WASM GUIDELINES: IF YOU ARE WRITING ON A WASM PROJECT!
• You can access the Women and Social Movements database here:
• To learn how to access a database when off-campus, please see the following video:
• Once you have entered the database, you can either locate your document project by typing the name of your document project into the “Search” box at the top of the page, or by clicking on “Document Projects” at the left of the page, and clicking through all of the document projects (arranged chronologically) until you locate yours. Please let me know if you have any difficulties tracking down your document project, or accessing this database!
• Please note: while it is likely that you will be writing on the same collection as another of your classmates, your discussion board post and paper will not be collaborative assignments, but will instead be ones you will work on entirely on your own!
• For your paper (which will be between 6-8 double-spaced pages), you will be:
o 1) Reading your document project editor’s introduction and selecting at least three (though you are welcome to read and analyze more, if you would like!) primary source documents from your project.
o 2) Analyzing how your editor discusses the significance and meaning of the particular facet of the antislavery movement/antislavery activism their project focuses on. What insights does your editor give into antislavery activism in the nineteenth century in their introduction? How do the sources they have collected help to expand our insights into antislavery activity during the era your project examines?
o 3) Analyzing the content of your (at least) three primary sources from your document project. Who are the authors/creators of these sources? How did the activists your project considers participate in the antislavery movement/engage in antislavery activism and resistance? How (if relevant) do they construct their arguments against slavery? And (since this site focuses our attention on women’s activism, specifically), how does gender shape women’s involvement in antislavery activism (their rhetoric, the forms their antislavery activity takes, etc.)?
o 4) Reflecting on how the primary sources you have selected help to answer the central question of your document project. (Since each project is organized around a central question.) If the central question of your project is, for example, about how antislavery women grappled with issues of racism within the abolitionist movement, you will focus your attention on the insights which the sources you analyzed provide into that question: i.e., how African-American female abolitionists critiqued racism within abolitionist organizations in their speeches and writings, how white female abolitionists responded to these critiques, etc.
• Please note that including specific quotations from your editor’s introduction and from your primary sources will be vital to the success of your assignment! For your citations, feel free to use whatever citation style you are most comfortable with (i.e, APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.), and to use either footnote or parenthetical citation. Any form of citation will be fine, as long as you are consistent!
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