Please incorporate ALL of the sources for each day into one reading response. Your thesis aims to explain what the primary sources tell us about their time period.
BRIEF (1-2 sentences) SUMMARY of the set of sources, assigned chapter, or chapter section: What time period and place(s) are these sources from? What are they about, or what issues do they raise?
REPRESENTATIVE QUOTATION that you would like to discuss in class from 1 or 2 of the sources in the assignment.
ARGUMENT.
What can these sources help us understand about the time when they were written? Choose one of the models below to write a draft thesis statement that uses your evidence to make an arguable claim to explain COMPARATIVE PRACTICES, CHANGE, or CAUSATION. You may wish to draw out differences among a set of sources rather than make a claim that they all provide evidence of the same practices, historical changes, or causes.
Some things to look for: religion, cultural forms, economics and trade, social/class structures, ideas or power differentials around identities (e.g. gender, class, race, religion), technology, war/military/conquest, the role of animals and natural resources, geography, and political systems.
OPTION A: COMPARATIVE PRACTICES AND IDEAS
THINK ABOUT HOW THESE SOURCES PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF DIFFERENT SOCIAL PRACTICES, CULTURAL FORMS, and/or IDEAS.
Put these ideas into a thesis statement that draws out similarities and/or differences between 2 or more sources, e.g.:
While [primary source A] give us evidence of _ [example of social practices, cultural forms or ideas], [primary source B] shows us _ [counter-example of social practices or ideas].
