Length: 8-10 pages, typed, double-spaced.

A. All About the Biographical Report. This assignment is the first stage of your major term paper for this course and will be the result of your interviews with the family member you choose. As you decide whom to interview, remember these points:

1. You should not interview someone of your own generation -- either your parents' or grandparents' generation should be used, preferably someone born before 1950.

2. You cannot choose to write about someone who is already dead -- although the memories of that person might be very important to the one you do interview.

3. You can do some of the interviewing by telephone or letter, but at least one lengthy interview must be face-to-face. A good way to proceed is to do some preliminary work by telephone, letter or email.

4. If you need to interview someone in Boone, tell us immediately so that we can make suggestions and contact that person.

5. Decide the person you will interview -- this includes getting the permission of that person! Turn in a brief description of this person to your bio-group instructor; include name, date of birth, and your connection to this person.

1. All important biographical details -- think of this as a complete curriculum vitae or résumé of this person's life. Thus, you will need to include birth date and place, parents, ethnic background, region called "home", education, marriage and family, work and unemployment, religion, politics, other organizations, military, travel, life stages and turning points. Even if your interviewee does not tell you all these things, it is your responsibility to ask the questions to get the information.

2. A chronology of about 2 pages at the end -- give year and important events in interviewee's life for that year. This chronology is in addition to the 8-10 pages. You do not need an entry for every year.

3. Indications that you have learned from Generations. Thus, we expect you to pose questions to your subject that shows an awareness of that person�s "peer personality," phase of life, and generational location. You are not trying to prove or disprove the theses of Generations; rather, you are using it as a source of interesting questions.

4. Do not neglect to ask about some of these public events -- whatever is relevant for your person: The Depression, World War II, the Kennedy assassination, Civil Rights, Desegregation, 1968, the Cold War, Viet Nam, the ERA, most women in the work force, more women than men in college, GI Bill, rising divorce rate, Sun Belt population shift, etc.

5. At the end, note where and when you interviewed this person. For this report you do not need a bibliography of other sources (unless, of course, you used some). You will need a complete annotated bibliography for the final paper. (An annotated bibliography includes a short description of the source and its usefulness to you.)

6. Do NOT submit a transcript of the interview -- write the paper in your own words, from your perspective, using apt quotations from your interviewee. Write in your own voice, but in an objective manner (ex.: My mother, Jean Smith, was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on June 13, 1949). Use a tape recorder if you wish for the interview, but only to free you from taking so many notes instead of listening.

7. Write in complete sentences and paragraphs, so that you will be able to include sections from this report in your final paper. Do not write in outline or notation form, except in the Chronology.

8. Note! Your readings by or about Rachel Carson, Hunter S. Thompson and Martin Luther King, Jr. are valuable in their own right -- BUT THEY ALSO ARE TRAINING YOU TO DO BIOGRAPHICAL WORK!!! Do not fail to use what you have learned from these stories.
 

1. Your instructor will read carefully the Report and suggest various research topics for you to explore. At this point, Phase II has begun. The basic idea of the final version of the paper is for you to work the materials you get in your interviews and research into a document that displays a keen awareness of the wider historical context in which your research subject lived. More simply: the paper must do justice to both the "background" (e.g. the Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, migration to the Sunbelt, the growth of a service economy, the rise to international power of the US, the vast increase in the role of government in our lives) and the "foreground." The foreground is the experience of your family.

2. A hot tip: You can get a jump on the research phase right now. Suppose that your subject was a car salesman in the early 50's. Prepare for the interview by doing a bit of reading about the 50's in terms of the post-war American enthusiasm for cars. If you know the kind of cars he or she sold, perhaps you could bring to the interview pictures of the 50�s models -- as a way of get-ting the conversation flowing.

3. Primary documents collection. You have the interview and your subject says, "Know something? I've got lots of 1950's Ford Motor Company promotional material somewhere in the attic. Would this be of help?" You throw your arms around him/her, for this is true pay dirt. Now you begin to amass a small portfolio of materials that can make up an appendix for the final paper and give you solid stuff to write from. Who knows -- maybe your paper will end up in the local library or historical society.

1. What are the three most fascinating events or people in your life?
2. Where do you call "home?"
3. Ask chronological questions, which usually unearth more detail.
4. How did you get to school?
5. How were family decisions made while you were growing up?
6. Who was considered "family?" Where did they live?
7. How were household responsibilities divided?
8. What was the attitude toward education and paid work for women?
9. What was your first car?
10. What was your first job?
11. Yours has been called "the Silent Generation," because American society in the 50's emphasized conformity and belonging. Does this really describe you?