argumentative essay(History)
Description
Judging by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) and Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), historical positivism—the view that history is a story of continual progress—was on the wane by the first decades of the twentieth century. Or was it? John Scott’s Behind the Urals (1942) and the film “Burnt by the Sun” (1994, set in the mid-1930s) hint at the persistence of historical positivism, even amid the social and political upheaval of Stalinism. Basing your answer on the three assigned readings and the assigned film, please describe the evolution of historical positivism during the first half of the twentieth century. It is imperative that your essay be argumentative–i.e., you must identify how historical positivism changed, if at all, over the course of these decades, and marshal evidence from the readings and film in support of your argument. In addition, please carefully review the requirements for essays on the syllabus for information on appropriate length, format, style, and citation style. All citations must be Chicago-style footnotes. Failure to use proper citations constitutes a failure to complete the assignment as directed. Instructions: 5 pages in length (roughly 1,500 words), double-spaced, and typed. write at a level appropriate for juniors and seniors in college. Consequently, your essay should be free of elementary grammatical errors. I also expect you to conform to conventional essay format. Your essays must have an introduction that includes some sort of hook for the reader, a clearly stated argument, and a description of the structure of the paper (or how you will illustrate the argument). Likewise, you must write transitions between the different components of your essay, and end with a conclusion that restates the argument. You must use Chicago-style footnotes when quoting or paraphrasing the readings. In addition, please be sure to use ibid. and shortened citations where appropriate, as demonstrated here: 1Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings (New York, 1995), 22-23. 2ibid., 45. 3Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (New York, 1968), 56. 4Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 78.
