Sanitation strike, Memphis, Tennessee, 1968

Paper Guidelines

The ULA Program has a standard procedure for papers. Here are the guidelines.

1. The final due date for all assignments for the summer term is November 1 and for the winter term is May 1. Students wishing to submit preliminary drafts of their papers should discuss this with individual faculty members. Papers received after the deadlines will receive an incomplete for the semester.

2. Send your paper directly to your instructor and not to UMass. Any questions about your assignment should also be made directly to the instructor. Our goal will be to have your grades and graded papers for you at the next ULA session.

3. Please do not send your only copy of a paper (or supporting material) to an instructor. Make sure you keep a paper or disk copy in case it gets lost or you want a clean copy for future use.

4. Your papers should be "typed," double spaced, and checked for errors in spelling and grammar.

5. Please use the "Chicago Style," which does not use footnotes but citations in parentheses (see Style Sheet below), unless instructed otherwise by your instructor. Footnotes are only for points of clarification.  For citations, please follow the ULA Style sheet instead of Rampolla's Pocket Guide.

6. If you use someone else's ideas you must cite the source, as well make clear when you are directly quoting.

7. Your paper should be divided into sections, beginning with a short introduction (1 or 2 pages) that includes an overview of the paper and where you are going, typically without citations. The next section (3 to 5 pages) should "set up" the issue or problems you are addressing. This typically involves reviewing the literature as to what others have written about the topic, as well as articulating what exactly you are focusing on. (In a research paper this should include a description of your research methods.) The main body of the paper (8 to 10 pages) should provide both your evidence and your analysis. This section is best broken up into several parts, topically arranged. The final section of the paper (1 or 2 pages) should be a conclusion. Here you move beyond the narrow data or information and make larger points. The conclusion, however, should not be based solely on your own opinion but should flow out of the research you have done.

8. The paper should have a title page with your name, address, and phone number. After the main paper you should include a list of references used, followed by any relevant appendices.

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ULA Style Sheet

For papers, the Labor Relations and Research Center program uses a standard Social Science citation format. Authors are cited in parentheses in the text, followed by the date of their article/book (Jones, 1996). If you are quoting from a specific page, use a colon followed by the page number (Jones, 1996: 36). If there is more than one set of authors, alphabetize them with semicolons between them (Jones and Laughlin, 1936; Smith and Smith, 1938). If you have multiple citations by one author, put the most recent first. When you have two citations by the same author(s) in the same year, use (author, 1996a) and (author, 1996b). You need to cite authors not only when you are quoting from them but also when your writing is based on their ideas. Footnotes are used only for clarification.

At the conclusion of your paper, your reference section should include all of the citations that you have listed in your paper. Do not include works you have not cited. The list should be alphabetized by the authors' last names.

Below is a sample reference section. Names of books or journals may be underlined or put in italics. If authors have multiple entries, put the most recent publication first. All following entries for the same author should have the name replaced by dashes. Works published by an organization should be listed under the name of the organization. The first line of each entry should be flush with the margin, with subsequent lines indented. The references should be single spaced with a double-space between entries.

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Sample reference section:

Quiroz-Martinez. "A Fair and Just Amnesty," The Nation. May 21, 2001: 18-22.

Ranalli, Ralph. "AG Aids Foreign Workers, Not INS," Boston Globe. April 1, 2001: A1.

Rubin, Lillian. Families on the Fault Line. New York: Harper Collins. 1994.

Sally (pseudonym). Interview. May 22, 2001.

Sargent, Gaye. Interview. June 6, 2001.

Sargent, Robert. Interview. June 6, 2001.

Schacht, John N. The Making of Telephone Unionism, 1920 - 1947. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 1985.

Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1999.

Schor, Juliet B. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books. 1991.

Seitchik, Adam D. "When Married Men Lose Jobs: Income Replacement Within the Family," Industrial and Labor Relations Review. July 1991. Volume 44, Number 4: 692-708.

Shrader, Debra. Interview. June 3, 2001.

Springsteen, Bruce. "My Hometown," on Born in the U.S.A. Columbia Records. 1984.

Stacey, Judith. Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1990.

Sterngold, James. "1 Cent Pie Crossing Border," New York Times. May 27, 2001.

Sum, Andrew M., and W. Q. Neal Fogg. The Changing Workforce: Immigrants and the New Economy in Massachusetts. Boston: Mass Inc. November 1999.

Tench, Megan. "Mayan Workers' Voices Echo Fear," [New Bedford] Sunday Standard Times. October 1, 2000: A6.

Tierney, Nancy Leigh. Robbed of Humanity: Lives of Guatemalan Street Children. Saint Paul: Pangaea. 1997.

United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. 1997 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization
          Service. Washington D.C. 1998.

Citations from Internet Sources
Author's Last Name, First Name. [author's internet address, if available]. "Title of Work" or "title line of message." In "Title of Complete Work" or title of list/site as appropriate. [internet address]. Date seen on web site. For example:

World Wide Web:
Limb, Peter. "Relationships between Labour & African Nationalist/Liberation Movements in Southern Africa." {http://neal.ctstateu.edu/history/world_history/archives/limb-l.html]. May 5, 1992.

Heinrich, Gregor. [100303.100@compuserve.com]. "Where There Is Beauty, There is Hope: Sau Tome e Principe." [ftp.cs.ubc.ca/pub/local/FAQ/african/gen/saoep.txt]. July 11, 1994.

"Democratic Party Platform, 1860," from June 18, 1860. [wiretap.spies.com Wiretap Online Library/Civic & Historical/Political Platforms of the U.S.] August 23, 2001.

E-mail Messages:
Page, Mel. [pagem@etsuarts.east-tenn-st.edu]. "African dance and Malawi." Private e-mail message to Masankho Banda. [mbanda@igc.apc.org]. November 28, 1994.

Listserv Messages:Walsh, Gretchen. [gwalsh@acs.bu.edu.]. "REPLY: Using African newspapers in teaching." In H-AFRICA. [h-africa@msu.edu]. October 18, 1995.

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