US History

BIOGRAPHY INSTRUCTIONS
You will identify an important figure in American history from the American National Biography Online database, available through the Jerry Falwell Library, and write a one-to-two page biography of that individual with a ten-source bibliography.

• Biography 1 must address an individual who was important in U.S. history between 1866 and 1945.
• Biography 2 must address an individual who was important in U.S. history after 1945.

Your paper should be a full, 1-2 page summary. The summary should not include any footnotes or other citations.

After writing the summary, you will create a bibliography that includes the American National Biography Online page you used, as well as three scholarly books using the Jerry Falwell Online Library search engine and/or WorldCat (www.worldcat.org), three scholarly, journal articles using JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, Academic OneFile, and/or Summon (found in Liberty Library’s databases), and three reputable websites (.org, .edu, .gov, .mil) to create a bibliography related to the subject of your biography. The use of current Turabian formatting in your bibliography is required.

The purposes of this assignment are to teach you about important figures in U.S. history, introduce you to the process of finding different sources available through Liberty University, and help you learn the importance of proper formatting.

SPECIFIC POLICIES FOR THE BIOGRAPHIES
A. Include your name, date, and course on the upper right of your biography. Please single space these items.
B. The summary must be typed and doubled-spaced, have 1-inch margins, and be between 1-2 pages.
C. The summary should have at least three paragraphs including an introduction, body, and conclusion. There should be no extra space between paragraphs.
D. You must place page numbers at the bottom of each page of your summary and bibliography.
E. Each source in the bibliography must be single-spaced with an extra space between the sources. The sources should be in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Please see the sample citations below for guidance.
F. Read and apply the “Tips for Reading and Writing in History” (found in the course’s Additional Information folder, under Syllabus and Assignment Instructions). With very few exceptions, the best biographies will be the ones that undergo several revisions. In your revisions, check for grammatical errors, organizational problems, and the clarity of your descriptions.

Proper Turabian format for Biography

Citation for American National Biograpy Online (at top of Bibliography):

Bruce, Robert V. “Bell, Alexander Graham.” American National Biograpy Online. http://www.anb.org/articles/13/13-00115.html.

Bibliography (in alphabetical order)

Books (three books)

Gray, Charlotte. Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006.

Articles (three scholarly articles)

Beauchamp, Christopher. “Who Invented the Telephone? Lawyers, Patents, and the Judgments of History”. Technology and Culture vol. 51, 4 (October 2010): 854-78.

Websites (three reputable websites)

Library of Congress. “The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers.” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/bellhome.html.