As the course syllabus indicates, the assigned length of Paper Two, an Archival
(Historical) Research paper, is 750-1,000 words. Your paper should have a minimum of
four sources, perhaps of various kinds (for example, three letters and one secondary
source; or one mystery novel, one letter written by the author of the novel, and two
secondary critiques of the novel). I have already discussed Chapters Six and Seven
from Rhetoric of Inquiry, as well as each sample archival paper from Appendix
B. These materials may be of use to you in considering what topic to choose and how
to approach the researching of that topic. If you have not read these materials on your
own (for I did not quiz you on them), I recommend doing so because of the numerous
fine examples presented of archival research. As I’ve said repeatedly in class, if you
have questions, concerns, and/or problems in researching or writing this archival paper,
please tell me during class, during office hours, or in an email message.
As the course title indicates, as the course syllabus discusses at length, and as I have
discussed at length during class meetings, the underlying theme and purpose of this
paper–as with the two other papers–are American mystery. This paper assignment
combines a look into one or more American histories (e.g., personal, family,
neighborhood, community, city, state, region, nation) with a look
at mystery or mysteries. As already covered at length in our class, mystery has two
broad working definitions for the assignments you undertake in English 102: 1) anything
that is difficult or impossible to understand (as determined objectively–or subjectively,
by you individually) and 2) an analysis or interpretation of the so-called mystery genre in
literature (under which heading all four supplemental texts in our class can be placed).
You have several broad options (and countless specific options) for this archival
assignment, several of them suggested by the sample archival research papers (and
accompanying instructions) appearing in Appendix B of Rhetoric of Inquiry.
1. You may concentrate your archival research on UTK’s Special Collections Library.
2. You may concentrate your research on the digital archives available online at the
UTK library website.
3. You may focus your research on secondary sources from a particular historical period
from which your topic originates (e.g., the 1860s, when Lincoln was President, when the
American Civil War was fought, when Reconstruction began, when Ulysses S. Grant
was President; or perhaps the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was President, when the Monica
Lewinsky scandal took place, when the O.J. Simpson trial occurred, when Nickelodeon
dominated kids’ entertainment).
4. You may focus your research on artifacts found in a myriad of places other than
libraries: museums (UTK’s own McClung Museum, for example); antique stores;
outdoor trails or hideaways or “spots”; houses, dormitories, prisons, asylums; your
grandmother’s attic, your mom’s diary, your dad’s old boy-scout or military backpack; or
some of the odd-seeming “places” suggested in Chapter Seven of Rhetoric of Inquiry
(“a boxful of bills.” a Dempster Dumpster, a random shopper’s grocery cart).
(Historical) Research paper, is 750-1,000 words. Your paper should have a minimum of
four sources, perhaps of various kinds (for example, three letters and one secondary
source; or one mystery novel, one letter written by the author of the novel, and two
secondary critiques of the novel). I have already discussed Chapters Six and Seven
from Rhetoric of Inquiry, as well as each sample archival paper from Appendix
B. These materials may be of use to you in considering what topic to choose and how
to approach the researching of that topic. If you have not read these materials on your
own (for I did not quiz you on them), I recommend doing so because of the numerous
fine examples presented of archival research. As I’ve said repeatedly in class, if you
have questions, concerns, and/or problems in researching or writing this archival paper,
please tell me during class, during office hours, or in an email message.
As the course title indicates, as the course syllabus discusses at length, and as I have
discussed at length during class meetings, the underlying theme and purpose of this
paper–as with the two other papers–are American mystery. This paper assignment
combines a look into one or more American histories (e.g., personal, family,
neighborhood, community, city, state, region, nation) with a look
at mystery or mysteries. As already covered at length in our class, mystery has two
broad working definitions for the assignments you undertake in English 102: 1) anything
that is difficult or impossible to understand (as determined objectively–or subjectively,
by you individually) and 2) an analysis or interpretation of the so-called mystery genre in
literature (under which heading all four supplemental texts in our class can be placed).
You have several broad options (and countless specific options) for this archival
assignment, several of them suggested by the sample archival research papers (and
accompanying instructions) appearing in Appendix B of Rhetoric of Inquiry.
1. You may concentrate your archival research on UTK’s Special Collections Library.
2. You may concentrate your research on the digital archives available online at the
UTK library website.
3. You may focus your research on secondary sources from a particular historical period
from which your topic originates (e.g., the 1860s, when Lincoln was President, when the
American Civil War was fought, when Reconstruction began, when Ulysses S. Grant
was President; or perhaps the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was President, when the Monica
Lewinsky scandal took place, when the O.J. Simpson trial occurred, when Nickelodeon
dominated kids’ entertainment).
4. You may focus your research on artifacts found in a myriad of places other than
libraries: museums (UTK’s own McClung Museum, for example); antique stores;
outdoor trails or hideaways or “spots”; houses, dormitories, prisons, asylums; your
grandmother’s attic, your mom’s diary, your dad’s old boy-scout or military backpack; or
some of the odd-seeming “places” suggested in Chapter Seven of Rhetoric of Inquiry
(“a boxful of bills.” a Dempster Dumpster, a random shopper’s grocery cart).
5. You may focus your research on an American literary text (on or off our syllabus),
formulating a thesis pertaining to an (historical) element or elements of mystery found in
that text or perhaps in the author’s writing of that text (e.g., Raymond Chandler’s The
Big Sleep, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling).
6. You may Combine two or more of the above approaches: for example, you may use
physical and digital archives, along with one or more secondary sources, to discover
and to research your topic.
NOTE: All above options except for Option 3 (which already focuses on secondary
sources) also require at least one corroborative or referential secondary source to lend
some “objective” context to your analysis/interpretation of the archives or literary
mystery you are investigating.
NOTE TWO: Although the UTK library tutorials cover citation and documentation
formats, I am including below a couple of online sources, the first about general MLA
citation/documentation formats and the second one, specifically, from an online article
by Jennifer Rappaport entitled “A Guide to Citing Materials from Physical Archives and
Collections.” I recommend looking at UTK Library’s citation/documentation tutorials as
well as these two links:
https://style.mla.org/works-cited/works-cited-a-quick-guide/ (Links to an external site.)
https://style.mla.org/citing-materials-physical-
archives/?gclid=CjwKCAjwh5qLBhALEiwAioods_RZlb6CMQbWjCrsIR3yI5JGDioHgFLO
DWTyBAf-oJkqOSgHOYhymBoCg9oQAvD_BwE
formulating a thesis pertaining to an (historical) element or elements of mystery found in
that text or perhaps in the author’s writing of that text (e.g., Raymond Chandler’s The
Big Sleep, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling).
6. You may Combine two or more of the above approaches: for example, you may use
physical and digital archives, along with one or more secondary sources, to discover
and to research your topic.
NOTE: All above options except for Option 3 (which already focuses on secondary
sources) also require at least one corroborative or referential secondary source to lend
some “objective” context to your analysis/interpretation of the archives or literary
mystery you are investigating.
NOTE TWO: Although the UTK library tutorials cover citation and documentation
formats, I am including below a couple of online sources, the first about general MLA
citation/documentation formats and the second one, specifically, from an online article
by Jennifer Rappaport entitled “A Guide to Citing Materials from Physical Archives and
Collections.” I recommend looking at UTK Library’s citation/documentation tutorials as
well as these two links:
https://style.mla.org/works-cited/works-cited-a-quick-guide/ (Links to an external site.)
https://style.mla.org/citing-materials-physical-
archives/?gclid=CjwKCAjwh5qLBhALEiwAioods_RZlb6CMQbWjCrsIR3yI5JGDioHgFLO
DWTyBAf-oJkqOSgHOYhymBoCg9oQAvD_BwE
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