Pass/Fail Assignment 2

Due date: see course calendar

Deliverable: an e-mail or e-mailed word document containing two parts:

1) A research question that your paper will address – not a “topic” (like ‘Egyptian politics’) but rather a “question” (like “to what degree do environmental and geographical factors explain the historically centralized nature of the Egyptian state.”)

2) Five sources you have found on that topic- preferably academic books or academic articles, either in paper or digital form. Non-academic web sites are generally not a good source for a history paper. IN ADDITION provide 1-2 sentences about each of these sources explaining how this source will be useful in analyzing the study question.

EXAMPLE:

1) “The Protestant Reformation saved lives in Northern Europe by stopping travel to Rome and thus reducing Northern European exposure to malaria.”

2) Sources:

a. Birch, Debra J. Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages: Continuity and Change. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1998. Talks about the large volume of European visitors to Rome before the Protestant Reformation.

b. Hoolihan, Christopher. “Health and Travel in Nineteenth-Century Rome” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 44, No. 4 (1989), pp. 480-481. Deals with the problem Malaria posed in Rome in the modern era. Also discusses travel to Rome and how it changed from the pre-modern to the modern period.

c. Randall M. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2007), pp. 42-43. Basic text about Malaria in general, with a good section on Rome, though only for the ancient period.

d. Robert Sallares, Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Lots of data about malaria in Rome from the ancient to the modern period, though with an emphasis on the ancient period. Some good material on travel to Rome as well.

e. Horst Fuhrmann, “Quis Teutonicos constutuit iudices nationum? The Trouble with Henry” Speculum, Vol. 69, No. 2 (April 1994). Mostly on a different topic, but when I searched it, it had a very interesting section on how malaria ruined a Medieval German military campaign to conquer Rome, and how this and other campaigns may have weakened Medieval Germany.