HIST 4495, US Food History Cookbook Analysis Paper
Deadline #1: Friday, September 25–Cookbook selection and one paragraph explanation of why you chose it (20 points)
Deadline #2: Friday, October 23—Thesis and bibliography due (50 points)
Deadline # 3: Wednesday, December 9—Final paper due. You should write a 5-7 page paper analyzing an American cookbook (published in the United States) written before 1975 as a historical resource.
Where to find a cookbook:
Please choose a digitized cookbook published in the U.S. before 1975 that is available at any of the following links. (If you wish to choose a different cookbook, please contact me for approval.)
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/index.html
https://guides.loc.gov/community-cookbooks/introduction
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis&c=1934413200
Deadline #1: Cookbook selection
Please select your cookbook and complete the first part of your assignment by Friday, September 25 at 11:59pm. Please tell me which cookbook you have chosen (including author, title, date, and place of publication) and why. Please write at least one paragraph explaining why you chose that particular book, and tell me what questions you have about the book and about the time period during which it was produced.
Deadline #2: What is your thesis? What secondary sources will you use?
By Friday, October 23 at 11:5pm please hand in your thesis statement (your scholarly argument) as well as a bibliography of the scholarly sources you will use when writing your paper.
The Thesis: Your paper should answer this question: What does ___________________ cookbook reveal about the historical moment in which it was written?
You should be able to provide an answer to that question in one sentence. That one sentence is your thesis statement.
Your thesis statement should come at the beginning of the paper, and the rest of the paper should provide evidence to support your thesis statement.
This is an example of the kind of thesis statement you should aim for:
“Fannie Merritt Farmer’s 1896 The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book reveals the author’s belief that cooking was a scientific undertaking and exemplifies the worldview of many Progressive Era reformers who believed that scientific knowledge could create a better society and cure a variety of social ills.”
If this was my thesis statement I would spend the rest of the paper describing the Progressive Movement and using evidence from the cookbook to help my readers better understand the values of the time period in which it was written.
Please Note: Don’t feel the need to limit yourselves to the time periods we have discussed in class so far. Please allow your specific historical interests to guide your choice of a cookbook. For example, you might wish to read a cookbook written during the time of war to analyze the patriotic values of its writers, or a cookbook written by African Americans during the civil rights movement to see what their attitudes were about the relationship between food and civil rights, or cookbook written after the widespread use of home refrigeration to see how technology influenced American ideas about foodways and domesticity. The options are seemingly endless. Be creative.
Your Sources: In order to understand the significance of your cookbook, you will have to understand the historical time period when it was created. In addition to your cookbook, you should consult (and cite in your paper) at least five other sources. These should be scholarly secondary sources—books or journal articles. Wikipedia and other online sources (unless you check with me and get my explicit permission) are not acceptable.
Citations: You should use the Chicago Manual of Style format (footnotes or endnotes). In your paper itself, you should use footnotes or endnotes. In your bibliography you should follow his style. Brief online guides are available here:
http://library.osu.edu/sites/guides/chicagogd.php
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Video tutorials here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOtiaWrtKW0
Deadline #3: The final paper of 5-7 pages is due Wednesday, December 9 at 11:59pm
An “A” paper will:
-Be at least five full pages long (standard margins, 12 point font, double spaced).
-Will contain a sophisticated, well-written, descriptive thesis statement.
-Will contain ample evidence to adequately support the thesis statement.
-Will contain references at least five scholarly secondary sources.
-Will be free of major stylistic and grammatical errors.
-Will demonstrate a good understanding of the historical context and of how the cookbook relates to that context.
