The Field Paper

FIELD PAPER GUIDELINES

To fulfill their written work requirement for graduation, students on the "non-thesis track" must write and submit two approved twenty-page "field papers" to the Director of Graduate Studies at the time of graduation clearance. Field papers are customarily written in the context of seminars in History and approved by their instructors. They may also be developed in the context of HIST 2321 Research Colloquium. The field paper may be a research paper, which is grounded in primary sources, or a historiographical review, which discusses secondary sources.

Standards: The field paper is approximately twenty-pages in length and includes a title page at the front and a bibliography at the back. Papers must uphold professional norms (especially as concerns originality, citations, and style) and will have earned the grade of a "B" or better in an MA seminar in History at the College. The paper should cite all its sources in (either foot- or end-) notes according to the style set forth in the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The text of the paper should also uphold the stylistic guidelines of the CMOS, especially as regards grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and the italicization of titles. All texts should also be proofread and paginated before submission to the Department. Texts that do not uphold these standards will NOT receive the final approval of the Director of Graduate Studies necessary for graduation clearance.

Certification: Once completed and approved, each field paper should be formally certified by the instructor for the purpose of graduation clearance by the Division of the Humanities. To certify a paper, the student completes their part of the “Certification of Completion of Field Paper Requirement” and submits it first to the reader of the field paper for signature and then to the Director of Graduate Studies along with a copy of the field paper for final approval.

Submission: There is a deadline for the submission of all paperwork to the Division for graduation clearance, which is set at the beginning of each semester. (For the Divisional deadline see the Graduation Checklist on the site of the Humanities Division.) Therefore, in the semester the student applies for graduation they should seek final approval of their field papers from their instructors and the Director of Graduate Studies well in advance of that deadline. Once signed off by the Director, the certifications go on file with the Graduate Adviser in the Office of the Dean of the Division of Humanities, whereas the field papers go on file with the Department.