Brunswick Dr. VA

Original Biography

This is by no means a typical biography assignment, and it must be understood to differ substantially from your role-playing papers of second and third marking periods. You may write about anybody you wish, living or dead, provided your choice of subject has not previously been treated by another biographer. This means that you probably will not be able to pick someone who is, or was, particularly famous. Most celebrities and people mentioned in your textbook will have to be considered out of bounds.

In some cases, the research for this project could consist entirely of primary source material. Newspapers, magazines, letters, diaries, government and business records, photographs, interviews--the range of sources open to you, depending on your subject, is considerable. Try to draw on a wide variety of sources (the more the better!). Warning: if it looks as if most of your material has come from just one or two interviews, I might think you haven’t done much work. Be imaginative and resourceful in your use of materials at hand. Organize the research around questions that you think would intrigue any reader of your paper. Remember that there are meaningful things about everyone’s life: decisions, events, people, places, ideas that made a difference in that person’s stream of experience. Find them. Weave your findings into a short tapestry representing a sensitive understanding of another human being.

As you prepare the paper, which should be about 5 word-processed pages, bear in mind that the best biographies are analytical or explanatory in nature, as well as descriptive of the subject in the context of her/his time. You must, by the way, include proper footnote or endnote citations to show how you used your research.

Again, I require an annotated bibliography, and if your paper does not include one it will be considered incomplete and, therefore, ungradable. To be “annotated,” a bibliography must feature several lines of descriptive commentary on each source (why the source exists, what its purpose was, what it reveals to you as a historian, what it doesn’t reveal, etc.) This is in addition to the usual bibliographical information (author, title, place and date of publication, or location of the material if it is unpublished).

I expect to receive your final drafts no later than: