Based on your interests related to one of the three historical topics (Conquest of the New World, Europe in the Age of Absolutism, the Holocaust), you will formulate a historical research question by writing a word proposal. In thinking about your research question it is important to focus and narrow down your topic. Your proposal should be phrased in the form of a question and help you embark on a process of discovery—don't start out to prove something you think you already know (that's bad historyl). Try to be open-minded by posing a question that may change what you think you know once you’ve conducted research. lmportantly, the topic must be narrow and focused enough that you are able to conclude something meaningful and speci?c. Think about how you can contribute one piece of knowledge to a larger body of scholarship. Ultimately, your proposal needs to answer the 'so what?’ question. Why should an interested reader who has no particular expertise in your particular topic still care about your research? What are the larger intellectual stakes, the bigger lessons your research can teach us? The most common mistake students make is to propose research that is too vague or too broad to answer in a project of this scope. The question “Why did some Germans resist the Nazis while others collaborated with them?" may be interesting and important, but it is much too broad to answer in an undergraduate research paper. Instead, you need to focus on how you might answer such a question using empirical evidence. A more manageable question might be “Why did Oscar Schindler protect Jewish workers at his factory?" This question is suf?ciently narrow, and it is possible to answer with available sources. Moreover, it gets at a “big question,” but in a grounded and focused way. The following may prove a useful template for composing the research proposal: The HolocausUConguest of the New WorldlEra of Absolutismletc. was important because . Historians know a great deal about , , and . One aspect of this topic that deserves more study, however, is . This project examines the following question: why/how . Knowing the answer to this question is important because it will help historians to , , and

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