HIS 353/354 Slave Emancipation in the British Empire

First "Gobbets" Exercise

The first selection of gobbets for you to discuss will be linked to this page from the morning of January 17th. DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS.

In the exam, you will have to answer one documentary commentary question, in which you will be given six extracts from the documents we have used in the course and asked to comment on two of them. This question will count for 1/3 of the total marks allocated to a three-hour exam, so you should spend about an hour on it, including the time you take to read the extracts. The extracts will be identified by date of publication or of writing, author, and title. In your commentary you should, in order to receive a mid-range 2.i mark, provide both

  1. a good contextual analysis of the document (who is the author? What is the purpose of the document? What relevant events occurred around the same time as the document was written—and how do they help us understand the document? Etc) AND
  2. a good close reading of the document (for instance, discuss the implications and resonances of specific words or phrases used in the quotation, analyze ‘hidden’ or implicit meanings and assumptions, comment on notable absences from the text—things that we might expect it to say, but it doesn’t).
If you do both of these things excellently, relating the two parts of your answer to one another, you will get a first class mark. If you do one well, but one hardly at all, or both fairly, you will get a 2.ii mark. If you do one poorly, you will get a low 2.ii or a 3rd.

This exercise is designed to help you to prepare for the exam. You can do it in one of two ways:

  1. Under exam conditions. If you choose this option, you should first spend a substantial amount of time preparing for the task, BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE EXTRACTS. Rather than try to predict which quotes are likely to come up, I advise you to spend time thinking about, making notes about, and revising, the context of each document we have studied as a whole. When you are ready, set aside one hour during which you will not be disturbed, print out the extracts, and select TWO to write commentaries on. This option will be the more useful—but also the more challenging—exercise.
  2. Not under exam conditions. If you choose this option, print out the extracts when you begin working on the exercise. Select FOUR to produce commentaries on. (I’d prefer word-processed commentaries, but will also accept hand-written ones.) Take as much time as you like.
When you hand in your commentaries you MUST declare in a written statement whether you worked under exam conditions or not. Please hand in your commentary at our seminar on February 6th—although unless you are finishing a dissertation or have lots of exams, you would be well advised to work on this and hand it in before the teaching term restarts.

When you are ready to look at the extracts, click HERE.