Fitchburg Three-Document Analysis Paper Assignment
Pursuing Justice examines how founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution/Bill of Rights influence the course of events in United States history. Our program focuses on four historical topics; the creation of the founding documents during the Revolutionary era; citizenship controversies of the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods; conflict between proponents of individual liberty and social justice during the Progressive period; and the multiple mobilizations of the Civil Rights era along with the governmental responses to them in the 20th and 2st centuries. Specifically, the Pursuing Justice program explores the conflicts and compromises that resulted in the creation of the founding documents and then investigates how social justice movements in succeeding eras employed the arguments, principles and rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to further their goals. What complicates this dynamic is that in many justice struggles opposing sides may employ the same founding documents to either legitimize their positions or to assert that the common good trumps the rights of individuals or groups.
The intent of our Fitchburg three-document analysis paper assignment is to enable participants to explore summer institute content and its implications for curriculum development. A three-document analysis paper;
· is 8-10 pages in length, with 1 ½ lines in 12 point font;
· addresses a summer institute topic(s), issue(s), social movement(s) etc. (See above.);
· examines at least three documents;
· briefly outlines the historical context of each document;
· Optional: and explores the potential curricular use of these documents.
Some ideas for how to deploy three primary source documents in such a paper are listed below. You might analyze;
1. documents that reflect different positions in a case study;
2. documents that embody three historical moments in a justice movement;
3. documents from the same movement and era that are written for different audiences and purposes;
4. documents that reflect the evolution of thinking about a justice concept or issue.
In past years, participants have written three-document analysis papers on such topics as free blacks in the North, Mendez v. Westminster and Cesar Chavez, changing interpretation of the 14th Amendment, justice claims and rhetorical strategies in slave narratives, and the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
We have a very short window of opportunity for submitting grades to Fitchburg, so I will have to ask you to either hand in or send me digital copies of your paper, by 12:00 noon on Monday, July 14th. Hope you find writing this three-document analysis paper to be both intellectually stimulating and useful in the enterprise of preparing your Pursuing Justice lesson(s).