Instructor: James R. Munson 
Office: E. Ruffner 226
Office telephone: 395-2218
Office hours:
MWF 2-3
TR 10-11
and by appointment
E-mail: munsonjr@longwood.edu
(Image, "The Uprising", by Honoré Daumier, courtesy of the WebMuseum)

Contents

Course Description: The history of major developments in French politics, culture, and society in the modern era.

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Texts:

Popkin, Jeremy, A History of Modern France. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Third Edition, 2005.

Burns, Michael, France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History, (The Bedford Series in History and Culture), 1999.

Cogan, Charles G., Charles de Gaulle : A Brief Biography with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture), 1995.

Wylie, Lawrence, Village in the Vaucluse. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, Third Edition, 1977.

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Course Objectives:

The goal of this course is for students to develop the following:

1. A better understanding and appreciation of history and historical inquiry by means of an in-depth study of modern France.

2. An ability to think critically, analytically and systematically about complex historical events and issues.

3. An ability to organize different types of source materials, relate them to each other by means of critical analysis, and use them to isolate essential issues and themes of the period covered by this course.

4. An appreciation of the variety of disciplines and approaches necessary to gain an understanding of the past.

5. A sense of how France's history relates to the broader development of modern Western and world civilization.

6. A greater ability to express oneself clearly and concisely on paper, as well as an ability to articulate pertinent observations and questions orally.

7. A general familiarity with the course and significance of the history of one of the leading nations in the modern West.

8. A greater understanding of the human condition and experience by examining the dilemmas and challenges faced by men and women in a society undergoing rapid change.

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Class Schedule:

Week 1 (Jan. 14-18)

France and the First World War
War and Reconstruction

Readings: Popkin, pp. 202-218.
Handouts.

Week 9 (March 17-21) 

France between the Right and the Left
France, Versailles and the European Order
Review

Readings: Popkin, pp. 219-229.
Wylie, pp. 185-205, 244-277.
Cogan, pp. 3-13.

De Gaulle, the Fifth Republic and the Decline of French Power
Prosperity and its Discontents: May, 1968

Readings: Popkin, pp. 273-288.
Wylie, pp. 340-383.

France since 1968: Is the French Revolution Finally Over?
Review

Readings: Popkin, pp. 289-294.
Cogan, pp. 111-164, 197-220.
 

FINAL EXAM -- Wednesday, April 30, 11:30-2 P.M.

Course Requirements: A mid-term exam, a comprehensive final exam and a research project/web page 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 result in a failing grade for the entire course (not a '0' for that particular assignment). In addition, each student will prepare a prospectus and a prospectus critique of another student's prospectus. These critiques will not be figured in the final grade, but they will be used froo grade estimate purposes, and failure to hand them in on time will result in a loss of 7 points from the final grade in each case. All assignments received in the seven days after the due dates indicated on the weekly schedule will be marked down up to one full grade. Absolutely no assignments will be accepted after 5 p.m. on the seventh day.

Exams must be handed in when scheduled. Extensions will be accepted 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 turn in an exam or other assignment because of sudden illness or some other extraordinary event, the instructor must be notified immediately. If I cannot be reached directly or by phone, you must leave a message with the History Department (x2224). A doctor's note or other written documentation must accompany a student's request for a make-up exam.

Exams: The mid-term and final exams will consist of essays, and the final will be comprehensive in nature. The exams will be designed to test acquaintance with the lectures and the assigned readings. Taking careful notes on the readings and in class, therefore, is strongly recommended. The instructor will be looking for evidence of general knowledge, an organized and analytical approach to that knowledge, and an ability to combine the raw materials of the course -- text, lectures, discussions, and documentary sources -- into pertinent and meaningful insights. The instructor will also be evaluating your ability to communicate those insights. 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 first mid-term will be fifty minutes long, the final will be three hours.

Research Project: The research project for this course is a paper utilizing primary sources.  The details will be explained in class and in handouts. For research ideas, begin in all cases with the required texts and sourcebooks. All students should meet with me as early as possible about their choice, because all the assignments must focus on the same document or set of documents. The paper, prospectus, and critique must be printed on a word-processor in a standard 10 or 12 pitch font (such as courier or times roman). They should be double-spaced, with a title page, and one-inch (and no more than one-inch) margins. The text (not including bibliography and title page) of the prospectus should be no less than 1 and no more than 2 full pages in length. The paper must be no less than 7 and no more than 10 full pages in length.   Your name, the course name and number, and the date must be on the title page of all written assignments. Each assignment must include a bibliography of all sources cited. Bibliography and endnote citations must conform to the proper style for the liberal arts, as defined in the departmental style sheet http://www.longwood.edu/history/HDPTSTS2.htm, or in the latest edition of Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations, Chicago, 1987. Do not use MLA, APA or any alternative style current in other disciplines. Unless you wish to see the instructor fly into a blind rage, do not even think of using parenthetical notes on any assignment other than the take-home.

The type of material that must be documented (i.e. cited in endnotes) 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 two lines in length must be indented and single-spaced as described in the style sheet or Turabian.

It is imperative that you document source material, but the argument or thesis of your paper must be 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. Each student must submit his or her paper to www.turnitin.com as a Word file for the purpose of generating an originality report before submitting it to me in hard copy. On plagiarism, see below and the departmental style sheet. The citation of at least six different sources is a minimal requirement for the paper. In addition to the assigned texts, which you must use when relevant, you must utilize at least three other sources from the library, one of which must be a primary source (in translation) from the period. These sources must include scholarly studies of article or book length (the on-line database JSTOR, available through our library, is a good place to look for articles). While you may use encyclopedias or other reference works for background information, these are not an acceptable substitute for a more substantial outside source, and should never be cited in the notes or listed in the bibliography. One of the remaining sources for your paper analysis may be an Internet source, appropriately cited and linked on your web page. Use material only from reputable web sites (like universities). Never use Internet sources the origins of which are murky or unknown to you, and avoid reference-style web sources (like Wikipedia, Encarta, or Sparksnotes). Double-dipping (submitting a paper for this course that is substantially the same as a paper submitted for any other course, past or present) is not permitted.

Some useful web sites containing primary sources are:

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)
Internet Marxist archive -- http://www.marxists.org/archive/ -- not just for Marxism, this is one of the best sites for primary sources in modern history on the web, with French history represented
Prof. Joseph O'Brien's web page -- http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/ -- contains links to many documents under "Reference Documents", especially good for diplomatic history

To Research Form

Reserve List

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Class participation:  Class participation is an essential part of this course. In most weeks, the last class period will be set aside for discussion of the readings. Students must arrive prepared to discuss the weekly assignments. In order to ensure this, I will designate at the beginning of each discussion class two or more students who will be graded for their contributions to the discussion that day. Any students so chosen who have not read the material or who are absent without prior clearance from me will receive a failing grade for that day's discussion. I will rotate the selections so that everyone gets a more or less equal chance to be "on call". Voluntary contributions from students not designated by this system will of course be considered positively, especially when they demonstrate acquaintance and engagement with the reading. Your overall grade for class participation will not be figured numerically into your final score, but will weigh heavily nonetheless. It will be used to decide borderline cases, offset negative trends like absences, or, if judged to be of significantly higher or lower quality than your written work, possibly bump you to a higher or lower grade. If I judge this system to be producing inadequate results, I reserve the right to require other written or oral assignments to facilitate discussion, and to use these assignments in the determination of final grades. Knowing, as you do, how sick and sadistic history professors are, it is in each and everyone's direct interest to make the discussions work.

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Grading: The mid-term, the final, and the research project (the document analysis and web page) are worth 100 points each. Your grade will be determined by the total number of points you gain out of a maximum of 300. 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 the instructor on or before March 3, 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 the paper. The assignment must take the form either of an analytical book review (not a book summary) 3-5 pages in length, or a research paper 7-10 pages in length, and must utilize sources not assigned in this course. Style of text, footnotes, bibliography and title page must conform to the guidelines of the departmental style sheet. If you decide to do an extra-credit assignment, it must be turned in no later than April 11 for you to receive credit.

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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. 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 by the end of the class period. Failure to do so will result in an unexcused absence, even if the student later produces class notes or other evidence that he or she was present for part of the class period.

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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 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 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. 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, text messaging, or the use of personal stereos, MP3 players, cell phones or other electronic devices) will be asked to leave and marked as absent. Food and drinks are not permitted in the classroom.

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Bibliography: References required of all students:

Popkin, Jeremy, A History of Modern France. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Third Edition, 2005.

Burns, Michael, France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History, (The Bedford Series in History and Culture), 1999.

Cogan, Charles G., Charles de Gaulle : A Brief Biography with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture), 1995.

Wylie, Lawrence, Village in the Vaucluse. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, Third Edition, 1977.

Consult the bibliographies in the required texts, the handouts, the library catalogue and the instructor for the outside references to be used in your research paper.

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