Primary Source Annotation

This assignment probably represents one of the first uses of Hypothesis in an educational context. University of Mary Washington history professor Jeff McClurken has been experimenting with Hypothesis in the classroom since the app’s early alpha days, well before we had a Director of Education or an education portal with sample assignments–not sure we even had a blog then! Most recently Jeff has used the assignment in a US Women’s History to 1870 class.

Using an annotation tool known as Hypothes.is (which I’ll introduce in class), you will publicly annotate two primary sources—one document, diary entry, letter, poem, or image—from each of the links below. For each source, highlight and comment on at least five sections of each source. Potential approaches: comment on examples of gender roles and expectations, define unfamiliar words, provide historical context, explore other factors or characteristics that shaped colonial women’s lives, or discuss the biases and reliability of the source. [Each annotation should include relevant citations of your sources.]

[Only 1 person can work on a particular source (poem, letter, diary entry, set of pages from a book, etc.).  Let me know which two sources you’re planning on using no later than Wednesday, Sept. 9.]