rachelreads Posted November 28, 2017 Report Share Posted November 28, 2017 Ok so I originally declared my subject as history because it definitely makes sense to me to declare it history, but now one of my teacher's is saying that my ee is on the border of history and cultural and social anthropology, and i really don't want to go through the whole expensive process of changing my subject for $200 USD when I would still have to rewrite my EE whether i change the topic or not. My RQ is: To what extent did European colonization impact the traditional roles of Indigenous women of Canada Basically I said that with European colonization, Indigenous society shifted from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal society which significantly degraded women. However, I agree with my teachers saying that my essay was too narrative without a strong thesis. My outline included: - pre-colonial customs -European perceptions -Implementation of Change: missionaries and political influence After some brainstorming, I changed my RQ to To what extent can the success of European colonization of Canada be attributed to the diminishing authority of Indigenous women? My outline would follow the same previous format but with a stronger focus on cause and effect, so like religious, political, social, and economic factors which contributed to European colonization. However, my timeframe is from 1632-1876; is this timeframe too broad? The bulk of my information is from 1850-76 for government legislation, but I thought it was really important to include missionaries which were prominent in the 1600s. Overall, is this change enough for my subject to be history? I still have to add historiography and more info. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImAcatnow Posted November 28, 2017 Report Share Posted November 28, 2017 Hi! I don't know much about History EEs and I'm not sure why you would have to pay an extra $200 for changing the subject. There's this website on History EEs and the 2018 criteria for it. It shows how you can pick the topic and how you can formulate the question so that it fits the subject properly. They insert this table to help construct the quesiton: To what extent was... [Event] [Situation] [Development] [Individual] [Policy] responsible for... [Event] [Situation] [Development] [Policy] the most important result of... How useful is... the Novel... the Album... oral testimony... photography... the painting... the film... to the historian studying... How successful / significant was... [Individual] (e.g. politician / sportsperson / entertainer / film director / etc) in the context of... I'm sorry if it's not much help but I hope it helps somehow! -K 2 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nomenclature Posted November 29, 2017 Report Share Posted November 29, 2017 23 hours ago, rachelreads said: Ok so I originally declared my subject as history because it definitely makes sense to me to declare it history, but now one of my teacher's is saying that my ee is on the border of history and cultural and social anthropology, and i really don't want to go through the whole expensive process of changing my subject for $200 USD when I would still have to rewrite my EE whether i change the topic or not. My RQ is: To what extent did European colonization impact the traditional roles of Indigenous women of Canada Basically I said that with European colonization, Indigenous society shifted from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal society which significantly degraded women. However, I agree with my teachers saying that my essay was too narrative without a strong thesis. My outline included: - pre-colonial customs -European perceptions -Implementation of Change: missionaries and political influence After some brainstorming, I changed my RQ to To what extent can the success of European colonization of Canada be attributed to the diminishing authority of Indigenous women? My outline would follow the same previous format but with a stronger focus on cause and effect, so like religious, political, social, and economic factors which contributed to European colonization. However, my timeframe is from 1632-1876; is this timeframe too broad? The bulk of my information is from 1850-76 for government legislation, but I thought it was really important to include missionaries which were prominent in the 1600s. Overall, is this change enough for my subject to be history? I still have to add historiography and more info. I understand your teacher, but I think you might be okay. Your teacher is right in that IB do tend to hate essays that try to document the reasoning behind widespread societal shifts, but I think your essay is different. First, you narrowed the subject matter, indigenous women (I could see an examiner taking issue with the homogenization of indigenous groups). Second, you aren't trying to diagnose some hidden cause for a change. Rather, there is an obvious change brought on by colonization and you're documenting effects. What you don't want are sweeping generalizations. If you think you have enough concrete (or near-concrete) cause and effect proof, you're good. If not, you may want to slightly change your angle. Regarding timeline, I'm pretty familiar with this issue. Whichever era that you have the most content for is the one you should use to bound your timeframe. Then, write in the intro justifying the consideration of prior events and why without them the paper would lack context. The reverse I assume would be justifying a final chapter if you need to sneak in content from a later era. I would be cautious about overusing this technique and try to analyze your main period as much as possible and only use the much earlier or later events to supplement your thesis. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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