Discussion Board

eneral Discussion Instructions:

Roughly half of your  Discussion grade (40 points) comes from making an original thread post of at least 300-words. This post should feature your answer to the question(s). It should include at least a thesis statement, and two or three relevant pieces of evidence from the primary source documents to support to support your argument. You should plan to complete this post before the due date so that other can reply to others. You will be unable to respond to other until you make your own original thread post.

The other half of your Discussion grade comes from replying to two of your peers (15 points per reply). These comments should engage your peers by replying to their original posts. In you response-posts, you may include another piece of evidence that you think is more powerful for their point. Or you may introduce a counter-point to their argument. You must reply to at least two peers with a comment of at least 100-words. Good discussion replies involve more than a simply agreeing/disagreeing and instead spur a back-and-forth between the author and the commenter.

You should also cite the documents in your discussion posts (simple in-text citations are fine). I recommend using quotes from the documents as evidecen to help support your point/argument.

Discussion Prompt:

For this Discussion you need to read:  "Olaudah Equiano  Describes the Middle Passage, 1789" and " Francis Daniel Pastorius Describes his Ocean Voyage, 1684" from the  American Yawp Reader. You may also want to reference the  "Print of the Slave Ship Brookes" as well. Then in your main post you should compare and contrast the two primary source documents, considering how each person described their voyage to America and what they experienced. Be sure to discuss how these two documents help you understand the real lived experience of historical people from the 1780s, and connect the documents to other topics you have read about in class -- such as exploration, slavery, immigration, etc. You may also contemplate what other sources or information you think would help you better understand their experiences.