Structured Writing Assignments in an American Economic History Course

Abstract

This article describes how our American Economic History capstone writing class is structured to allow students to build upon their own research and writing in order to complete an extensive written piece as the culmination of the class. The course is organized so that students can pursue their own interests across fields in economics, and emerge from it with both a better understanding of a particular field, and a paper that can be used for job and graduate school applications and potential publication. The article relates the lessons learned by the authors during the teaching of the course, and the ways in which the course organization has assisted students with their education and careers.