IICS 648: The Changing Nature of War and Conflict
Essay 1: How has technology revolutionized warfare throughout the last century
Your essay contains some fascinating insights and astute observations and it is clear to me that you have indeed tried to get your head around the nature of war and the role played by technology. That’s good. You have read widely and carefully and tried to make sense of the authors’ sometimes competing arguments.
Your real problem is that you don’t provide enough EVIDENCE. Put simply, you don’t have anywhere enough citations. At graduate level you need to reference every major point, which means you should probably have around one reference for every hundred or so words.
To add a citation, use a superscript number at the end of the sentence you are referencing. MS Word will do this for you. Then, at the bottom of the page (for footnotes) OR at the end of the essay (for endnotes), place the citation in this format:
J. Hayward, War in History (Washington, DC: White Cloud Press, 1978), pp. 78-81.
That is: author, title (in italics), place of publication, publisher, date, page number(s).
Your central argument is strong and well constructed. You have arranged your key points in a logical sequence and built a sophisticated and interesting argument that actually convinced me of its correctness. You write well. Your easy and intelligent choice of words and your compactness of expression really do impress me. You make a few punctuation and grammatical errors. I didn’t bother identifying them, but I encourage you to proof-read carefully.
So for the next essay remember to reference every major point. Your grade will be even better if you attend to this critical issue.
