UPDATE: All meetings will be held in my office, Humanities 330, according to this schedule.

Before coming to your meeting next week to discuss your rough drafts, you should write a brief peer review memo to share with the person whose paper you read. I will count this memo towards your class participation grade.

Remember to avoid the pitfalls in peer-reviewing that we have talked about in class. Don’t give your partner’s paper a superficial reading; respect him or her enough to really engage with this piece of writing that he or she has worked hard to produce. Similarly, don’t be afraid of criticizing the draft for fear of being negative; receiving nothing but compliments will not help your partner improve his or her draft. But you should also avoid making your critique personal; avoid “you” statements (like, “you’re not making sense here) in favor of statements that focus on the paper (“this paragraph could be clearer if …”)

When writing this memo, you should offer your comments both as a reader of the rough draft (which will allow you to tell your partner how at least one reader understood the work) and as a fellow author (which will allow you to make recommendations and give advice based on your own experience with writing a paper.)

Here is the specific checklist that your peer review memo should follow. Completing these questions well should mean that your memo is no less than 300-600 words. But try not to let your memo run beyond a maximum limit of 800-1,000 words. There is only so much advice and feedback an author can take at one time!

1. Summarize, in no more than a few sentences, the question or problem that the paper is trying to answer or solve.

2. Summarize, in a sentence or two, the author’s thesis–his or her answer or solution to the question or problem you identified in #1. (If you have difficulty with #1 or #2, you may want to focus your recommendations in #7 on helping the author clarify the question or thesis.)

3. Place a wavy line in the margins next to all of the places in the draft that were unclear to you as a reader.

4. Write a paragraph summarizing your assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the argument of the draft. (For example, is the thesis supported by persuasive reasons? Does the thesis seem to make a contribution to an existing debate of some kind among historians? Are there counter-arguments that the author does not seem aware of, or does not sufficiently address? Where do you agree or disagree?)

5. Reread the draft, then write a paragraph focusing solely on the author’s use of evidence. Are there sufficient pieces of evidence, drawn primarily from primary sources, that support the author’s small and larger claims? Does the writer need to do more research?

6. Write out at least two things that are particularly strong about this draft.

7. Make three or four specific recommendations about specific changes the writer should make in the next draft.