Instructions from professor:
For this paper, you will interpret
Allen D. Grimshaw’s “Urban Racial Violence in the United States Changing
Ecological Considerations”. The purpose of the exercise is to focus
intensely on the nature of a source, avoiding a superficial analysis. I
want you to make a sustained argument and support it with evidence from a
close examination of the source.
Successful arguments about
primary sources begin with careful attention to the thematic and formal
features of the text as well as the conditions of its production. In
arriving at an argument, you should first concentrate on figuring out
all of the details of the source. For written texts, this includes
giving consideration to diction, syntax, grammar, and sentence
structure; voice, tone, style, and genre; images, metaphors, and themes;
and structure. You will also want to think outside of the text, to
consider the creator’s relationship to the audience of the song and the
links between this song and other works/events of the time. Your
examination should also focus on the context of the report in relation
to history, politics, the social climate of the time, overall message,
and effect. *(In this case, evaluating, tracing, and forecasting the
changing social climate in the U.S. urban racial violence in the north
and south)
The key to writing an interesting analysis of a
primary source is to find something that intrigues you about it and try
to figure out what that something means.
In writing your paper,
you should take care to situate your reader with respect to your source
and its context, providing any and all pertinent information that he/she
needs to know in order to properly understand its meaning. This might
include: the creator’s name and background; the context of creation; the
genre of the source; and the reason for its creation (insofar as it is
possible to know from the source). Your aim should be that any educated
non-specialist, even one who does not know anything specific about your
source or its topic, can follow your argument.
Number of pages: 4 Number of sources: 0 Citation style: chicago Academic level: collegeyear4 Course name:
