I do when I arrive in a new city, hunt up the old Micky Dee, and chow one down,” George Bush, II, as he was campaigning.

As the cohesiveness of small-town communities gradually evaporated, fast food icons came to replace the church as the center of a shared identity, textbook, p. 56.

Okay, so you’ve filled up one of these brainstorming pages with lots of quotes and ideas and paraphrases from your different sources. You have especially focused on the primary source (the interviews). Now only one more step, and your paper is basically written.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

What you do now is to look over all the material you have in front of you (above) and try to find connections between different parts. For instance, you could circle (with a pen) this quote:

“I ate at a McDonald’s hamburger yesterday, in fact that’s the first thing I do when I arrive in a new city, hunt up the old Micky Dee, and chow one down,” George Bush, II, as he was campaigning

Then you could look for other quotes or comments that might relate to it. I see one obvious one.

As the cohesiveness of small-town communities gradually evaporated, fast food icons came to replace the church as the center of a shared identity, textbook, p. 56.

Another one that might have similar themes with these is:

“Burgers are American. China has its rice. We have our hamburgers. Don’t try to change anything or we’ll end up being Reds,” interviews, p. 15.

You see, what these all have in common is something about the idea that McDonalds’ burgers are somehow connected to the identity of belonging to a community, a small community that is part of a bigger community that is America.

(by the way, the word “identity” is a good one to use in academics – it’s popular at the moment).

So now you have the beginnings of a paragraph. (The hardest work for you is to try to make these connections between themes).

2) WRITING A PARAGRAPH

• Don’t write your topic sentence until last (topic sentence = the first sentence of the paragraph that sums up the whole paragraph)

• start with general information and background.

• you could start by paraphrasing the textbook:

As the cohesiveness of small towns slowly evaporated under the spread of post-WW II development, Americans began to look for symbols of larger forces now knitting their lives together. The McDonald’s hamburger came to symbolize not only a larger force, but the ultimate backbone of American society: big government. (McClane, textbook, p. 759).

• then you can add some primary sources

“Burgers are American. China has its rice. We have our hamburgers. Don’t try to change anything or we’ll end up being Reds,”( interviews, p. 15).

• if you really want to do well, you can add an analyzing sentence after this one. Such as:

McDonalds hamburgers were now seen as not only patriotic but as an integral part of the political establishment. Even the cadence of the interviewee’s comments sounds like a political chant.

• bring in another primary source, perhaps introduce it first:

Even fifty years later, the McDonald’s hamburger was still equated with a unifying vision, or force, binding the country together not only in an anonymity and generality of taste but also in a clearly recognizable icon that even politicians could exploit.

“I ate at a McDonald’s hamburger yesterday, in fact that’s the first thing I do when I arrive in a new city, hunt up the old Micky Dee, and chow one down,” George Bush, II, as he was campaigning.

• add another comment that builds on this part:

• paraphrase the textbook again:

Many Americans, particularly on the East Coast, equated the consistency of burgers with the consistency of government. (text, p.789)

(since the tense of this quote is a little problematic for our purposes, you might consider “massaging” it a little bit so it sounds like this:)

Following the attack on the World Trade Center, a large majority of Americans, especially those on the East Coast, began to look to McDonald’s hamburgers, for the consistency in those burgers, as a hallmark of something still consistent in the United States, particularly its government. (textbook, p. 789).

• you can take the paragraph even one more level up by adding something like this:

For some, a McDonald’s hamburger began to be equated with a transcendent, even a spiritual order not found on earth: it was equated with supernal rapture.

-- then bring in that last quote

“My cousin ate a burger yesterday and then he began to sing, and then he began to dance and then he began to lift up his eyes to heaven and pray,” interviews, p. 1008.

SO WRAPPING ALL THIS UP, THE PARAGRAPH WOULD READ LIKE THIS:

As the cohesiveness of small towns slowly evaporated under the spread of post-WW II development, Americans began to look for symbols of larger forces now knitting their lives together. The McDonald’s hamburger came to symbolize not only a larger force, but the ultimate backbone of American society: big government. (McClane, textbook, p. 759). “Burgers are American. China has its rice. We have our hamburgers. Don’t try to change anything or we’ll end up being Reds,”( interviews, p. 15). McDonalds hamburgers were now seen as not only patriotic but as an integral part of the political establishment. Even the cadence of the interviewee’s comments sounds like a political chant. Even fifty years later, the McDonald’s hamburger was still equated with a unifying vision, or force, binding the country together not only in an anonymity and generality of taste but also in a clearly recognizable icon that even politicians could exploit. “I ate a McDonald’s hamburger yesterday, in fact that’s the first thing I do when I arrive in a new city, hunt up the old Micky Dee, and chow one down,” said George Bush, II, as he was campaigning. Following the attack on the World Trade Center, a large majority of Americans, especially those on the East Coast, began to look to McDonald’s hamburgers, for the consistency in those burgers, as a hallmark of something still consistent in the United States, particularly its government. (textbook, p. 789). For some, a McDonald’s hamburger began to be equated with a transcendent, even a spiritual order not found on earth: it was equated with supernal rapture. “My cousin ate a burger yesterday and then he began to sing, and then he began to dance and then he began to lift up his eyes to heaven and pray,” (interviews, p. 1008.)

Now there’s a history paragraph.

Of course, yours doesn’t have to be half that long, but I just wanted to show you whole shish-kebang.

One more thing. You have to add a nice topic sentence to it. THE TOPIC SENTENCE should do two things: sun up the argument of the whole paragraph while offering an analysis of the paragraph.

For this paragraph, it might be something like: (since you’re answering a history question that has “political” in it, you might begin like this, although not absolutely necessary)

“Politically, the McDonalds hamburger has taken on the weight of consistency, reliability and uniformity that the central government usually symbolized in the eyes of Americans.”

(sometimes, when I’m trying to write a topic sentences, I scroll through the paragraph looking for key words or concepts I can fit into the topic sentence).

So, here’s the whole thing:

Politically, the McDonalds hamburger has taken on the weight of consistency, reliability and uniformity that the central government usually symbolized in the eyes of Americans. As the cohesiveness of small towns slowly evaporated under the spread of post-WW II development, Americans began to look for symbols of larger forces now knitting their lives together. The McDonald’s hamburger came to symbolize not only a larger force, but the ultimate backbone of American society: big government. (McClane, textbook, p. 759). “Burgers are American. China has its rice. We have our hamburgers. Don’t try to change anything or we’ll end up being Reds,”( interviews, p. 15). McDonalds hamburgers were now seen as not only patriotic but as an integral part of the political establishment. Even the cadence of the interviewee’s comments sounds like a political chant. Even fifty years later, the McDonald’s hamburger was still equated with a unifying vision, or force, binding the country together not only in an anonymity and generality of taste but also in a clearly recognizable icon that even politicians could exploit. “I ate a McDonald’s hamburger yesterday, in fact that’s the first thing I do when I arrive in a new city, hunt up the old Micky Dee, and chow one down,” said George Bush, II, as he was campaigning. Following the attack on the World Trade Center, a large majority of Americans, especially those on the East Coast, began to look to McDonald’s hamburgers, for the consistency in those burgers, as a hallmark of something still consistent in the United States, particularly its government. (textbook, p. 789). For some, a McDonald’s hamburger began to be equated with a transcendent, even a spiritual order not found on earth: it was equated with supernal rapture. “My cousin ate a burger yesterday and then he began to sing, and then he began to dance and then he began to lift up his eyes to heaven and pray,” (interviews, p. 1008.)

Again, this paragraph is a little long, but it gets across the main points of how to build and develop a paragraph. Once you get this, then you can start focusing on the primary sources more and analyzing those more, but that’s for the future. This is the basic backbone.

• Write more paragraphs in the same way you did the one above.

• Write your thesis (the easy part)

• go through your paper and copy and paste all your topic sentences to the top of your first page.

• when you’re finished, you should have a list of all of your topic sentences in the order they appear in your paper

- then combine them and summarize them into fewer sentences (for instance if you have 5 topic sentences, you might rewrite them as 3 sentences using different language)

- It might look like this:

(topic sentence one) Politically, the McDonalds hamburger has taken on the weight of consistency, reliability and uniformity that the central government usually symbolized in the eyes of Americans.

(topic sentence two) In social circles, consuming a McDonald’s hamburger meant, for the upper class, a dalliance with risk and banality while for the middle and lower classes it often meant an insouciant disregard for the mores imposed upon them by an uncaring and unfeeling medical establishment.

(topic sentence three) As an icon, few items surpassesd the “Mickey Dee” burger as a symbol for being American, whether that meant as a rebel against the established order or as a promoter of change in the world at large or simply as a consumer of the finest products.

So let’s say it’s a short paper and you only have three paragraphs, with these three topic sentences. You might rewrite them as 2-3 sentences as follows:

In the years since World War II, Americans increasingly came to see the Mcdonald’s hamburger as a symbol of American political steadfastness. At the same time, it came to symbolize an attempt to escape from the traps of the class system while promoting what Americans considered to be their most distinct traits: freedom, change and appreciation of the good life.

So that’s your introduction. You just need to add two more things.

Your thesis statement: (sums up the whole thing and goes last): it should be in one sentence:

In short, the McDonald’s hamburger has almost come to instantiate the general and abstract traits that Americans associate with their brand of religious democracy and liberal life: a symbol of godhood.

So putting those together, you get:

In the years since World War II, Americans increasingly came to see the Mcdonald’s hamburger as a symbol of American political steadfastness. At the same time, it came to symbolize an attempt to escape from the traps of the class system while promoting what Americans considered to be their most distinct traits: freedom, change and appreciation of the good life. In short, the McDonald’s hamburger has almost come to instantiate the general and abstract traits that Americans associate with their brand of religious democracy and liberal life: a symbol of godhood.

Now, many students want to add a little introduction about when McDonald’s first started making burgers, how many they have sold, etc. etc. If you really want to, you can add a few such sentences at the very beginning of this paragraph, leading into the introduction and thesis statement.

Then you put it all together:

• Introduction plus thesis statement (the last summing up sentence at the bottom)
• Your paragraphs
• A conclusion (optional*)

• conclusion: you don’t really need one for a history paper, but if your TA or professor wants one and you want one, for whatever reason, just rewrite your introduction in different language.
• If you really want to be risqué, in the last sentence of your conclusion, especially if this is a research paper, you can suggest what a next step in research on this topic might be:

“Given the proliferation of McDonald’s outlets around the world, a topic for further research might be how McDonalds has sought to assimilate into – and ultimately develop new symbology for – foreign cultures.”

• but this is not necessary.

Disclaimer:

Neither The History Writing Center nor the author can take any responsibility for the grade you receive on your paper. Many students have found this approach helpful and many have reported it brought them higher grades. But of course the final tally is up to your professor or TA.

Created by Julianne Zurovec

© 2001 HWC. All rights reserved.