I'm totally out of my depth here. I'm an accounting major with a history minor, and I'm taking History of Rome. This is my first upper level history course, and I absolutely love the class, but I'm working on writing my historiographical paper and I'm clueless. All the other students (our class only has 7 in it) are history majors and have taken a course about writing types of historical papers, but I haven't and my professor hasn't been very helpful in explaining it to me.
My topic is pleasure in ancient Rome, focusing on baths, food, travel, and violence. It has to be ten pages and I've chosen ten scholarly sources. I feel like I have some good material and observations, but I'm unclear on what to do with it. Is this a summary, an argument, or something else entirely? Should I quote my sources directly more or summarize them?
Please give me any tips you have for writing historiographical papers or just taking upper level history courses in general. Thanks in advance!
Hi - we as mods have approved this thread, because while this is a homework question, it is asking for clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself, which is fine according to our rules. This policy is further explained in this Rules Roundtable thread and this META Thread.
As a result, we'd also like to remind potential answerers to follow our rules on homework - please make sure that your answers focus appropriately on clarifications and detailing the resources that OP could be using.
Additionally, while users may be able to help you out with specifics relating to your question, we also have plenty of information on /r/AskHistorians on how to find and understand good sources in general. For instance, please check out our six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay.