The West and the World: Modern
HIST: 1403:0AAA Spring 2020
Lectures: T Th 11:00-11:50 in C20 PC
Professor: Jeffrey Cox
http://clas.uiowa.edu/history/people/jeffrey-l-cox
jeffrey-cox@uiowa.edu
Important Information
Bookmark This Course Web Site
You must use this course website for information about the course, including paper deadlines and lecture outlines.. You will also have an ICON site associated with your discussion section.
Activate your University of Iowa e-mail account,
Activate and check regularly your University of Iowa e-mail account, which will be used to distribute announcements. We are not allowed to use non-UI addresses such as GMail for academic communication.
Drop-In Hours
Office: 109 Schaeffer Hall; e-mail: jeffrey-cox@uiowa.edu
My Drop-In Hours this semester are Tuesday 1:30-3:00, Wednesday 10:30-12:00 and by appointment. You are welcome to come see me during office hours or at other times. If you cannot see me during those hours for any reason, please see me after class, or e-mail me, for an appointment..
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Policies
http://clas.uiowa.edu/faculty/teaching-policies-resources-syllabus-insert
Please consult this for College policies governing this course on issues of Accommodation for Disabilities, Electronic Communication, Academic Honesty, Final Examination Policies, Making a Suggestion or a Complaint, Understanding Sexual Harassment, and Reacting to Severe Weather.
Teaching Staff
The members of our teaching staff are engaged in graduate research in history, and have classroom teaching experience or a graduate degree, or both. Garrett Lewis (Lead Teaching Assistant) , Decent Ndongwe, Nyari Chisaka, Zachary Mauck.
Objectives: Why This Is An Important Course
Historical Literacy
Historical Argument
Historical Writing
(1). Historical Literacy. This course is designed to give you a general overview of the history of Europe and the European empires and their interaction with the wider world since the eighteenth century (the 1700s). By the end of the course, you should be familiar with a basic narrative of some of the most important events of modern history, and to be able to recognize allusions to important individuals, ideas, and social changes. The West and the World is not a world history course, but many of the important events in the west have had important consequences for the wider world, especially through war, invasion, imperial occupation, and economic exploitation. and non-western civilizations and cultures have had a profound impact on western history through processes of mutual encounter, impact, and incorporation.
(2)Argument. This course is designed to improve your ability to read texts with critical insight, and write about them persuasively and with greater clarity. The West and the World is a course in rhetoric as well as history. The study of history is not a matter of breaking knowledge down into tiny little parts, and then reassembling that knowledge. It is a matter of using your knowledge to reason about and make arguments about the past. Our goal is not only to provide basic historical literacy (e.g. who was Lenin?), but also to teach some of the fundamentals of historical argumentation that will equip us as citizens to evaluate the information we receive (e.g. should the United States have invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was like Hitler?) The exams are essay exams for the most part, and your grade will be based primarily on your ability to use your knowledge of the past to construct an argument about the past. The communication skills that we emphasize in this course will be of great value to you in life after college, particularly as you think about, and participate in, the debates shaping our democracy
(3). Writing. Like all General Education Courses at the University of Iowa, this course stresses improvement in your writing. Iowa is known as a "writing university," with a worldwide reputation (note the "Writers Workshop" and the "International Writing Program"). Instructors will focus on the improvement of both argumentation and style in your writing. Your grade on assigned papers will be based in part on your success in improving your writing (as shown in your paper portfolio) including progress in eliminating the most common writing errors, especially sentence fragments and run-on sentences.
Assigned Readings
Available at Prairie Lights
http://www.prairielightsbooks.com/textbook-store
Textbook Bundle:
Lynn Hunt, The Making of the West. A Concise History, ed. 5e, Volume II.
Katherine J. Lualdi, Sources of Making of the West. Peoples and Cultures. ed. 4e, Volume II
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Others to purchase (available at Prairie Lights or elsewhere):
Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997. ISBN 0472084100
Chinhua Achebe. Things Fall Apart. Anchor pb, 1958. ISBN-13: 978-0385474542
World War I British Poets ISBN: 9780486295688
A Woman in Berlin. ISBN: 9780312426118
Your Grade
Two essay exams 45% (covering topics covered in the lectures)
1. Mid-Term Exam, March 12 in class (C20 PC) 15%
2. Final Exam (date, time and location TBA) 30%
Paper Portfolio 35%
1. Paper 1 (on Prince) 750-1250 words, 10%
2. Paper 2 (on Achebe) 750-1250 words, 10%
3. Paper 3 (on A Woman in Berlin), 750-1250 word. to be submitted with your graded copies of papers 1 & 2, thus constituting your portfolio) 15%
Discussion Sections 20%
a. The discussion sections are taught by Teaching Assistants (TAs) . The small class meetings are meant to provide you with the opportunity for discussion of the lectures and assigned readings, and the chance to develop skills that cannot be practiced in the large lecture format. Your TA will distribute an additional syllabus for this portion of the course. This syllabus will be unique to each section and can contain additional assignments or readings. You will need to refer to both syllabi to be successful in this class. Each section will have an ICON site.
b. Attendance. You are allowed three absences for any reason from section. The fourth absence, if unexcused, will result in a reduction of your final grade in the course of one half of a letter grade (e.g. B+ to B). A subsequent absence will have a similar penalty.
The Lecture Hall
Please be on time, turn off your cell phone, and shut down your laptop browsers. Do not text, tweet, read email, or look at Facebook during the lecture. I recommend a pen or pencil and paper for lecture notes, (you can print out an outline in advance). Do not leave before the end of lecture except in an emergency. As a courtesy to other students, please avoid shutting books or notes before the end of the lecture, which will always end promptly at 11:50.
Lecture Notes
In order to do well on the mid-term and final, it is important for you to attend every class and to take notes on each lecture. The outline on the website is no substitute for a good set of lecture notes. I understand that the topics are often very broad, but I will explain in the lecture why they are important, and also how we can understand how things change in history-sometimes gradually and almost imperceptibly at first (e.g. population growth), but at other times radically and unexpectedly (e.g. the rise and fall of Communism in the twentieth century). Please see me after the lecture if you have questions. I enjoy discussing history in person or on-line. Questions are very welcome via e-mail.
The Textbook
The lectures and the textbook organize material in a somewhat different way, but the textbook has a useful index and table of contents to help you review after your initial reading, and the schedule of lectures on the course website identifies the precise textbook pages that are related to the topics in the lecture. When reading the textbook, concentrate on the material that is covered in the lectures. We will not ask you on the mid-term or final to write essays on topics that were not covered in the lectures.
Academic Honesty
When you submit a paper, it should be your own ideas conveyed in your own words. Do not submit a paper that contains material downloaded or copied from the web. Do not paraphrase the ideas of others and submit them as your own. Do not cite material without making it clear that it has been written by someone else. Do not submit a paper that you have written for another course. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense, and the penalties for it range from an F for the written work to an F for the entire course for those with previous offenses. For more information see:
http://clas.uiowa.edu/students/handbook/academic-fraud-honor-code
Complaints
Complaints about academic matters: History Department Chair, Landon Storrs, 280 Schaeffer Hall, 335-2299.
Discrimination or sexual harassment, Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, 335-0705
Office of the Ombudsperson https://uiowa.edu/ombuds/ 335-3608