HIST 120 group projects.

About the group-project component

HIST 120 is a high-enrolment survey course (typically 60–80 students). The group-project component runs across the second half of the semester and gives small groups of four to six students a substantive primary-source research assignment that they research, present, and write up collectively. It is the part of the course where students do the actual work of historians rather than read about it.

Group composition

Groups of 4–6 students are assigned in week 5 by the instructor, balancing across declared majors, prior history coursework, and stated topical interests. Each group elects a coordinator (responsible for scheduling and submission) and a presenter (responsible for the in-class presentation in the final two weeks of the semester).

Project topics (AY 2004)

1. Land speculation and the Constitution: the Yazoo land scandal as a case study in the early-republic property regime.
2. Free Black communities in the early-national North: Boston, Philadelphia, and the limits of Northern freedom before 1830.
3. The market revolution at the household scale: women, household manufacture, and the cash economy in New-England farming families.
4. The Trail of Tears: Cherokee removal and the constitutional crisis of the early 1830s.
5. The Mexican-American War: causes, conduct, and the politics of the Wilmot Proviso.
6. Slavery, secession, and the road to Fort Sumter — a close reading of the secession-convention debates.
7. The Underground Railroad: the historiography from the late-nineteenth-century memorial accounts through the recent quantitative reassessments.

Deliverables

• Week 8. Project proposal: 500-word statement of the question, the primary source base, and the secondary literature the group will engage.
• Week 11. Annotated bibliography: 8–10 sources (mix of primary and secondary), with one-paragraph annotations describing how each source contributes to the group's argument.
• Weeks 14–15. In-class presentation: twenty minutes per group plus ten minutes of question-and-discussion. Slides supplied by the group; handout supplied to the class.
• End of semester. Final group paper: roughly 4,000 words, with a one-page individual reflection from each group member describing their specific contribution.

Grading

The group component contributes 30% of the final course grade. 20% of that is the group product (proposal, annotated bibliography, presentation, paper); 10% is the individual contribution as documented in the reflection and the group's own peer-assessment forms collected at the end of the semester.