The goal of the course is to produce a ready-to-publish research or interpretative piece reflecting the current stage of each student’s dissertation project. In addition to this, we will write book reviews and peer reviews.

Requirements: active class participation, diligent independent work. You are expected to produce one peer review of an article; one book review (with a possibility of offering it for publication in an academic journal); the draft and the final version of your main writing assignment for the course (an article or a dissertation chapter).

Students will be evaluated on the basis of their work in class and attendance (30%); peer review (10%), book review (15%), and their main course writing piece (45%).

You are welcome to communicate with me on any question you may have about the class or your project via e-mail or by coming to talk during my office hours (or by appointment).

Part 1.

January 13

Introduction. Please come to the first meeting prepared to talk about your dissertation project and what kind of text you want to develop in the course of the seminar (an article, a dissertation chapter with the potential to be developed into an article, a historiographic essay). Planning our seminar:

1. Think about when you will be able to present an outline of your article/chapter for discussion in class (March 3, March 10, March 17). We need to have a preliminary order of presentations.

2. We need to preliminary nominate discussants for each outline.

3. Start thinking about the book for a book review. Read instructions for the class on February 17, try to identify and get the book you want to review as early as possible.

January 20 Martin Luther King Day, no class.

Use your time to read articles posted on Blackboard—all of them have passed a vigorous review process, two of them stimulated important interdisciplinary discussions in their respective fields, and all three present different genres of contemporary history writing (modern intellectual/cultural history; theoretical discussion; research articles in the field of social history). Please think about why these articles are representative of their genre, how they are done, and what you can borrow from these three examples.

Mark Lipovetsky, “The Poetics of ITR Discourse: In the 1960s and Today,” Ab Imperio 14, no. 1 (2013): 109−132;

Jean-François Bayart, “Postcolonial Studies: A Political Invention of Tradition?” Public Culture 23, no. 1 (2011), http://publicculture.dukejournals.org/content/23/1/55.full.pdf+html;

Andriy Zayarnyuk, “The War Is as Usual”: World War I Letters to a Galician Village,” Ab Imperio 11, no. 4 (2010): 197−224.

January 27

Discussion of the articles from Ab Imperio (Lipovetsky; Bayart; Zayarnyuk): genre, academic conventions, structure, writing style, reliance on sources, and so on.

February 10

Peer review. Please read my own article and peer reviews that I have received (Blackboard). Think about peer-reviewing and what it entails. Select any of the articles posted on Blackboard under the peer review rubric and write your own peer review of one of them. Please e-mail it to me two days before the class, that is, by Saturday, February 8. I will circulate your reviews so you can come to class and discuss your agreements and disagreements. After that I will disclose the actual reviews the articles received after they had been submitted to Ab Imperio (the names of contributors and reviewers will not be disclosed).

February 17

Book review: As a genre of writing, book review is one of the most learnable and manageable ways to break into scholarly publication. Please study:

Robert Pinsky’s “How Not to Write a Book Review” http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/07/how_not_to_write_a_book_review.html

Wendy Belcher’s “Writing the Academic Book Review” http://www.wendybelcher.com/pages/documents/WritingtheAcademicBookReview.pdf

Academic Skills Center, Trent University, “Writing Academic Reviews” http://www.trentu.ca/academicskills/documents/ASC_Writing_Academic_Reviews_Final.pdf

Read as examples of good reviews: E.P. Thompson reviewing Raymond Williams’s A Long Revolution (in two parts) in the New Left Review 1/9, May–June 1961 and 1/10 1961; and Kenneth Cmiel reviewing Robert Wiebe’s The Search for Order, in American History 21/2, 1993.

You may find them on the electronic reserve course page: Course name ERes URL for HIST 594: SP' 2014 http://uic.docutek.com/eres/coursepass.aspx?cid=2984

Please select a new book in your field and write a draft of the review. If you decide to write your review on a book pertaining to the history of Russia or Eastern Europe, or dealing with nationalism and empire studies (regardless of the region), you may offer it (through me) for publication in Ab Imperio. In any case, you will be encouraged to offer your review to academic periodicals of your choice.

E-mail them to me on February 15, at the latest. I will circulate these reviews. You should come to class with brief “peer reviews” of two book reviews of your colleagues. Be ready to discuss your book reviews.

February 24 No class. You should work on the final versions of your book reviews. Please e-mail them to me no later than February 28.

Part 2.

March 3

Discussion of the first two outlines of the article/chapter. Please e-mail your outlines to me along with your books reviews no later than February 28.

Outline: title; main thesis and research questions; structure; sources; bibliography.

March 10

Discussion of the next two outlines of the article/chapter. Please e-mail your outlines to me no later than March 8.

March 17

Discussion of the remaining outlines of the article/chapter. Please e-mail your outlines to me no later than March 15.

March 24–28 Spring break. No classes.

April 7 No class, independent work on drafts of your written pieces. Please e-mail me your drafts by April 10. I will propose the order of discussion of the drafts and nominate two reviewers of each draft.

April 14 First round of draft discussions.

April 21 Second round of draft discussions

April 28 Third round of draft discussions.

I expect all final articles/chapters to be e-mailed to me by Monday, May 2.

Have a great summer!