Another way to think about this type of article is to see it as weighing in on a debate. That is, do you think that existing approaches explain the existing evidence well? For instance, say that you have written an article about the role of white women in the south during the Civil Wa If there is a debate about women's role with many theorists arguing that the Civil War widened the scope of women's work and a few theorists arguing that it narrowed women's options-you can weigh in on the debate by arguing that the war reinforced women's gender roles, using as evidence an examination of The Diary of Miss Emma Holmes. That is, both the approach and the evidence are old, but no one has brought the diary to bear on the question of white women's freedom during Civil War. You have done something new.