literacy history essay

History Essay Examples

Top History Essay Examples To Get Inspired By

Published on: May 4, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 31, 2024

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History essays are a crucial component of many academic programs, helping students to develop their critical thinking, research, and writing skills. 

However, writing a great history essay is not always easy, especially when you are struggling to find the right approach. This is where history essay examples come in handy. 

By reading and examining samples of successful history essays, you can gain inspiration, learn new ways to approach your topic. Moreover, you can develop a better understanding of what makes a great history essay.

In this blog, you will find a range of history essay examples that showcase the best practices in history essay writing. 

Read on to find useful examples.

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Sample History Essays

Explore our collection of excellent history paper examples about various topics. Download the pdf examples for free and read to get inspiration for your own essay.

History Essay Samples for Middle School

The Impact of Ancient Civilizations on Modern Society

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

The Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution

History Writing Samples for High School Students

The Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Society

Grade 10 History Essay Example: World War 1 Causes and Effects

Grade 12 History Essay Example: The Impact of Technology on World War II

Ancient History Essay Examples

The Societal and Political Structures of the Maya Civilization

The Role of Phoenicians in the Development of Ancient Mediterranean World

The Contributions of the Indus Civilization

Medieval History Essay Examples

The Crusades Motivations and Consequences

The Beginning of Islamic Golden Age

The Black Death

Modern History Essay Examples

The Suez Crisis and the End of British Dominance

The Rise of China as an Economic Powerhouse

World History Essay Examples

The Role of the Silk Road in Shaping Global Trade and Culture

The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire

The Legacy of Ancient Greek Philosophy and Thought

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American History Essay Examples

The Civil Rights Movement and its Impact on American Society

The American Civil War and its Aftermath

The Role of Women in American Society Throughout History

African History Essay Examples

The Impact of Colonialism on African Societies

The Rise and Fall of the Mali Empire

European History Essay Examples

The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of Protestantism in Europe

The French Revolution and its Impact on European Politics and Society

The Cold War and the Division of Europe

Argumentative History Essay Examples

Was the US Civil War Primarily About Slavery or States

The Effects of British Colonization on Colonies

Art History Essay Examples 

The Influence of Greek and Roman Art on Neoclassicism

The Depiction of Women in Art Throughout History

The Role of Art in the Propaganda of Fascist Regimes

How to Use History Essay Examples

History essay examples are a valuable tool for students looking for inspiration and guidance on how to approach their own essays. 

By analyzing successful essays, you can learn effective writing techniques that can be expected in a high-quality history essay. 

Here are some tips that will help you take full advantage of the samples above.

Tips for Effectively Using History Essay Examples

• Analyze the Structure:

Pay close attention to how the essay is organized, including the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Look for how the author transitions between paragraphs and the use of evidence to support their argument.

• Study the Thesis Statement:

The thesis statement is the backbone of any successful history essay. Analyze how the author crafted their thesis statement, and consider how you can apply this to your own writing.

• Take Note of the Evidence: 

Effective history essays rely on using strong evidence to support their arguments. Take note of the sources and types of evidence used in the essay. Consider how you can apply similar evidence to support your own arguments.

• Pay Attention to the Formatting and Other Academic Formalities:

The sample essays also demonstrate how you can incorporate academic formalities and standards while keeping the essay engaging. See how these essays fulfill academic standards and try to follow them in your own writing.

• Practice Writing:

While analyzing history essay examples can be helpful, it is important to also practice writing your own essays. Use the examples as inspiration, but try to craft your own unique approach to your topic. 

History essays are an essential aspect of learning and understanding the past. By using history essay examples, students can gain inspiration on how to develop their history essays effectively. 

Furthermore, following the tips outlined in this blog, students can effectively analyze these essay samples and learn from them. 

However, writing a history essay can still be challenging. 

Looking for an online essay writing service that specializes in history essays? Look no further!

Our history essay writing service is your go-to source for well-researched and expertly crafted papers.

And for an extra edge in your academic journey, explore our AI essay writing tool . Make history with your grades by choosing our online essay writing service and harnessing the potential of our AI essay writing tool.

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• Introduction

Literacy and human history

Two theories of literacy, writing surfaces, writing systems.

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• Table Of Contents

literacy , capacity to communicate using inscribed, printed, or electronic signs or symbols for representing language . Literacy is customarily contrasted with orality (oral tradition), which encompasses a broad set of strategies for communicating through oral and aural media. In real world situations, however, literate and oral modes of communication coexist and interact, not only within the same culture but also within the very same individual. (For additional information on the history, forms, and uses of writing and literacy, see writing .)

In order for literacy to function, cultures must agree on institutionalized sign-sound or sign-idea relationships that support writing and reading of knowledge, art, and ideas. Numeracy (the ability to express quantities through numeric symbols) appeared about 8000 bce , and literacy followed about 3200 bce . Both technologies, however, are extremely recent developments when viewed in the context of human history. Today the extent of official literacy varies enormously, even within a single region, depending not only on the area’s level of development but also on factors such as social status , gender, vocation, and the various criteria by which a given society understands and measures literacy.

Evidence from around the world has established that literacy is not defined by any single skill or practice. Rather, it takes myriad forms, depending largely on the nature of the written symbols (e.g., pictographs to depict concepts, or letters to denote specific sounds of a syllable) and the physical material that is used to display the writing (e.g., stone, paper, or a computer screen). Also important, however, is the particular cultural function that the written text performs for readers. Ancient and medieval literacy, for instance, was restricted to very few and was at first employed primarily for record keeping. It did not immediately displace oral tradition as the chief mode of communication. By contrast, production of written texts in contemporary society is widespread and indeed depends on broad general literacy, widely distributed printed materials, and mass readership.

In general, researchers have developed two major theories of literacy. One of these is correlated with ideas about the overall progress of civilization and similar concepts. It presents literacy as an “autonomous,” independent skill that proceeds along a predictable evolutionary path. The other, quite opposite in its approach, describes literacy as an “ideological” phenomenon that varies widely and unpredictably according to its social setting. As evidence has accumulated from various regions across the globe, the ideological model has more adequately accommodated diverse styles and uses of literacy. Since about 1990 it has been considered by most scholars and theoreticians to be the more accurate of the two models.

The numeracy that preceded literacy can be charted through ancient, geometrically shaped clay tokens—some dating to about 8000 bce —that have been found throughout the Middle East . The symbols impressed on these tokens initially stood for numbers, but they later came to stand for concepts, marking a crucial step in the history of writing and reading. Enclosure of the tokens within a clay envelope, subsequently sealed with an account of its contents inscribed on the outside, eventually produced a new writing surface—the clay tablet. These tablets can be viewed as the starting point of a continuum of increasingly sophisticated writing surfaces that stretches to the computer desktop of the 21st century.

Along this continuum lies a wealth of surface technologies. Papyrus was invented in ancient Egypt and used alongside stone and clay tablets throughout the Middle East, whereas modern-style paper arose in China about 100 ce . Medieval European manuscripts were written out, sometimes with elaborate illuminations, on vellum, or sheepskin. Moveable type and a press were known in Korea and China by 750 ce , some 700 years before the development of the mechanized printing press in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg (about 1440). Gutenberg’s press ushered in a highly uniform, regular, and easily replicable surface, which in turn created a radically more efficient economy for the creation, transmission, and consumption of ideas. During the 20th century digital devices simplified traditional printing, making possible the surfaces composed of pixels that constitute electronic pages.

Several types of writing systems evolved alongside the physical surfaces that accommodated them. The earliest of those systems included ideographic scripts, which use abstract symbols to represent concepts rather than words, and pictographic symbols, which represent concepts by visually depicting them. Logographic systems use signs called logograms to represent either words or morphemes (linguistically, the smallest units of semantic meaning); Egyptian hieroglyphics and the cuneiform scripts of the ancient Middle East provide examples. Chinese characters are logograms that can contain phonetic information and can stand for related or unrelated concepts in other East Asian languages, including Japanese , Korean , and Vietnamese . Syllabaries, such as Japanese kana or the Cherokee orthography, map syllabic units to an assortment of symbols. More familiar, perhaps, are consonantal writing systems, in which symbols represent only consonants (leaving vowels to be inserted by the reader, as in Arabic , Hebrew , and Phoenician , the parent of Greek writing), and alphabets, where both consonants and vowels are matched to unique signs (Greek, Latin , Cyrillic , Mongolian , and the rationalizing alphabet of the International Phonetic Association , among scores more).

Writing systems appear to have arisen separately in various parts of the world as well as through direct genetic influence. For example, Mesopotamian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese characters, the Cree syllabary , the Pahawh Hmong script , and the Vai syllabary have distinct, entirely independent indigenous origins. This is not to say that the general idea of writing was not paralleled by or imported from an adjoining culture but rather that the specific symbols and systems of writing were in such cases formulated without explicit prior models. On the other hand, the Latin alphabet, directly descended from Greek and ultimately Phoenician letters, changed over time to become the conventional writing system not simply for the English , Celtic , Romance , and other Indo-European languages but also for Turkish , Finnish , Basque , Maltese , and Vietnamese . Some systems have an uncertain origin, such as the Germanic orthography known as runes .

Methods for getting this inventory of different kinds of symbols onto available surfaces have varied a great deal in strategy, in the time and energy required for the task, and in the permanence of the product. Until the invention of moveable type, writing was often the job of specialists who spent long periods generating singular, quite perishable texts. Paper books proved to be rapidly and easily replicable with the printing press, making possible mass readerships, but they too have faced problems of fragility, wear, and oxidation (relieved by acid-free paper). The digital age has raised new opportunities and challenges associated with sustainability, while it has also called copyright conventions into question by making publication, replication, and distribution fast, simple, and individually driven. ( See also writing: Types of writing systems and History of writing systems .)

How readers read what they encounter on various writing surfaces also is enormously diverse. Ideographic and pictographic scripts have severe built-in limitations, because they lack a strictly one-to-one relationship of sign to word and therefore require substantial interpretation. Even in early cultures, where literacy was a craft practiced by very few, such breadth of interpretation could lead to disparate results. Purely logographic systems are restricted because of the tremendous number of signs that are needed to reflect the lexical riches of a language, and so they were typically extended by inclusion of sound-based cues. However, latitude for interpretation can also be created by syllabaries when semantic units are broken into smaller parts for more efficient representation. Consonantal systems, moreover, are necessarily incomplete in their representation of individual consonantal sounds, and alphabets, while ideally reflecting all the sounds of the languages they accommodate, ambiguously and imperfectly represent them. Inherent in all writing systems, then, is the potential for multiple readings.

The modern notion that the physical text is freestanding and wholly explicit in its meaning did not exist in the ancient and medieval worlds, where works were literally embodied by reading them aloud. Often communities of listeners were able to access a text only through a designated literate specialist. Only with the printing press and its bounty of exact replicas could the ideology of the self-sufficient text—as a stable “thing” democratically accessible to all—take root. With the advent of the digital age, the hypothesis of total explicitness and ready containment has begun to recede, however. Indeed, in the 21st century, literacy and the text itself are once again becoming individually styled experiences, as readers (or Internet surfers) subjectively navigate their way through webs of electronic, hyperlinked options. ( See also writing: Literacy: the uses of writing .)

How to Write a Good History Essay. A Sequence of Actions and Useful Tips

Before you start writing your history essay, there is quite a lot of work that has to be done in order to gain success.

You may ask: what is history essay? What is the difference between it and other kinds of essays? Well, the main goal of a history essay is to measure your progress in learning history and test your range of skills (such as analysis, logic, planning, research, and writing), it is necessary to prepare yourself very well.

Your plan of action may look like this. First of all, you will have to explore the topic. If you are going to write about a certain historical event, think of its causes and premises, and analyze what its impact on history was. In case you are writing about a person, find out why and how he or she came to power and how they influenced society and historical situations.

The next step is to make research and collect all the available information about the person or event, and also find evidence.

Finally, you will have to compose a well-organized response.

During the research, make notes and excerpts of the most notable data, write out the important dates and personalities. And of course, write down all your thoughts and findings.

It all may seem complicated at first sight, but in fact, it is not so scary! To complete this task successfully and compose a good history essay, simply follow several easy steps provided below.

Detailed Writing Instruction for Students to Follow

If you want to successfully complete your essay, it would be better to organize the writing process. You will complete the assignment faster and more efficient if you divide the whole work into several sections or steps.

• Introduction

Writing a good and strong introduction part is important because this is the first thing your reader will see. It gives the first impression of your essay and induces people to reading (or not reading) it.

To make the introduction catchy and interesting, express the contention and address the main question of the essay. Be confident and clear as this is the moment when you define the direction your whole essay will take. And remember that introduction is not the right place for rambling! The best of all is, to begin with, a brief context summary, then go to addressing the question and express the content. Finally, mark the direction your essay about history will take.

Its quality depends on how clear you divided the whole essay into sections in the previous part. As long as you have provided a readable and understandable scheme, your readers will know exactly what to expect.

The body of your essay must give a clear vision of what question you are considering. In this section, you can develop your idea and support it with the evidence you have found. Use certain facts and quotations for that. When being judicial and analytical, they will help you to easily support your point of view and argument.

As long as your essay has a limited size, don’t be too precise. It is allowed to summarize the most essential background information, for example, instead of giving a precise list of all the issues that matter.

It is also good to keep in mind that each paragraph of your essay’s body must tell about only one issue. Don’t make a mess out of your paper!

It is not only essential to start your essay well. How you will end it also matters. A properly-written conclusion is the one that restates the whole paper’s content and gives a logical completion of the issue or question discussed above. Your conclusion must leave to chance for further discussion or arguments on the case. It’s time, to sum up, give a verdict.

That is why it is strongly forbidden to provide any new evidence or information here, as well as start a new discussion, etc.

After you finish writing, give yourself some time and put the paper away for a while. When you turn back to it will be easier to take a fresh look at it and find any mistakes or things to improve. Of course, remember to proofread your writing and check it for any grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. All these tips will help you to learn how to write a history essay.

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How to Write a History Essay

Last Updated: December 27, 2022 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Emily Listmann, MA . Emily Listmann is a Private Tutor and Life Coach in Santa Cruz, California. In 2018, she founded Mindful & Well, a natural healing and wellness coaching service. She has worked as a Social Studies Teacher, Curriculum Coordinator, and an SAT Prep Teacher. She received her MA in Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 2014. Emily also received her Wellness Coach Certificate from Cornell University and completed the Mindfulness Training by Mindful Schools. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 245,543 times.

Writing a history essay requires you to include a lot of details and historical information within a given number of words or required pages. It's important to provide all the needed information, but also to present it in a cohesive, intelligent way. Know how to write a history essay that demonstrates your writing skills and your understanding of the material.

Preparing to Write Your Essay

• The key words will often need to be defined at the start of your essay, and will serve as its boundaries. [2] X Research source
• For example, if the question was "To what extent was the First World War a Total War?", the key terms are "First World War", and "Total War".
• Do this before you begin conducting your research to ensure that your reading is closely focussed to the question and you don't waste time.

• Explain: provide an explanation of why something happened or didn't happen.
• Interpret: analyse information within a larger framework to contextualise it.
• Evaluate: present and support a value-judgement.
• Argue: take a clear position on a debate and justify it. [3] X Research source

• Your thesis statement should clearly address the essay prompt and provide supporting arguments. These supporting arguments will become body paragraphs in your essay, where you’ll elaborate and provide concrete evidence. [4] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Your argument may change or become more nuanced as your write your essay, but having a clear thesis statement which you can refer back to is very helpful.
• For example, your summary could be something like "The First World War was a 'total war' because civilian populations were mobilized both in the battlefield and on the home front".

• Pick out some key quotes that make your argument precisely and persuasively. [5] X Research source
• When writing your plan, you should already be thinking about how your essay will flow, and how each point will connect together.

Doing Your Research

• Primary source material refers to any texts, films, pictures, or any other kind of evidence that was produced in the historical period, or by someone who participated in the events of the period, that you are writing about.
• Secondary material is the work by historians or other writers analysing events in the past. The body of historical work on a period or event is known as the historiography.
• It is not unusual to write a literature review or historiographical essay which does not directly draw on primary material.
• Typically a research essay would need significant primary material.

• Start with the core texts in your reading list or course bibliography. Your teacher will have carefully selected these so you should start there.
• Look in footnotes and bibliographies. When you are reading be sure to pay attention to the footnotes and bibliographies which can guide you to further sources a give you a clear picture of the important texts.
• Use the library. If you have access to a library at your school or college, be sure to make the most of it. Search online catalogues and speak to librarians.
• Access online journal databases. If you are in college it is likely that you will have access to academic journals online. These are an excellent and easy to navigate resources.
• Use online sources with discretion. Try using free scholarly databases, like Google Scholar, which offer quality academic sources, but avoid using the non-trustworthy websites that come up when you simply search your topic online.
• Avoid using crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia as sources. However, you can look at the sources cited on a Wikipedia page and use them instead, if they seem credible.

• Who is the author? Is it written by an academic with a position at a University? Search for the author online.
• Who is the publisher? Is the book published by an established academic press? Look in the cover to check the publisher, if it is published by a University Press that is a good sign.
• If it's an article, where is published? If you are using an article check that it has been published in an academic journal. [8] X Research source
• If the article is online, what is the URL? Government sources with .gov addresses are good sources, as are .edu sites.

• Ask yourself why the author is making this argument. Evaluate the text by placing it into a broader intellectual context. Is it part of a certain tradition in historiography? Is it a response to a particular idea?
• Consider where there are weaknesses and limitations to the argument. Always keep a critical mindset and try to identify areas where you think the argument is overly stretched or the evidence doesn't match the author's claims. [9] X Research source

• Label all your notes with the page numbers and precise bibliographic information on the source.
• If you have a quote but can't remember where you found it, imagine trying to skip back through everything you have read to find that one line.
• If you use something and don't reference it fully you risk plagiarism. [10] X Research source

Writing the Introduction

• For example you could start by saying "In the First World War new technologies and the mass mobilization of populations meant that the war was not fought solely by standing armies".
• This first sentences introduces the topic of your essay in a broad way which you can start focus to in on more.

• This will lead to an outline of the structure of your essay and your argument.
• Here you will explain the particular approach you have taken to the essay.
• For example, if you are using case studies you should explain this and give a brief overview of which case studies you will be using and why.

Writing the Essay

• Try to include a sentence that concludes each paragraph and links it to the next paragraph.
• When you are organising your essay think of each paragraph as addressing one element of the essay question.
• Keeping a close focus like this will also help you avoid drifting away from the topic of the essay and will encourage you to write in precise and concise prose.
• Don't forget to write in the past tense when referring to something that has already happened.

• Don't drop a quote from a primary source into your prose without introducing it and discussing it, and try to avoid long quotations. Use only the quotes that best illustrate your point.
• If you are referring to a secondary source, you can usually summarise in your own words rather than quoting directly.
• Be sure to fully cite anything you refer to, including if you do not quote it directly.

• Think about the first and last sentence in every paragraph and how they connect to the previous and next paragraph.
• Try to avoid beginning paragraphs with simple phrases that make your essay appear more like a list. For example, limit your use of words like: "Additionally", "Moreover", "Furthermore".
• Give an indication of where your essay is going and how you are building on what you have already said. [15] X Research source

• Briefly outline the implications of your argument and it's significance in relation to the historiography, but avoid grand sweeping statements. [16] X Research source
• A conclusion also provides the opportunity to point to areas beyond the scope of your essay where the research could be developed in the future.

Proofreading and Evaluating Your Essay

• Try to cut down any overly long sentences or run-on sentences. Instead, try to write clear and accurate prose and avoid unnecessary words.
• Concentrate on developing a clear, simple and highly readable prose style first before you think about developing your writing further. [17] X Research source
• Reading your essay out load can help you get a clearer picture of awkward phrasing and overly long sentences. [18] X Research source

• When you read through your essay look at each paragraph and ask yourself, "what point this paragraph is making".
• You might have produced a nice piece of narrative writing, but if you are not directly answering the question it is not going to help your grade.

• A bibliography will typically have primary sources first, followed by secondary sources. [19] X Research source
• Double and triple check that you have included all the necessary references in the text. If you forgot to include a reference you risk being reported for plagiarism.

Sample Essay

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://www.historytoday.com/robert-pearce/how-write-good-history-essay
• ↑ https://www.hamilton.edu/academics/centers/writing/writing-resources/writing-a-good-history-paper
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/thesis_statement_tips.html
• ↑ http://history.rutgers.edu/component/content/article?id=106:writing-historical-essays-a-guide-for-undergraduates
• ↑ https://guides.lib.uw.edu/c.php?g=344285&p=2580599
• ↑ http://www.hamilton.edu/documents/writing-center/WritingGoodHistoryPaper.pdf
• ↑ http://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/
• ↑ https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/hppi/publications/Writing-History-Essays.pdf

About This Article

To write a history essay, read the essay question carefully and use source materials to research the topic, taking thorough notes as you go. Next, formulate a thesis statement that summarizes your key argument in 1-2 concise sentences and create a structured outline to help you stay on topic. Open with a strong introduction that introduces your thesis, present your argument, and back it up with sourced material. Then, end with a succinct conclusion that restates and summarizes your position! For more tips on creating a thesis statement, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Personal Experience — My Literacy Journey: Tracing the Evolution of My Skills

My Literacy Journey: Tracing The Evolution of My Skills

• Categories: Literacy Personal Experience

About this sample

Words: 1110 |

Published: Mar 18, 2021

Words: 1110 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Works Cited

• Alexander, P. A. (2017). Reading into literacy: An exploratory investigation of literacy events experienced by early readers. Early Childhood Education Journal, 45(1), 39-47.
• Gee, J. P. (2015). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. Routledge.
• Heath, S. B. (2015). What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Luke, A. (2017). Critical literacy: Foundational notes. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(6), 611-615.
• Lunsford, A. A., & Lunsford, K. J. (2008). "Mistakes are a fact of life": A national comparative study. College Composition and Communication, 59(4), 781-806.
• McLaughlin, M., & DeVoogd, G. L. (2004). Critical literacy: Enhancing students' comprehension of text. Scholastic.
• Paulson, E. J. (2015). The virtual library: A gateway to literacy for adolescents. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 88(2), 56-61.
• Street, B. V. (2015). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge University Press.
• Wagner, T., & Combs, M. (Eds.). (2017). Content area literacy: An integrated approach. SAGE Publications.
• Zipes, J. (2016). The irresistible fairy tale: The cultural and social history of a genre. Princeton University Press.

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Civic literacy essay checklist, checklist for student writing and teacher feedback.

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Resources for Part 3: Civic Literacy Document Based Essay: Civic Literacy Essay Checklist

Students can use this checklist to write their essay, teachers can use this checklist to give students feedback 

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The Power of Literacy Narratives

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I first learned to read at the age of three while sitting on my grandmother’s lap in her high-rise apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, IL. While flipping casually through Time magazine, she noticed how I took a keen interest in the blur of black and white shapes on the page. Soon, I was following her wrinkled finger from one word to the next, sounding them out, until those words came into focus, and I could read. It felt as though I had unlocked time itself.

What Is a “Literacy Narrative?”

What are your strongest memories of reading and writing? These stories, otherwise known as “literacy narratives,” allow writers to talk through and discover their relationships with reading, writing, and speaking in all its forms. Narrowing in on specific moments reveals the significance of literacy’s impact on our lives, conjuring up buried emotions tied to the power of language, communication, and expression.

To be “ literate ” implies the ability to decode language on its most basic terms, but literacy also expands to one’s ability to "read and write" the world — to find and make meaning out of our relationships with texts, ourselves, and the world around us. At any given moment, we orbit language worlds. Soccer players, for example, learn the language of the game. Doctors talk in technical medical terms. Fishermen speak the sounds of the sea. And in each of these worlds, our literacy in these specific languages allows us to navigate, participate and contribute to the depth of knowledge generated within them.

Famous writers like Annie Dillard, author of "The Writing Life," and Anne Lammot, "Bird by Bird," have penned literacy narratives to reveal the highs and lows of language learning, literacies, and the written word. But you don’t have to be famous to tell your own literacy narrative — everyone has their own story to tell about their relationships with reading and writing. In fact, the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers a publicly accessible archive of personal literacy narratives in multiple formats featuring over 6,000 entries. Each shows the range of subjects, themes, and ways into the literacy narrative process as well as variations in terms of voice, tone, and style.

How to Write Your Own Literacy Narrative

Ready to write your own literacy narrative but don’t know where to begin?

• Think of a story linked to your personal history of reading and writing. Perhaps you want to write about your favorite author or book and its impact on your life. Maybe you remember your first brush with the sublime power of poetry. Do you remember the time you first learned to read, write or speak in another language? Or maybe the story of your first big writing project comes to mind. Make sure to consider why this particular story is the most important one to tell. Usually, there are powerful lessons and revelations uncovered in the telling of a literacy narrative.
• Wherever you begin, picture the first scene that comes to mind in relation to this story, using descriptive details. Tell us where you were, who you were with, and what you were doing in this specific moment when your literacy narrative begins. For example, a story about your favorite book may begin with a description of where you were when the book first landed in your hands. If you’re writing about your discovery of poetry, tell us exactly where you were when you first felt that spark. Do you remember where you were when you first learned a new word in a second language?
• Continue from there to explore the ways in which this experience had meaning for you. What other memories are triggered in the telling of this first scene? Where did this experience lead you in your writing and reading journey? To what extent did it transform you or your ideas about the world? What challenges did you face in the process? How did this particular literacy narrative shape your life story? How do questions of power or knowledge come into play in your literacy narrative?

Writing Toward a Shared Humanity

Writing literacy narratives can be a joyful process, but it can also trigger untapped feelings about the complexities of literacy. Many of us carry scars and wounds from early literacy experiences. Writing it down can help us explore and reconcile these feelings in order to strengthen our relationship with reading and writing. Writing literacy narratives can also help us learn about ourselves as consumers and producers of words, revealing the intricacies of knowledge, culture, and power bound up in language and literacies. Ultimately, telling our literacy stories brings us closer to ourselves and each other in our collective desire to express and communicate a shared humanity.​

Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is a poet, writer, and educator from Chicago, IL (USA) who currently splits her time in East Africa. Her essays on arts, culture, and education appear in Teaching Artist Journal, Art in the Public Interest, Teachers & Writers Magazine, Teaching Tolerance, The Equity Collective, AramcoWorld, Selamta, The Forward, among others.

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Thesis Statements

What is a thesis statement.

Your thesis statement is one of the most important parts of your paper.  It expresses your main argument succinctly and explains why your argument is historically significant.  Think of your thesis as a promise you make to your reader about what your paper will argue.  Then, spend the rest of your paper–each body paragraph–fulfilling that promise.

Your thesis should be between one and three sentences long and is placed at the end of your introduction.  Just because the thesis comes towards the beginning of your paper does not mean you can write it first and then forget about it.  View your thesis as a work in progress while you write your paper.  Once you are satisfied with the overall argument your paper makes, go back to your thesis and see if it captures what you have argued.  If it does not, then revise it.  Crafting a good thesis is one of the most challenging parts of the writing process, so do not expect to perfect it on the first few tries.  Successful writers revise their thesis statements again and again.

A successful thesis statement:

• makes an historical argument
• takes a position that requires defending
• is historically specific
• is focused and precise
• answers the question, “so what?”

How to write a thesis statement:

Suppose you are taking an early American history class and your professor has distributed the following essay prompt:

“Historians have debated the American Revolution’s effect on women.  Some argue that the Revolution had a positive effect because it increased women’s authority in the family.  Others argue that it had a negative effect because it excluded women from politics.  Still others argue that the Revolution changed very little for women, as they remained ensconced in the home.  Write a paper in which you pose your own answer to the question of whether the American Revolution had a positive, negative, or limited effect on women.”

Using this prompt, we will look at both weak and strong thesis statements to see how successful thesis statements work.

While this thesis does take a position, it is problematic because it simply restates the prompt.  It needs to be more specific about how  the Revolution had a limited effect on women and  why it mattered that women remained in the home.

Revised Thesis:  The Revolution wrought little political change in the lives of women because they did not gain the right to vote or run for office.  Instead, women remained firmly in the home, just as they had before the war, making their day-to-day lives look much the same.

This revision is an improvement over the first attempt because it states what standards the writer is using to measure change (the right to vote and run for office) and it shows why women remaining in the home serves as evidence of limited change (because their day-to-day lives looked the same before and after the war).  However, it still relies too heavily on the information given in the prompt, simply saying that women remained in the home.  It needs to make an argument about some element of the war’s limited effect on women.  This thesis requires further revision.

Strong Thesis: While the Revolution presented women unprecedented opportunities to participate in protest movements and manage their family’s farms and businesses, it ultimately did not offer lasting political change, excluding women from the right to vote and serve in office.

Few would argue with the idea that war brings upheaval.  Your thesis needs to be debatable:  it needs to make a claim against which someone could argue.  Your job throughout the paper is to provide evidence in support of your own case.  Here is a revised version:

Strong Thesis: The Revolution caused particular upheaval in the lives of women.  With men away at war, women took on full responsibility for running households, farms, and businesses.  As a result of their increased involvement during the war, many women were reluctant to give up their new-found responsibilities after the fighting ended.

Sexism is a vague word that can mean different things in different times and places.  In order to answer the question and make a compelling argument, this thesis needs to explain exactly what  attitudes toward women were in early America, and  how those attitudes negatively affected women in the Revolutionary period.

Strong Thesis: The Revolution had a negative impact on women because of the belief that women lacked the rational faculties of men. In a nation that was to be guided by reasonable republican citizens, women were imagined to have no place in politics and were thus firmly relegated to the home.

This thesis addresses too large of a topic for an undergraduate paper.  The terms “social,” “political,” and “economic” are too broad and vague for the writer to analyze them thoroughly in a limited number of pages.  The thesis might focus on one of those concepts, or it might narrow the emphasis to some specific features of social, political, and economic change.

Strong Thesis: The Revolution paved the way for important political changes for women.  As “Republican Mothers,” women contributed to the polity by raising future citizens and nurturing virtuous husbands.  Consequently, women played a far more important role in the new nation’s politics than they had under British rule.

This thesis is off to a strong start, but it needs to go one step further by telling the reader why changes in these three areas mattered.  How did the lives of women improve because of developments in education, law, and economics?  What were women able to do with these advantages?  Obviously the rest of the paper will answer these questions, but the thesis statement needs to give some indication of why these particular changes mattered.

Strong Thesis: The Revolution had a positive impact on women because it ushered in improvements in female education, legal standing, and economic opportunity.  Progress in these three areas gave women the tools they needed to carve out lives beyond the home, laying the foundation for the cohesive feminist movement that would emerge in the mid-nineteenth century.

Thesis Checklist

When revising your thesis, check it against the following guidelines:

• Does my thesis make an historical argument?
• Does my thesis take a position that requires defending?
• Is my thesis historically specific?
• Is my thesis focused and precise?
• Does my thesis answer the question, “so what?”

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NKY History Hour: Fast Food: A Lot Older Than You Think

If you thought fast food only dates back to McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, think again! The roots of fast food began in the late 1800s, as American industrial and office workers sought quick, convenient meals during their lunch breaks.   Join Behringer-Crawford Museum’s next virtual NKY History Hour on Tuesday, August 20, from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., as historian Paul Tenkotte takes you on a journey through the origins and evolution of fast food in his presentation, Fast Food: A Lot Older Than You Think.   While many associate fast food with the rise of modern giants, its story stretches much further back in time. Tenkotte will explore how the fast food phenomenon was born out of necessity and has since grown into a billion-dollar industry. From the introduction of square little hamburgers to the global empire it is today, this engaging presentation will offer a fresh perspective on the culinary revolution that has shaped American culture and cuisine.

To register and participate in the free presentation by Behringer-Crawford Museum, visit: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_a2jgosPgQZ-MyVjjVYZiFA   Information on connecting to the Zoom session will be sent after registration. The event will also be streamed live on BCM's Facebook page at www.facebook.com/bcmuseumnky. All recordings of past episodes can be viewed at https://www.bcmuseum.org/activities/nky-history-hour/2-uncategorised/368-past-nky-history-hours.

Paul A. Tenkotte, PhD is a Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University. He has published 16 books, contributed chapters and essays to 13 additional books, and written/edited more than 600 articles and book reviews for a wide range of publications. In addition, he has participated in 22 television documentaries, including his 2018 national PBS debut, Ten That Changed America: Engineering Marvels. Dr. Tenkotte’s textbook, The United States since 1865: Information Literacy and Critical Thinking, was published in 2022 by Kendall Hunt. He is also editor of the weekly “Our Rich History” column in the NKyTribune, an online publication of the non-profit Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism. Currently, Tenkotte is co-directing a non-profit regional initiative of the Kenton County Public Library (KY) entitled ORVILLE (Ohio River Valley Innovation Library and Learning Enrichment.)

NKY History Hour programs take place every other Tuesday evening from 6:30-7:30 p.m. and are free to the public. To support NKY History Hour and access many other entertaining and thought-provoking programs for free, join BCM today: http://bcmuseum.org/support-us/join/become-a-member. 

Behringer-Crawford Museum is supported in part by our members, the City of Covington, Kenton County Fiscal Court, ArtsWave, Kentucky Arts Council, the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation. 

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