Essay Assignment One

Due Date: See Syllabus
Three Copy Peer Review: See Syllabus

Assignment Length: 4-5 pages
Double-spaced, 12 point Font

Assignment Goal

The goal of this assignment is to successfully argue what you believe to be the most important difference between different 'cultures of slavery' in the Anglo-English and Latin American slave societies.

Note: Since your main source will be Frank Tannenbaum's Slave and Citizen, you will have the option of agreeing with him, disagreeing with him, or agreeing/disagreeing with him because of a significant qualification that you want to make. By qualification, I mean a type of argument that accepts some, but not all, of another argument (in this case, his argument(s)).

Assignment Description

In order to construct this essay, you will need to use excellent summaries, supporting evidence, organized paragraphs, quotation and citation, and critical thinking. We will introduce and review these techniques over the next month.

We will also read Tannenbaum's text over the next month. This will be your main source, but I will also expect you to incorporate at least one other academic source into your discussion. We will review what I mean by academic sources, and we will review where to find them.

It will be important that you discover Tannenbaum's main points, and also important that you're able to distinguish your own perspective from his. You will be able to distinguish your own perspective by examining the claims he makes (claims=supporting arguments to his major argument), the evidence he uses, and by discovering his biases and perhaps prejudices.

It's important to remember that this assignment isn't asking you to form an argument that totally answers the question about cultures of slavery in different hemispheres. You're "in conversation" with Tannenbaum, and your argument and point of view about slavery will form in conversation to his own. Having said this, you're welcome to introduce other sources that help you form your own argument and support it. It's also possible that your own perspective may very much agree with one of his claims, or even his major claim. This is fine, but your thesis will then discuss why you agree with him, and qualify that argument through a discussion of the text.