P.A.P.E.R

Throughout this semester, we've been using a system called PAPER to analyse all of the primary sources that we find for the class.  PAPER is an acronym that stands for

Purpose of the author writing it
Argument or strategy of the paper
Presuppositions (in the text and our own)
Epistemology (evaluating the truth)
Relate to other papers

I really like this way of analyzing a primary source because it causes you to look at it in multiple ways, sometimes in ways that you wouldn't think of normally.  I thought it was really interesting to try to think of the biases or presuppositions that both the author and I would have had in reading this.  Normally I think of just the writers bias (the point of view that they have, what information they included, etc.) but i've never thought about my own bias - what presuppositions I have when going into reading this piece.  For example, our values may be different today than they were when the piece was written.  This is especially pertinent when dealing with things like slavery that have gone from completely acceptable to completely unacceptable in a very short amount of time.

Also, looking at the author's purpose is really interesting.  Why did this person write this?  Usually, people don't just write things down because.  They write things down that are interesting or important, and it can be really fun to try to find what exactly that important thing is.

Lastly, the epistemology of the source.  How truthful does this person's writing sound?  This can be really hard to judge, especially with pieces from a long time ago, but it can be really interesting.  So far, all of the pieces have sounded very truthful.  I think it'd be really fun to have a reading that was completely false and see if my classmates and I catch onto it.  It'd have to sound really legitimate, though.