Hist. H113, Section 8735; Honors Section 12632

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Fall 2012

History of Western Civilization I

Hist. H113, Section 8735; Honors Section 12632

Time: Tue./Thur. 9:00—10:15 a.m.Dr. Kevin C. Robbins

Place: Cavanaugh Hall, Rm. 235 Associate Professor of History

Office: CA 503Q

Office Phone: 317-274-5819

E-MAIL: FAX: 317-278-7800

Office Hours: Tue./Thur. 1:30-3:00

p.m. and by Appointment.

Course Objectives: A course in the grand history of Western Civilization is an excellent and rigorous means by which all students can gain, practice, and master critical reading, critical writing, critical thinking, and critical, analytical study skills useful for a lifetime. Never conceive of this course as merely a history class. It is always to be thought of as a course for critical skills acquisition and practice vital to your future academic and professional success. Among the vital skills to be developed and practiced by all students in the context of this university-level history course are: 1) greater ease and confidence in oral and written expression; 2) more careful and better analytical reading habits developed through direct, daily contact with original sources and written masterworks of the eras surveyed; 3) an improved ability to read complex maps and other graphic media for meaning to develop a clear understanding of old world geography and the geo-cultural factors shaping the development of our Western Civilization; and 4) more effective critical thinking abilities. Diligent students can expect to leave this course with a far better knowledge of important historical civilizations and events still powerfully shaping the world in which they live right now. Conscientious students who apply themselves will also gain from this coursea greater knowledge of the fundamental skills of critical study, critical reading, critical writing, and incisive argument essential for them to do well in all future university courses and in all future working environments. Since the vast majority of IUPUI undergraduates do not manage to obtain a college degree within six years of entry—often due to very poor academic preparation and survival skills, paying close attention in this class and learning as much as you can may indeed save you from failure in the future. The ethical standards and moral issues raised by each of the required masterwork readings will also aid diligent students to fashion a strong, superior, and personal set of civil values, principles that will help you to think, to learn, and to live better. Progress toward these course objectives fulfills the IUPUI Principles of Undergraduate Learning, especially enhancement of Core Communication Skills, Critical Thinking, Integration and Application of Knowledge, Intellectual Depth and Breadth, Understanding Society and Culture, and High Ethical Behavior.

The aim of this course is not to fill the student's mind with a mass of useless, memorized, boring, and quickly forgotten "facts." History is definitely not the mere accumulation of uncontested "facts" about prior times and peoples. It is not (and never has been) an "objective" or un-biased mode of inquiry about which everyone agrees. Written history is always an interpretation of the past based upon scholars' highly idiosyncratic, inherently contentious research and problematic analysis of selected surviving evidence about past, highly complex human beings, human communities, and human cultures. Such investigators, like good detectives, commonly reflect over, question, and argue about the meaning and implications of all fragmentary evidence gathered about their elusive human subjects. In these investigations strong argument and well-founded, cleverly asserted opinions are extremely important. It is opinion, not fact that drives history forward as an imaginative and artful human discipline. All students must be ready to question and to disagree over the meanings, significations, and implications of the readings assigned and the civilizations they very imperfectly communicate to us. All students must therefore prepare themselves to express their opinions about course readings and subjects as clearly, directly, and elegantly as possible. In history, opinions--crafted as interpretations based upon careful analysis of evidence--count powerfully. Your opinions about what we study, always formed by your careful reading and reflection on class assignments, are thus also important. You should be ready to share your opinions in a civil, intelligent, and determined manner orally and in writing with your instructor and with your classmates.

Following this path, we will work to break terrible, common, and pitiful misconceptions held by many about the nature of history and the value of historical study. History is not just stupid, boring facts that you memorize for tests and then forget. History taught rightly can never be a boring subject! After all, it’s where you have come from without a doubt. History may have previously appeared to you to be boring only because your prior history teachers were ill-trained, incompetent, and boring in the art of teaching history as a vibrant, constantly provocative, and deeply enlightening subject. Students should thus always expect to have their opinions challenged in this course and to be pressed in consideration of how history, even ancient history, continues to shape and inform powerfully their own lives, thoughts, and values today.

Required Course Readings: This course will address the institutional, political, social, and cultural history of human communities from circa 6000 BCE to circa 1400 CE. Special emphasis will fall on the cultures of the Mediterranean World: Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq), Ancient Greece, Republican and Imperial Rome, early “Christian” cultures, and the Middle Ages. While a short textbook and associated reader will be part of the assigned required readings, all students will also read a number of beautiful, much harder, very challenging, provocative, and memorable original works written by authors living during the time periods covered in the class. Each of these required masterworks is far better and far more valuable reading than any textbook. BE WARNED:FOR ALL STUDENTS, This is a reading-and writing-intensive course and all students who expect to thrive here need to commit to daily and serious reading of all class texts. IF YOU CANNOT COMMIT TO AND ACCOMPLISH SERIOUS, REGULAR, DAILY, INTENSIVE READING, QUIT THIS COURSE RIGHT NOW!For quality of instruction about past human communities, their values, preoccupations, arts, passions, and obsessions, there can be no better sources than such original texts. That is why we will read them, discuss them, and pay very careful attention to them in class and in your required writing assignments. These original works by great authors of the West demand interpretation so that we may come to see how they represent or communicate to us information about the societies in which they were written. We will always ask: What do these great books teach us about the society, time, and place in which they were written? More importantly, we must always ask: what do these very great books teach us about ourselves and the ways we think and the values that we hold dear? Their history is OUR history. Be prepared. NOTE: The Professor will distribute in advance reading questions relevant to each assigned masterwork text to help students comprehend the most vital themes and points in each masterwork. Never go into an assigned masterwork reading without your reading questions as a guide. Always keep your reading questions with you. Review your reading questions often and always consider carefully how best to respond to those key questions.

The required textbook and supplemental reader for this course are: Lynn Hunt, et. al., The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Fourth Edition, Vol. A, to 1500; and K. Lualdi, Sources of the Making of the West, Fourth Edition, Vol. I, To 1750. These required texts are packaged together and for sale at the IUPUI Barnes and Noble Campus Book Store. BOTH textbook and Supplement must be obtained by all students. These core textbooks are abbreviated in the reading assignments below as HUNT and LUALDI. These textbooks will provide a basic narrative of important events and documentary examples during the periods of history covered. They are full of chronologies and illustrative original documents that will help to orient you in general to the times, places, and cultures of your Western Civilization. Careful textbook reading is essential to prepare you to understand better the other, required masterwork readings assigned and on which you will write papers. Each assigned textbook chapter or supplement chapter section must be read by the date listed below. These textbooks will be supplemented by readings taken from seven great required masterworks by justly famous and vastly influential ancient authors. These great books helped to build the Western Civilization of which you are so lucky to be a part. These books and authors have powerfully shaped your life, your thoughts, your values, and will continue to do so. These seven additional required readings are (in order of use):

Ferry, David. Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

New York: 1992.

Plato. Symposium. Robin Waterfield (Translator). Oxford World's Classics, Oxford

University Press, Oxford: 1994.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. A.D. Melville (Translator). Oxford World's Classics, Oxford

University Press, Oxford: 1987, reissued 1998.

Pliny the Elder. Natural History: A Selection. J.F. Healy (Translator). Penguin Classics

Edition, 1991, reprint 2004.

St. Benedict. The Rule of Saint Benedict. Vintage Books/Vintage Spiritual Classics, 1998.

Einhard/Notiker, Two Lives of Charlemagne.David Ganz (Translator). Penguin Classics

Edition, 2008.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Vol. 1, The Inferno. Mark Musa (Translator),

Penguin Classics Edition, 1984, reissued 2003.

All required texts for this course are for sale in the IUPUI Barnes and Noble Bookstore, Basement, History Section, H113 Shelves. Cheaper used copies of all of these readings can easily be found at online booksellers such as Amazon.com. IF YOU BUY YOUR BOOKS OFF-CAMPUS, BE SURE TO GET THE EXACT EDITIONS NOTED ABOVE. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOUGET EXACTLY THESE BOOKS AND CHOOSE OVERNIGHT OR MOST RAPID DELIVERY FOR ALL ONLINE BOOK PURCHASES. GET ALL OF YOUR BOOKS FAST! All students must purchase and read their own hard copies of the required texts. Buy or rent them all IN HARD COPY ONLY. NO ELECTRONIC BOOKS ARE PERMITTED IN MY SECITONS! If you buy or rent at the IUPUI campus bookstore, get your books early since the bookstore very quickly ships back unsold copies of all textbooks early in the semester. NOTE: for superior student comprehension and retention of information read, real books—hard or soft back—are always to be preferred to electronic copies. Often conveyed and carried in inherently distracting and superficial electronic media environments, E-Books, as yet, cannot be as thoroughly annotated, highlighted, underlined, effectively assimilated, and comprehended as well as real books can. DO NOT CHEAT YOURSELF OR YOUR EDUCATION, SKIP E-BOOKS FOR SERIOUS EDUCATION.

Supplemental Course Material from the World Wide Web: Students should be aware that a vast amount of material in diverse formats (texts, images, maps, graphs, etc.) highly relevant to the cultural history of Western Civilization can be found in their course textbook and at various sites on the World Wide Web. Through three required text-media projects assigned over the semester, all students will examine more closely brief examples of such media and provide written replies to questions on them posed by the professor. Some of these projects will require use of the Web-based materials. Please see the professor if you have little or no experience with web-based research work. He will be happy to arrange an individual Web tutorial conference with you.

Online Grammar and Writing Workshops: All students in this H113 section will be expected to prepare several written text-media projects, take-home essay examinations, and papers on course readings and relevant topics. Thus, all students should be aware that substantial assistance with the logistics and forms of university-level writing is also available through numerous online writing centers and workshops. One of the best such online writing centers, providing many screens of information on all aspects of paper organization and composition, can be found through PurdueUniversity. Visit OWL, Purdue's Online Writing Lab, at:

NOTE: The professor fully expects all students to strive for perfection in the organization, grammar, writing, and argument of all their course written assignments. Any lesser effort by any student betrays irresponsibility and a lack of adequate self-respect. Dereliction of constant duty toexcellence in any class work by any student will not be tolerated by this instructor. As a student, your only acceptable goal in every class is excellence. The professor will be happy to help all students with improvement of their oral and written expression skills via individual paper conferences arranged by appointment, review and commentary in advance on drafts submitted in timely fashion for all portions of all course written assignments (including outlines, introductory paragraphs, paper sections, and entire drafts), and referrals to helpful staff at the University Writing Center if necessary.

Course Requirements: 1) Regular attendance at all class sessions (two unexcused absences will lower your final grade for course participation by an entire mark or more at the professor’s discretion). Class rosters for student signature will becirculated at all class sessions and reviewed daily by the instructor. It is IMPERATIVE that all students sign the roster on every day of class attendance. Make certain that your name is on these rosters. All students missing any class without documented excuse will be penalized accordingly. Students who cannot assure consistent attendance at allclass meetings should save us all discontent and drop this class at once. All students will come to class exactly on time every class day, prepared to learn, always equipped with their books assigned for the day, with materials to take notes, and with all cell phones and all computers turned off. No student is permitted to take notes via computer at any time. Students who fall asleep will not be tolerated in my classroom. I will fail you for the entire course if you fall asleep once. Classrooms are not cafeterias. No eating here; it prevents you from attentive class participation, note taking, and can disturb your classmates;2) completion of all assigned readings by the dates listed below; 3) completion on time of all assigned map and text-media projects; 4) completion of a take-home, Mid-Term Examination comprised of essay questions; 5) completion of a non-comprehensive take-home, Final Examination comprised of essay questions; 6) completion exactly on time of two research papers with two required outlines for each, one paper on a topic assigned by the instructor on course readings and one on an assigned topic within a course reading or on a theme and course reading chosen by the student with the instructor's expressed approval; and 7) informed, vocal participation in all class discussions. All written work submitted late is subject to severe grade penalties at the discretion of the Professor. Both papers may be re-written twice with the Professor’s assistance for a higher grade. Deadlines are deadlines, learn to meet them for all assignments all of the time.

Additional Course Requirements for Honors Students Only Honors College students will be expected to meet all the requirements above except point 6 on papers. Honors students instead will write a total of five essays over the course of the term focused on some of the masterwork texts assigned. In addition, Honors students are required to attend five additional pre-class meetings (scheduled on class days at 8:00 a.m. as noted in the Course Outline and Assignments below). These meetings are mandatory and will enable sharper and more focused discussion on prime class texts, a core component of respectable, Honors-level instruction at any university.

Course Grading: Mid-Term 10% of final grade; Final 20% of final grade; Text-Media Projects 15%; Papers (2) 40% of final grade; and Class Participation 15% of final grade.

Course Grading Honors Students: Mid-Term 5% of final grade; Final Exam 15% of final grade; Text-Media Projects 5% of final grade, papers (5) 60% of final grade; and Class Participation 15% of final grade.

COURSE OUTLINE AND ASSIGNMENTS

(All Readings to be Completed by the Date They Are Listed)

Tue. 08/21 Course Introduction. Distribution of Syllabus. First Lecture on History and

Geography. Distribution of First Map Project.

Thr. 08/23 Lecture on Deep Time, Deep History, Ancient Civilizations, and Their

Complex Geo-Histories. Readings:HUNT, Preface, Contents, To the Student,

How to ReadPrimary Sources, Prologue, and Chapt.1, pp. v--xxxii,

P-1-P-14and 3-33.NOTE : To the Student. Background information on