"Primary sources are materials produced by people or groups directly involved in the event or topic under consideration, either as participants or as witnesses," (A Pocket Guide to Writing History, 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007).
These primary sources are what historians, art and literary critics, researchers, etc. rely on to interpret history, movements, and events. Primary sources differ based on subject. For history they are first hand accounts of an event, topic, or time period. These sources can be diary entries, laws, ephemeral such as fliers, newspaper articles, photographs, speeches, etc. For art, primary sources are any original artistic piece. Such as paintings, sculptures, music, plays, poetry, and any other original form of artistic creation. For FNDS 3301 you may need to draw on primary sources not only from history, but also art and literature to get a contextual understanding for the time period in which the restless woman of interest lived.
For information on how to find primary sources, check out the Recommended Databases page on the left hand side.