Historiographical essay

Each student will write a historiographical essay over a historical event that occurred during the time period covered by the class (1500 B.C.E. – 1715 C. E. ). Students have 1,000 words (+/10%) to complete this assignment. I think the evolution from hominids to modern humans would be a good topic for this paper but if there’s a better topic the writer wants to write about, that’s ok.
Event Choice:
The event must have taken place between 1500 B.C.E – 1715 C.E.
You must have at least four scholarly sources to support your essay
Paper Goals:
The primary goal of this paper is to get the student to begin thinking and writing like a historian. Historians do not always agree about how to interpret the events and people that they study; this leads to multiple explanations, which at times, are diametrically opposed to each other. Analysis of scholarly sources can help students develop a deeper understanding of how history is written and the fact that events and ideas are open to interpretation. What this means in practice is an exploration of a specific topic, and how historians have explained events or people over time, i.e. how their explanations have changed due to their own worldview and/or ideological bent, due to re-interpretation of previously-viewed sources, due to the availability of new sources, previously unexplored, and/or due to the application of different questions and/or methodologies to sources. Revision of prior interpretations of the past is an implicit and important element of historiography. The focus of a historiographical essay is not on the event or person itself; rather, it is on the interpretations of the event or person.
The paper will have a properly formatted Bibliography
The paper will use the Chicago style footnotes, size 10 point font
Professor recommended jstor for the scholarly sources.