Historical Tour Proposal
Imagine that an eccentric billionaire has offered to send a group of students on a 5-week tour of important places in world history before 1500. If you can create a winning proposal, your proposal will be funded with you as a paid tour guide. Your job is to select the places that the students will visit, write up an itinerary (dates on which they will visit each place), and write a narrative which explains the historical significance of the places you have chosen and justifies your choices.
Your proposal must include:
1. Itinerary. This will give a list of the places that the students will visit, when they will visit them, and how long they will stay there. You do not need to give specific dates, but can make clear the order of visit as “week 1” or “day 13.” Unless you indicate otherwise, the reader will assume that students will travel by the most convenient modern method of transportation (planes, trains, buses, etc.) and stay in standard tourist accommodations. If you want to be more creative, however, you can specify that they will be traveling by camel and sleeping in tents, for example (explain why unusual choices are appropriate in section 2). Be sure that you are realistic in allowing time for travel between regions. Your itinerary must include sites on at least three different continents. (Remember that this is funded by a billionaire, so money is no object.)
This section should be in list or table form. Save explanations and details for Section 2.
2. Explanatory narrative. This is the part of the proposal where you explain and justify your choices. You need to address the overall plan of your tour (what theme unites these places in world history) as well as the historical significance of each place that you include. Be sure to cite sources in the text of this narrative. This section should include a strong introduction (in which you lay out and explain the theme), several paragraphs justifying the stops along the way, and a conclusion in which you sum up what students should learn from this experience. Cite sources for all information in this section. This should be about 1000-1500 words long (roughly 4 to 6 pages).
You will be graded on how well you justify your overall theme as relevant to world history before 1500 and how well you justify each stop on the tour as adding to students’ understanding of the theme.
3. Bibliography with full citations of sources. Cite sources for ALL information in the text of your proposal and include all sources cited in your proposal in this bibliography. (Include ONLY sources that you actually used. If you use a source, it must be referenced in your proposal; if you did not use it in your proposal, don’t include it in the bibliography.) Acceptable sources are articles from the Oxford Reference Books On-line Premium, Gale Virtual Reference Library (both available from the e-books page on the TSU library web site), JSTOR, and the History Compass Journal in the Wiley Online Library (both JSTOR and the Wiley Online Library are available from the database page on the TSU library web site). You may use travel websites ONLY for information on modern transportation and accommodations (NOT for historical information).
