Coming up with a topic
     What are the questions historians ask, and how do they go about answering them? You have probably been working on this in all of your history classes, now you will have to follow through. You want to ask a question that people will want to hear the answer to. The things we are reading over the first couple of weeks should help you with this. The most important person to interest in your topic is of course yourself. You are going to be putting a lot of work into this, and if you are trying to answer a question that even you don't care about it will show.

Coming up with a doable topic
    Once you have figured out a topic that the historical profession will be interested in, you need to figure out if it is the type of thing you can do in the time you have. This will be based in part the resources you are able to find, and partly on your own abilities. Usually making a topic doable is a process of narrowing it down. Everyone would be interested in the answer to the question "What impact did American missionaries have on the societies they evangelized?", but it is probably a little much for you in three respects. First, you would need a lot of sources about a lot of things. Second, it would probably be beyond your intellectual abilities (or anyone else's) to answer that question in 30 pages. Third, there is just not enough time.

-Coming up with a topic and coming up with a doable topic are related processes. As you are thinking about your topic you should be reading, and as you are reading you are finding sources.
-You can do this process backwards by finding a good source and then asking what questions you could answer with it.
-Note that I will help you in picking out a good topic, but there is only so much I can do. You will have to figure out what your sources are good for, how much work you will be able to do, and how you will budget your time. You will be responsible for the decisions you make. You may find yourself with a month left in the semester stuck with a topic you can't possibly do in the time allotted.

Writing the topic statement
    Each of you will turn in, and your fellow students and I will assess, a topic statement. This will consist of about a page or so in which you state what your topic is and explain why it is important and how you are going to answer it. The topic statement should be brief but clear, and ideally should be in the form of a question.
    You should attach an annotated bibliography. A bibliography is just a list of sources, but an annotated bibliography includes brief comments about the works and what they are good for. You don't need to comment on every item in the bibliography, but you should make it clear why these things are here and that you have almost all the things you will need to do the paper.