Brennan's Topic

For my topic I am looking into segregation and how baseball was such a huge ice breaker for the two races. Baseball was so important to almost everyone during most of the 20th century and for blacks and whites to be playing professional baseball together was crazy to think of back then. After doing research on the library of congress website and also on an online archive I was able to find many articles and photographs dealing with desegregated and segregated professional baseball leagues. In the early 20th century pro baseball leagues were segregated meaning there was a African American league and a white league. Towards the middle of the 20th century whites and blacks started playing together professionally. It was a unique way for African Americans to prove themselves to the whites and show them that they could in fact out play them. When the African Americans joined the white leagues it allowed the two races to basically ignore the skin color difference and just play the game. They were basically forced to work together on the field and it led to better relationships off the field. I am currently doing research on Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays, which are some of the best African American baseball players ever. Through interviews, documents, pictures, and articles written about them, the hard work and experiences these guys faced to play in the big leagues with desegregated leagues was tremendous. So i plan on finding more information on these guys as well as the laws during this time which kept blacks and whites segregated and also other players that might have played in black only baseball leagues.

Read this article about writing hacks and leave a comment

One of the things you'll hear me say over and over is that writing makes you think more clearly. Another is that the more you write, the easier you will find writing. I have to remind myself of these things on a regular basis, too! Lots of things can count as writing -- things you might not really consider, because we have all been trained to consider only formal writing as "real" writing. But a friend of mine posted a link to this article today, and it reminded me to think of all writing as writing. It also had some really good tips for getting into the writing habit. Please read it, and then comment on this post with your reactions and any tips or strategies you might have. Due date is Monday, October 6, at 3:00 p.m..

Jennifer's Topic

I started at looking at the infanticide cases on the Old Bailey's webpage. As I was going through the infanticide cases, I noticed quite a few cases that dealt with women and their bastard children. Many of the cases the women tried to cover up the infanticide by saying the babies were born still born. I looked at both the guilty and not guilty. A lot of the guilty cases people had found the child smothered or stuffed in places. The mothers would try and hide the child. In the cases of the not guilty verdict there were midwives or someone like that there to verify that the child was still born. I am questioning the problem of the societal view on bastards and that as a possible cause to the infanticide of bastard children.

Writing Group, Instructions

Welcome to the class writing group. Except for this week, goals and progress reports will be due by noon on Wednesdays, so that everyone has time to review each other's reports by class time on Thursday. Every week, you will need to post achievable goals below mine in the appropriate post. After the first week, you will incorporate a progress report (follow my model) as well.

Additionally, you should use your workspace to keep track of major goals, sources, to-do lists, etc.

Finally, we will all be posting examples of our work and work process on a weekly basis.


Timeline for papers:

October 14 - narrowed-down topic and at least one question that will lead to a thesis statement due at beginning of class

October 21 -- initial bibliography due; primary and secondary sources separated, Chicago format, at least 10 secondary sources

October 28 -- 1200-1500 word draft due

November 1, noon -- peer reviews of first draft due to Dr. Hofmann for return to authors by November 3

November 14, 5:00 p.m. -- Complete draft due for turnaround to peer reviewers. This should be a fairly polished draft, and have no spelling, grammar, or typographic errors.

November 18, beginning of class -- peer reviews due to Dr Hofmann


Final Draft due December 1

Welcome to the academic blogosphere!

This blog is meant as a place for our writing group, a.k.a. HIST 201: The Practice of History. This is the main page, which is the official blog. This is where faculty and students will post announcements, feedback, ideas for class, etc. Please feel free to look around the blog. Each member of the course has his or her own workspace (please post to your own, although you may comment on each other's). Our regular goals and progress reports should all be posted to the Writing Journals page.

I'm creating a list of labels for us to use on our various posts. Feel free to add more labels as you need them, but please make sure not to create duplicate labels.  Instructions for how we'll be using the blog will follow.

I think each author's name will attach automatically to a post, so we should be able to search by author. If that isn't the case, then every person will have to label their posts with their first name.

Otherwise, labels are:

Progress Reports
To-Do lists
Weekly Goals
Rants about class
Research woes
FTW
Cool Stuff I discovered
Useful sources
Questions
I'm Lost
Using My Brain
Reflections