[rachelloughery]

Hi everyone!

Firstly, I love how the students come and ask me and then I come straight on here and ask all of you! Well, two heads and all that.....

Ok, so my student wants to look at the consequences/impact of the El Salvadorian (sp?) war. She mainly wants to focus on the impact on the youth of the time. I am enthusiastic for a few reasons mainly because she is very enthusiastic about it and her family are El Salvadorians who left because of the war. She has a variety of viewpoints as her father left to escape the war whilst other family members stayed and fought for the Army. She is going to stay with them in December for a few weeks so has the opportunity to interview them. We were discussing the relevance of socio-economic background on the choices available to individuals at the time and maybe being able to interview someone who joined the Guerilla forces whilst she is there or speaking to a victim's organisation etc.

However, I have reservations.
I know nothing about this! Should not be a major problem as I can research and learn but it means I am unsure when advising her.
I'm not sure about availability of resources although I think questia should cover it.

Mostly, I am unsure if this is more sociology than 'history'.

Is this a suitable topic and how can the question be framed? Do they need to have 'controversy' in their essay's or can she critically analyse the sources i.e. her family members etc. ?

Thanks in advance!

[rachelloughery]

Um......... has no-one replied because this is so obviously a bad question? Or some other reason I am unaware of? Please, please, please reply!

[BarbaraH]

It doesn't really matter whether you know anything about this as long as the resources are available. Ask the student to give you a list of resources proposed and you should get an idea of feasbility. Topic great if there is enough written about it. I have had students do EEs on all sorts of topics about which I know nothing but it becomes clear fairly quickly whether they are doing proper research and writing convincingly or whether they are trying to pull the wool over your eyes and cutting and pasting or making it up. If you read an article in BBC History, for example, you would quickly know whether and why it was convincing. Hope this helps a bit.

[mikel]

You would have to be very careful, though, to make sure that the student was aware of and followed the "ten-year" rule. These people she's planning on interviewing, for example, would have to be talking about events of at least ten years ago. I think she might be better off doing it as a Peace Studies or Soc Anth EE rather than a History one...

[rachelloughery]

Thank you!

We had a chat earlier and decided to give it a 5 year boundary so she is going to be interviewing people about the period at the beginning of the war. This is when her father fled so she will focus on people leaving, staying and fighting for the Army or people staying and fighting for the Guerillas but only ask about those 5 years. Hopefully this will keep it within the History scope. The war was 1980-1992 so should be ok. Hopefully she will also be able to include at least one other interview. She is very excited about it and is aware she needs to assess for OPVL which should be fairly straight forward given the range of opinions. At the minute we are still looking for secondary resources. Aiiiiii, this is kind of fun but also really stressful!