Your task for this assignment is to research a Wikipedia page for a topic of you

Your task for this assignment is to research a Wikipedia page for a topic of your choosing (*see below for guidelines) and to describe how the record of that page has changed over time. You should aim to find larger trends, explain big changes (or series of changes), and try to offer explanation for those changes. Your essay should not be a description of a historical event/person, etc. as told by Wikipedia, nor should it simply be a list of individual revisions. It should instead seek to explain the “big picture” of how this particular page has changed over time. Imagine yourself knowing nothing about the topic and reading the Wikipedia page for the first time. And then imagine yourself reading the same Wikipedia page prior to significant edits. How might your (the reader’s) understanding of that topic be different based on which version of the page you read? Some questions to consider include:
What kind of material has been added/discarded? Are there common themes regarding these changes?
Are new interpretations (rather than simply fact) being offered in material that is being added/removed?
For factual edits, why might someone be including/removing that material? Could it advance (or counter) an historical interpretation that is not being explicitly advanced?
Do you see trends over time, where groups of chronological-similar edits differ markedly from a set of edits at a different period? – This might particularly be the case for a topic that has great significance/relevance today.
Your essay should be 800-1100 words (roughly 3 pages double-spaced). You should write your essay according to the MLA Style Guide.
Your essay should be documented, where appropriate. This includes any quotations you decide to include (these should be used very sparingly) but also when you’re drawing on specific revisions to make a point. Citations should be in the form of footnotes or endnotes and should include the URL for the specific Wikipedia revision page you are referencing – you should not just cite the main Wikipedia page for that entry if you’re talking about a specific revision. For instructions on how to include footnotes/endnotes using your favorite word processor, refer to the help section within that program or a Google search. At the end of your essay, you should also include a full citation for the Wikipedia page you have written your essay on, rather than the revision pages you have cited throughout your essay.
I want you to choose a topic that is interesting to you. The only limitations are that it needs to be related to US history some time during the period of our course (US history up until 1877) . It need not be a specific topic that we discussed in our course. It need only be related to American history during the time of our course. For example,  you might write your essay on a Wikipedia page addressing women’s fashion trends in early America. Find something you’re passionate about and write on that.
A few pieces of advice on choosing a topic, however, as much of the work for this essay will be in finding a good topic:
I would avoid too broad of a topic, as these sorts of topics will likely have an unmanageable number of revisions and the pages themselves will be very long, making it difficult for you to keep track of how revisions change the overall shape of the Wikipedia page.
I would try to keep an open mind – you may have a topic that is very interesting to you and you’re very passionate about, that simply doesn’t have a sufficient number of revisions or interesting enough revisions to write a good paper. If you find that to be the case, move on to another topic idea. Don’t try to force a paper where there isn’t one.
If you’re having trouble finding a topic with meaningful revisions, try to think of a historical topic that has a lot of relevance today – past pandemics or Presidential impeachments come to mind, for example.