What does an “empire” look like?

What does an “empire” look like? This sounds like an easy question. In the historical record, empires are big and hard to miss. Yet, today there are many competing definitions as scholars focus on different parts of the empires before them. In this paper, propose and defend your own definition of empire by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the current historiography on the key characteristics of empires.
Attached is a guideline and one of the assigned readings related to the topic. You can use it together with other sources