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History EE - Help deciding on/refining my topic - Am I headed in the right direction?


magictimelord

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(please bear with me, I tend to get really wordy with my questions but I'll try to keep this short - and thanks in advance for any help!)

I've been jumping back and forth between a couple of topics for a few days now, but I have to decide soon (as in by this weekend) because our IB coordinator is checking up on our progress next Thursday, so by then I will need to have met with my EE advisor and at least have an idea/timeline for my outline/rough drafts and such, and I plan on going to a university nearby to research on Monday and it would probably be best if I knew what I was looking for.

Anyways, these are my possible topics right now (I haven't phrased them into questions yet so it's just a really rough idea):

-The Bracero program and how it affected the agricultural/US economy until it ended in 1964 or something else with the Bracero program and its effects or how both the US and Mexico failed to go through with the promises that they made to workers under the program

-The role of the Catholic church in the Hispanic civil rights movement in the 60s and how its lack of activity/support was one of the reasons that it was hard for the Latinos to really get their movement going when it started up in the late 50s (would it be a good idea to compare the activity of the Catholic church to that of Evangelical churches in the Black civil rights movement or would that make it too broad?)

-Examining the aftermath of the enactment of the Equal Education Opportunities Act in 1974, going into how rather than helping to dissolve barriers/discrimination against minority groups in education and facilitating bilingual education, it resulted in tensions and complications because people were not happy with having to go to schools far away simply for the sake of being integrated with other races/cultures.

-Analyzing the role of Dolores Huerta in the Hispanic civil rights movement and talking about how without her help to Caesar Chavez the movement would not have been nearly as successful (this was suggested by my advisor but I haven't really looked into it yet)

So far what our school librarian, IB coordinator, and my advisor have told me is that the IBO tends to like unconventional essays/essays that are a bit risky and take controversial stances on issues and/or essays that focus on things that are not very common, so that's kind of what I'm going for with these topics; I tried to stay away from WWII/Cold War even though my original intention was to do something with that. Am I at least kind of headed in that direction? Which of these seems like it would have the most available resources (I'm kind of on a time crunch because I will be away for a month after next week so I will have limited internet/library/research access and I'm trying to get as much gathered as possible so I can just write during that time if I can). Also, they mentioned that it is best to focus on a specific event as opposed to an expanse of time - is this true? How well do these topics fit that? I've tried finding either isolated or major events that occurred under any of these topics, but my fear is that I won't be able to find enough scholarly sources to come up with a good essay.

So pretty much, are any of these topics suitable and if so, how can I refine/improve them?

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