Relations between the US and Cuba

You should use the paper to answer the following questions about it:

1) Give a BRIEF summary of your topic. What are the major relevant details about the subject? This should be NO MORE THAN 750 WORDS. That’s why you need to narrow your topic before you sit down to write your paper.

2) Are there any relevant international agreements about your topic? Has the United Nations or other IGO’s dealt with your topic? What NGO’s are active in this area and what are their goals?

3) Who are the (most) relevant countries? What are their interests or goals as regards your topic? Go beyond just restating what you said in Question 1.

4) Analyze your topic from a realist and liberal perspective. How would each approach explain the way countries and individuals have behaved in your topic?

5) What is the future of your topic?

Formatting:

You can structure your paper any way you see fit, so long as you address the above questions. I would suggest breaking your paper down into an introduction in which you lay out what will be in the rest of the paper, five separate sections (each dealing with a question) and a conclusion, to match the attached rubric. Make sure to read the rubric at the end of the paper assignment for guidance on what each section should contain. lease note that you should not just write a five paragraph essay with each of the above questions being a paragraph. Generally each question should take you several/numerous paragraphs to answer.
The total length of the paper is 2000 to 2500 words. That is roughly 8 to 10 double-spaced pages with normal font and margins. Please put the word count on the front page of your paper. The word count does not include the works cited page. Pretty much every word processing program has a way of automatically counting words for you. If you are unsure how to do this, let me know and I will show you. Will I count all of your words to verify your total? Probably not. Unless you hand in something that is clearly not the length listed on the front page. I know most people start out by aiming for the minimum number of words, but given the scope of this paper topic you will likely have no difficulty meeting the word count. While you will lose points for being under 2000 words, if a paper has less than 1500 words it will automatically fail the assignment.

Sources/Citations/Plagiarism:

You should be using academic sources for this paper. That means that while you can consult Wikipedia as a start, you should be using additional sources, possibly including global newspapers, scholarly books and journal articles and government websites. If you are going to use web-based sources, make sure (as always) to consider who the source of the website is. Are they credible? Do they have expertise? What’s their angle or bias? MAKE SURE TO USE IN-TEXT CITATIONS in your paper. I don’t particularly care what format they are (MLA vs APA vs Chicago) just so long as (a) you stay consistent in the paper and (b) I can figure out how to find each source myself if I so choose.

Remember that whenever you use someone’s idea, either in a direct quote or reworded yourself, you should use a citation. Using someone’s words or ideas without citation is PLAGIARISM and doing so will lead to a minimum of a zero on the paper and quite possibly failure of the class. Please include a Works Cited page IN ADDITION TO the in-text citations. Failure to do so will result in a 10% penalty.

This is what it has all been building towards. Write the paper and submit it. It’s worth up to 260 points with the rubric as follows:

Paper Rubric

Section of the Paper Total Points

Introduction 15

Question 1 40

Question 2 30

Question 3 30

Question 4 40

Question 5 30

Conclusion 15

Grammar/Spelling 40

Paper Length 20

Overall Points 260

100% grade:
Introduction – Covers all in the up to 85% range, plus includes a framing argument.
Grammar & Spelling – Few to no grammatical and/or spelling errors
Paper Length, including word count on title page – 2000-2500 words
Questions 1-5 – Does everything in previous category with addition of something distinctive
Conclusion – Covers all in the up to 85% range, plus includes an analysis of what the student learned from the assignment