History 4963 - Southern Asia
Formal Writing #2

In this second paper I want you to come to grips with the problems and challenges of ethnography, the study of the values, assumptions, etc. that make up another culture. I have asked you to do this by looking at a source that provides a view of an Asian culture from a European perspective. You will have around 6 such sources, often called travel narratives, to choose from. They will be available by week 10 (and likely before) at the CU Library Reserve. After selecting approximately 100 pages from one of these travel narratives your goal in this paper is to 1) figure out what historians have suggested was happening in the time and place that your passage concerns 2) describe what the person writing the travel narrative claims is happening 3) describe the assumptions that the person writing the narrative makes about the culture he is in and 4) explain what you think the source tells us about the culture being examined. I recommend allotting 1.5 to 2 pages double-spaced to each of these sections, which will give you the required length for the paper of 6-8 pages. The same standards apply as in the first paper, you should footnote properly and you should also use 12-pt. Courier or Times Roman font. Good luck!!!