Essay Assignment
Purpose – This assignment will develop students’ abilities to assess and use the scholarship on the working-class, and will particularly challenge them to explore key questions in labour history. To provide students with some direction in their research, the essay questions deal with subjects that are discussed at length in one of the articles in the coursepack. Hence doing an intensive examination of the arguments of labour scholars is also a key part of the assignment.
Assignment – Write an essay that answers one of the questions below. Your essay should draw upon the relevant material in your coursepack, plus THREE (3) other sources. Part of the evaluation will be the quality of the material you find, ie. its relevance, whether it is sufficiently scholarly, etc. Your essay will also be judged on how effectively you build and argument by taking a position and supporting it with the material from your research. You may bring American examples and scholars into your essay, but your primary focus should be on Canada.
1. “The Knights of Labor were just a passing trend from a long time ago and made no meaningful impact.” Do you agree with this statement? Explain why.
2. “Canada’s economy may have enjoyed some boom years from 1896 to 1914, but not all workers got the benefits.” Do you agree with this statement? Explain your position.
3. How important was gender in determining how workers survived the Great Depression?
4. Do you agree with Prof Don Wells’s argument that the United Auto Workers in Canada in the 1940s saw an “evolution of a work-centred, ‘rank and file’ model of unionism into a top-down model” of unionism? Explain why or why not.
Citations: Citations and a bibliography are required. You can use either footnotes (numbers in the text) or references in brackets. If you use the latter, include the author, publication year, and page number– eg. (Yates, 2012, 214).
Plagiarism is a serious offence. Be sure that you know what it is. For your own protection, retain your rough work and a copy of your essay.
Length: 4 to 6 pages double-spaced (not including bibliography)
Due Date: November 3
Late Penalty: 2% per working day. In addition, late papers will receive fewer written comments from the instructor – and the amount of comments will diminish further as time passes after the deadline.
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Essay AssignmentPurpose – This assignment will develop student.docx
1. Essay Assignment
Purpose – This assignment will develop students’ abilities to
assess and use the scholarship on the working-class, and will
particularly challenge them to explore key questions in labour
history. To provide students with some direction in their
research, the essay questions deal with subjects that are
discussed at length in one of the articles in the coursepack.
Hence doing an intensive examination of the arguments of
labour scholars is also a key part of the assignment.
Assignment – Write an essay that answers one of the questions
below. Your essay should draw upon the relevant material in
your coursepack, plus THREE (3) other sources. Part of the
evaluation will be the quality of the material you find, ie. its
relevance, whether it is sufficiently scholarly, etc. Your essay
will also be judged on how effectively you build and argument
by taking a position and supporting it with the material from
your research. You may bring American examples and scholars
into your essay, but your primary focus should be on Canada.
1. “The Knights of Labor were just a passing trend from a long
time ago and made no meaningful impact.” Do you agree with
this statement? Explain why.
2. “Canada’s economy may have enjoyed some boom years from
1896 to 1914, but not all workers got the benefits.” Do you
agree with this statement? Explain your position.
3. How important was gender in determining how workers
survived the Great Depression?
4. Do you agree with Prof Don Wells’s argument that the United
Auto Workers in Canada in the 1940s saw an “evolution of a
2. work-centred, ‘rank and file’ model of unionism into a top-
down model” of unionism? Explain why or why not.
Citations: Citations and a bibliography are required. You can
use either footnotes (numbers in the text) or references in
brackets. If you use the latter, include the author, publication
year, and page number– eg. (Yates, 2012, 214).
Plagiarism is a serious offence. Be sure that you know what it
is. For your own protection, retain your rough work and a copy
of your essay.
Length: 4 to 6 pages double-spaced (not including bibliography)
Due Date: November 3
Late Penalty: 2% per working day. In addition, late papers will
receive fewer written comments from the instructor – and the
amount of comments will diminish further as time passes after
the deadline.
