MUST USE THIS William Rosen, Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of
the Roman Empire (Penguin, 2008)
material. Make certain to consider the credibility your sources before using them.
Do NOT use Wikipedia, Shmoop.com (or similarly potentially unreliable sources),
or insubstantial, short-cut sites like Encyclopedia Britannica, World War II
Encyclopedia or similar sources. Do not use book reviews, dictionary entries or
previously submitted student papers. Please avoid material aimed at a juvenile
audience. The ideal starting point for identifying additional source material for
your paper is the bibliography of the monograph you’ve selected from the course
list. If you find something of potential value there, seek out and access the
original source. Legitimate academic sources can be obtained via the JSTOR
database (the FLCC Library maintains a link to this site). As a rule, please avoid
.com websites, unless approved by your instructor. If you are uncertain about the
legitimacy/value of a source, please ask your instructor. My class lectures and
PowerPoints, and the textbooks (Backman) for the course, should not be used as
sources for this assignment.
• Primary source material (written during the historical period you are focusing
on) should be represented in your list of sources. These are original/eyewitness
material rendered during the historical period you are investigating (rather than
more recently). These should be properly cited in your bibliography (see below).
You need at least one major primary source in your paper.
but they should not dominate your text, or replace your own analysis. Direct
quotations should not comprise more than 15% of your total text.
• Your paper should contain a properly-formatted bibliographic page, which
reveals the various sources you consulted during the production of your paper:
the monograph you’ve selected from the course booklist, as well as any
additional sources you’ve accessed and cited.
Your paper should be written in the third person. It is not an opinion paper
(avoid phrases like “I think” or “I believe”) and should not be presented in the first
person. In developing your historical case, you need to rely upon the work of
acknowledged, expert historians. Your tone should always be formal and
colloquialisms should be avoided.
• The past tense should be applied (you are discussing historical material).
• It should be a minimum of 5 pages in length (exclusive of a title page and a
bibliographic page), double-spaced and presented in 12 point Times New
Roman, Calibri or Arial font. Margins should not exceed 1 inch on all sides. No
images or other “fillers” should be used (except on the title page, if you wish).
• Pages are to be numbered