HISTORY 100, SECTIONS 03, 04

SPRING 2009

(Image of the Parthenon in Athens courtesy of http://www.ancient-sites.com)

Contents

Course Description: An introduction to the foundations of Western Civilization from the dawn of humans through the Reformation, with an emphasis on the political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural attributes which made that civilization unique.

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Texts:

Coffin, Judith, and Robert Stacy, Western Civilizations, Brief edition, Volume 1. New York: Norton, 2005.

Brophy, James M., Steven Epstein, Cat Nilan, John Robertson, Thomas Max Safley, eds.,
Perspectives from the Past:  Primary Sources in Western Civilization, Volume 1.  New York, W.W.
Norton, Third edition, 2005.

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Course Objectives:

Upon completion of the course, students will have gained an appropriate increase in:

     1. An understanding and appreciation of history and historical inquiry through the use of research, critical thinking, and
     problem solving..

     2. A sense of how historical knowledge has been affected by new findings and approaches.

     3. An appreciation for how history poses ethical dilemmas and challenges, both for men and women who lived in the
     past, and for those pondering its significance now.

     4. An appreciation for how knowledge of history helps clarify the consequences of collective action, both in the past and
     in the present.

     5. A sense of history as combining a variety of disciplines, approaches, and perspectives.

     6. An awareness of the diverse modes of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information.

     7. An ability to express oneself clearly and concisely on paper, by means of a substantive written assignment or
     series of written assignments.

     8. An understanding of how history relates to other disciplines and modes of inquiry.

     9. An awareness of how historical inquiry can contribute to understanding the issues and dilemmas that face the
     contemporary citizen.

     10. An understanding of the historical development of Western civilization in its formative stages.

     11. A sense of how to relate the development of Western civilization to other regions of the world.

     12. An understanding of how historical cultural developments influence the present day.

General Education Goal 7 Goals

Class Schedule:

Week 1 (Jan. 12-16)

Introduction: Course Information and Requirements
What is History? What is Civilization? What and Where is the West?
Early Humans and the Neolithic Period

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 3-39.
Brophy, pp. 12-31.

Note: The drop deadline is January 20.

Mesopotamia
Egypt
Hebrews, Phoenicians and other Peoples

Map quiz: Thursday.

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 40-74.
Brophy, pp. 89-95, 98-108.

Early Greeks
The Dark Age and the Emergence of the City-State
Classical Greece 1

Quiz on readings for weeks 1-3, Thursday.

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 77-106.
Brophy, pp. 117-126, 133-137, 141-146.

Alexander the Great and Hellenistic Civilization
Early Rome
Rome from Republic to Empire

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 109-146.
Brophy, pp. 161-175, 208-213.

Prospectus due by Thursday, 5 p.m.

Review
MID-TERM - Thursday, Feb. 12.

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, chapter 5, pp. 146-188.

Imperial Rome
Fall of the Western Empire and Early Christianity
Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 191-222.
Brophy, pp. 220-233, 253-259.

Critique of prospectus (together with the critiqued work) due by Wednesday, 5 p.m.

The Byzantine Empire and Islam
Feudalism and Manorialism
Church and Culture in the High Middle Ages

Quiz on readings for weeks 4-7, Thursday.

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 225-243, 261-286.
Brophy, pp. 269-280.

Note: Deadline to withdraw with "W", March 2.

The Emergence of National Monarchies 1
The Emergence of National Monarchies 2

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 243-258.
Brophy, pp. 290-296, 306-311, 352-357, 386-392.

Week 9 (March 16-20)

Conflicts and Crises in Medieval Society
The Waning of the Middle Ages

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 289-321.
Brophy, pp. 364-371, 394-401.

Renaissance in Italy and Humanism
Politics and Society in Renaissance Europe

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 323-340.
Brophy, pp. 434-440.

Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

Review
MIDTERM - Thursday, April 2.

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 343-376.
Brophy, pp. 467-471, 530-536, 539-543, 553-559.

The Reformation in a European Perspective
The Catholic Counter-Reformation
State-Building in Early Modern Europe

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 376-390.
Brophy, pp. 575-581, 593-600, 608-623.

Final paper due by Thursday, April 9, by 5 p.m.

European Society in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries
The Age of Religious Wars 1

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 393-404.
Brophy, pp. 512-529, 546-551, 624-632.

Map Quiz , Thursday.

The Age of Religious Wars 2
Europe in 1648
Review

Readings: Coffin/Stacey, 404-416.
Brophy, pp. 636-641, 656-666.

Quiz on readings for weeks 8-14, Thursday.

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Course Requirements:

Course Requirements: Two mid-term exams, a final exam and a paper are the written requirements for this course. Failure to complete any of the requirements will be regarded as a failure to complete the course, and will therefore result in a failing grade. In addition, there are five short map and reading quizzes, with one unannounced bonus quiz in the course of the semester. Papers received in the seven days after the respective due dates indicated on the weekly schedule will be marked down up to one full grade. Absolutely no assignments will be accepted after the seven-day grace period – this will result in an F for the entire course, not a "0" for the individual assignment.

Exams and quizzes must be taken when scheduled. Make-ups will be scheduled only by prior consent of the instructor, and only for compelling reasons (as determined by the instructor). If a student, without gaining prior consent, is unable to take an exam Because of sudden illness or some other extraordinary event, the instructor must be notified immediately. If I cannot be reached directly or by phone, leave a message with the History Department. A doctor's note or other written documentation must accompany a student's request for a make-up exam.

Exams: The first mid-term exam will consist of multiple choice questions. The second mid-term and the final may also be multiple-choice, but I reserve the right to change the format of those exams to all essay or a combination of essay and short answer in format.  Part of the the final exam will be comprehensive (covering the entire course). As a study aid, class time will be set aside for review sessions as indicated on your weekly schedule, but the exams may contain material not covered in these sessions. The exams will be designed to test acquaintance with the lectures and the assigned readings. Taking careful notes in class and on the readings, therefore, is strongly recommended. The instructor will be looking for evidence of general knowledge, and an organized and analytical approach to that knowledge. In the case of essays, the instructor will also be looking for an ability to combine the raw materials of the course -- text, lectures, and documentary sources -- into pertinent and meaningful insights, and will also be evaluating your ability to communicate those insights. In the essays, points will be taken off for run-on sentences, grammatical errors, spelling errors, poor punctuation, illegible handwriting or any other problems that, in the opinion of the instructor, affect comprehension of the student's work. Strive above all for clarity. The two mid-terms will be fifty minutes long, the final will be two and a half hours.

Papers: This will be the subject of a special handout. The primary source materials from Brophy will be the point of departure for these assignments, but you will be required to find longer selections from primary source collections in the library and on the internet (see section on sources below). Early in the semester, each student will prepare a prospectus, which will contain a topic statement, a thesis statement, a brief statement of how the paper's argument will be structured, and a bibliography.  I have provided an on-line research form to serve as a guide for gathering information about the primary source you have chosen to analyze. The prospectus will be reviewed by another student in the class before being reviewed by me. Each student, therefore, will be responsible for a written critique. This critique will not be graded, but failure to complete it on time will result in a deduction of seven points from the final grade. All prospectuses,  critiques and final papers must be printed on a word processor, in a standard font of 10 or 12 pitch (courier or Times Roman 10 or 12 is preferred), with double-spaced text, a title page, and one inch (and no more than one inch) margins. The text of the prospectus (not including title page) should be no less than 1 full page and no more than 2 in length.  The final analysis (not including bibliography, title page and endnotes page) should be no less than 4 full pages and no more than 6 in length. All citations should be in the form of endnotes (in a separate section at the end of the paper). Your name, the course name and number, section number and the date must be on the title page. It must include a bibliography of all sources cited. Bibliography and endnote citations must conform to the proper style, as defined in the "Department of History and Political Science Style Sheet" on the departmental web page at  http://www.longwood.edu/history/HDPTSTS2.htm. More in-depth coverage of style questions can be found in the latest edition of Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations. Do not use MLA, APA, parenthetical footnotes or any alternative style current in other disciplines. Unless you wish to see the instructor fly into a blind rage, make a particular point of not using parenthetical notes. All papers should be saved to disk in at least two separate locations (hard disk and memory stick, hard disk and floppy, two floppies, etc.), so that a new copy may be immediately printed in case the original hard copy is misplaced.

The type of material that must be documented (i.e. endnoted) includes: controversial or distinctive arguments and opinions, facts that are not a matter of broad general knowledge, statistics, all quotes, and paraphrases or summaries of an author's argument. All direct quotes over fifty words in length must be indented and single-spaced as described in the departmental style sheet. You should have at least one footnote or endnote per full page of text.

It is imperative that you document source material, but your own points, observations, and arguments must be expressed in your own words: excessive use of quotes or lengthy paraphrasing of sources will not be accepted, and leads easily to the grievous sin of plagiarism. The final papers must be submitted to www.turnitin.com as a Word file for the purpose of generating an originality report before being submitted to me in hard copy. On plagiarism, see below.

Sources:  In addition to the primary sources you find in Brophy and elsewhere, you must utilize at least two other secondary sources from the library. These sources must include a scholarly study of article or book length. You may use no more than two Internet sources (one as a primary source, one as a secondary source). Some useful web sites containing primary sources are:

The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook --  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook.html
The Internet Medieval History Sourcebook -- http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html
The Internet Modern History Sourcebook -- http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html
(the best and easiest to use -- it contains both excerpts and full-text on-line editions of important sources)
The Hanover Historical Texts Project -- http://history.hanover.edu/project.html
The Avalon Project --  http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
The Historical Text Archive --  http://historicaltextarchive.com/ (useful mainly for links)
The Michigan Electronic Library -- http://web.mel.org/mer/SPT--BrowseResources.php?ParentId=357  (also a collection of links, organized by category)
The Voice of the Shuttle --  http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2713#id877 (be sure to browse the special topics as well)
E-Server --  http://eserver.org/history/ (for selected topics)
EuroDocs --  Main Page - EuroDocs  (use both time period and national history links)

You can also find primary source materials (in addition to maps, quizzes and other study aids) on the web site for the textbook.  You will need to register using the registration code on the card inside the front cover.  Go to:  http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/wciv 

All of these web sites require extensive searching to get to the documents you want, so be prepared to spend some time
browsing.  In many, if not most, cases, books will be easier and less time-consuming to access, especially if they contain a good
index.  This listing is not exhaustive, nor can I vouch for the accuracy of everything contained in them.  

For secondary sources (by historians), the best place to start is the bibliography at the end of each chapter in the textbook, checking the Longwood and Hampden-Sydney on-line library catalogs for availability (you can also use the inter-library loan service, if you're able to plan ahead of time).  For articles, check the indexes of both the print copies of journals in the libraries and the on-line databases like JSTOR.

You may use encyclopedias and other reference works for background information on the document(s) you are using in the paper -- in fact, these are a good place to start -- but these are not to be cited and will in no way be considered a replacement for a more substantial outside source. Never cite a textbook or encyclopedia in the final paper.  Double-dipping (submitting an assignment for this course that is substantially the same as a paper submitted for any other course, past or present) is not permitted.

   To research form

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Grading: The mid-terms, the final and the paper are worth 90 points each. The five quizzes are worth eight points each, for a total of 40 points. Your final grade will be determined by the total number of points you gain out of a maximum of 400. I do not grade on a curve. Attendance, evidence of progress or lack thereof in the course of the semester, and class participation, will be used to decide half grades and borderline cases (which, experience shows, means most students). Serious attendance problems or misconduct in class can result in a lowering of grade. The grading scale is as follows:
 
 

Extra-Credit Assignments: Extra-credit assignments may be arranged with the instructor. These assignments must be approved in advance by me on or before March 2, and will not be accepted unless so approved. They are worth a maximum of 40 points. Under no circumstances will an extra-credit assignment be accepted as substitute for any other written requirement in the course.   An extra-credit assignment can only elevate a student into a higher grade bracket (for example, from a B to an A) if the student has scored the higher grade on at least one of the three major exams or as an overall grade on the document analyses. The assignment must take the form either of an analytical book review (not a book summary) 3-5 pages in length, or an analytical research paper (with a thesis) 5-7 pages in length, and must utilize sources not assigned in this course. The topic and sources must be substantially different from any used in the required document analyses. Style of text, footnotes, bibliography and title page must conform to the guidelines of Turabian. If you decide to do an extra-credit assignment, it must be turned in no later than April 10 for you to receive credit.

Attendance Policy: Class attendance is a requirement of this course. Repeated unexcused absences will lead to a reduction of grade. Unexcused absences totaling 25% or more will result in an automatic F for the course. The instructor will excuse a student only under the most extraordinary circumstances. Chronic lateness will also be penalized, since it presents a class disturbance. If a student arrives after roll is taken, it is the student's responsibility to place his or her name on the class roll no later than the end of that class period. Failure to do so will result in an unexcused absence.

Honor Code and Plagiarism: Students are expected to observe the honor code. All work for this course must be pledged. Students found to have cheated on an exam or to have plagiarized material in a paper will be subject to the maximum penalty under college rules. For those in doubt about the definition of plagiarism, it consists of copying passages from a source without both attribution and quotation. If you have reproduced the language of your source, you have committed plagiarism whether or not you have cited the source and the page number. This includes passages that a student may have modified: for example, changed verb tenses, omission or replacement of occasional words, reshuffling of phrases, sentences or paragraphs, combining of different plagiarized sources. The question of the author's intent -- whether a student, in his or her heart of hearts, intended to deceive the instructor -- is completely irrelevant.  If passages have been lifted from another source as described above, the student has committed plagiarism, period.  Students are required to comply with any request by the instructor -- for example to bring in all the sources used, or to write an on the spot description of the essay in question -- to determine whether that student has committed plagiarism or cheated on an exam. The moral is:  writing a bad paper in your own words is far better than writing a good one using the words of someone else. One suggestion for avoiding inadvertent echoing of your texts and sources: close all books when writing, and consult them only for specific facts or direct quotes. Also, proofread your paper with plagiarism specifically in mind. For more on plagiarism, see the departmental style sheet.

Tape-recording and Class Decorum: Tape-recording of lectures is not permitted. Students who are excused from class by the instructor must make arrangements with the instructor or with other students to cover the material missed. Students who skip class without permission are responsible for making their own arrangements with other students (not with the instructor) for the material covered in class.

Students are expected to observe class decorum. Students engaging in behavior bothersome to other students or to the instructor (for example, eating or drinking, talking in class, the use of personal stereos, switched on cell phones or other electronic devices) will be asked to leave and marked as absent. Food and drinks are not permitted in the classroom.