DRAFT! This is the syllabus from last summer’s course, and the 2016 course will follow a similar format. No books to buy.

Seminar on Historical Method: Theory and Approach

HIST 293-301 MW 9am-11:40am (blended course)

Holton Hall 341 Summer 2015 May 26-June 20

Office hours: MW after class and by appointment

Instructor: Joe AustinOffice: Holton Hall, 391

Office Phone: 229-4531email:

Catalog description: Systematic exploration of the varieties of historical thought and of common problems in writing history, including causation, generalization, objectivity, purpose and value of history.

Course description HIST 293 is a sophomore-level seminar class that introduces history majors and minors to the basic skills, techniques, and frameworks that inform historical research and writing. To that end, we’ll spend a considerable amount of time learning to locate, evaluate, and contextualize primary and secondary sources materials, and place these in written dialogue with historical scholarship.

This is a sophomore-level course. At minimum, I expect you to be able to: 1) keep up with the required reading at the assigned pace; 2) keep up with the required writing at the assigned pace; 3) keep up with the required research each week; 4) read critically and think independently; form your own judgments, and be able to defend and explain your judgments based on reasonable evidence, using basic academic criteria; 5) put your descriptions, explanations, and arguments into written formats that can be easily understood and accepted by other students and scholars; 6) listen, speak about, and debate matters of interest in an engaged but respectful way.

Required Readings: No book purchases are required. 5 required articles are available on the course D2L site + handouts + your daily class notes, plus the materials you select for your research project.

Assignments

A Take-Home Essay Exam will constitute 20% of the final grade. The exam will be based on class discussions, handouts, and assigned readings. See Schedule.

Active Participation will determine 20% of the final grade. With the exception of the Student Reviewer

Suggestions written near the end of the course, the participation grade is based exclusively on

Speaking in Class. It is expected that all students contribute something useful to each discussion; your participation grade drops by half if you do not contribute something useful in at least 5 of the 7 discussions (this means your final grade drops by 10 points). Students are also expected to read the assigned materials before class; come to class prepared to speak; speak respectfully; attend class on time; ask critical questions; and acceptably complete the assignments.

The Research Project will determine 60% of the final grade. This is a multi-part, cumulative assignment that extends across the entire semester. The Research Project includes a Topics Template, Primary Source Templates #1, #2, and #3, a Secondary Source Template, a Draft of the title, intro paragraph, and outline, and a draft of the final paper. Each of these 7 assignments is worth 5% of the final grade, or together, 35% of the final grade. The completed Final Paper is worth 25%.

Due dates/Late Work/ Missing papers/Incompletes

All written work is due at the BEGINNING OF CLASS. Late work will be penalized 10% per day, beginning at the end of the class when the assignment was due. All required work must be completed to receive a passing grade. No incompletes (“I”) for the course will be allowed.

Attendance

DANGER!!!! ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED IN THIS COURSE!!!!

  • This course meets only 7 times in a face-to-face format during the semester.
  • The first absence (for WHATEVER REASON) is “excused,” no questions asked.
  • PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT EXCUSES FOR YOUR FIRST ABSENCE.
  • ANY AND ALL subsequent absences that are not excused will reduce your final grade by 5 points per absence.
  • more than 2 total absences will result in failure of the course.
  • All absences (after the first) require some sort of documentation of emergency, distress, or over-riding obligation to be excused.
  • Attendance will be recorded by means of student sign-in sheets. It is the student’s responsibility to sign in each class. The sign-in sheet will be the determinant of any dispute about absences.

Academic misconduct.

Cheating on exams or plagiarism are violations of the academic honor code and carry severe sanctions, including failing a course or even suspension or dismissal from the University. See the link below: http://www4.uwm.edu/dos/conduct/academic-misconduct.cfm

I follow all University policies in cases of academic misconduct. The University policy states: “Academic misconduct is an act in which a student seeks to claim credit for the work or efforts of another without authorization or citation, uses unauthorized materials or fabricated data in any academic exercise, forges or falsifies academic documents or records, intentionally impedes or damages the academic work of others, engages in conduct aimed at making false representation of a student's academic performance, or assists other students in any of these acts.”

For this course, academic misconduct includes (but is not limited to) cheating on an examination; submitting written work as one's own when a part or all is the work of another; submitting a paper or assignment that contains ideas or research of others without appropriately identifying the sources of those ideas; knowingly and intentionally assisting another student in any of the above. If you have ANY questions about what these guidelines mean AT ANY TIME before handing in your work, please contact me.

Emergency situations will be handled on an individual basis, but be aware that some sort of evidence that an emergency actually existed will be required. Student athletes, students with disabilities, or students with other kinds of situations (including military service, religious observances) that might make meeting deadlines or criteria difficult should see me no later than the second class session to make necessary arrangements.

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Schedule/Due Dates

Wed, May 27For This Class: Discussion: Introductions. Primary sources, secondary sources, and tertiary sources. Commercial materials for a popular audience interested in history. Subfields, periodizations, and geographies. Generating narrow topics for a research paper. How to read a newspaper (historically). Newspapers as primary sources. How to use the UWM Proquest electronic Newspaper databases. How to write a primary source annotated bibliography.

For next class: Read, take notes: Tosh-Historical Awareness and Uses of History (available in Content, “Articles,” on D2L). Research and Write: Topics Template: Describe 2 topics of interest in 20th century US history, with at least a 4-sentence initial description for each topic based on one or more secondary or tertiary sources. Next, Primary Source Template #1: search the UWM Library’s Proquest databases for newspaper articles related to each of your topics. Summarize what you find, in one paragraph, for each topic – no need to read a lot of articles, a few will do. Select the research topic that seems most promising to you, then select one of the major newspaper articles you located, and write a primary source annotated bibliography.

Mon, June 1 For This Class: DUETopics Template (20th century US history); Primary Source Template #1 (newspaper article)..

Meet in the Library with Tyler Smith, first floor, west side, Library Room A for Course Integrated Instruction (90 minutes). Discussion: Topics generation and the results of newspaper searches. Critically reading primary sources. Tosh-Historical Awareness and Uses of History (available in Content, “Articles,” on D2L). Locating online archival collections relevant to your topics.

For next class: Read, take notes: Sample HIST 600 paper (available in Content, “Articles,” on D2L). Research and Write: Search for primary sources related to each of your topics. Primary Source Template #2: Summarize what you find, in one paragraph, for each topic. Select the research topic that seems most promising to you, then select the most promising primary source you located for that topic, and write a primary source annotated bibliography.

Wed, June 3For This Class: Due Primary Source Template #2.

 Meet in the Library with Brad Houston, first floor, west side, Classroom A for UWM

Archives Instruction (90 minutes). Discussion: Results of primary sources searches. Article #3. Narrowing to a single topic. Locating a relevant archival collection of primary sources for your topic.

For next class: Read, take notes: “Eisenhower Administration and the Dilemma of Race in US Foreign Policy” and “Massive Resistance and the Civil Rights Awakening” (available in Content, “Articles,” on D2L). Research and Write: Narrow to a single topic. Locate an archival collection for your selected topic. Primary Source Template #3: summarize what you find, in a paragraph. Select one relevant primary source from the collection, and write a primary source annotated bibliography. Begin looking for secondary sources relevant to your topic.

Mon, June 8For This Class: Due Primary Source Template #3.

 Meet in Regular Classroom for the remainder of the semester.

Discussion: Archival collections and primary sources students selected for Primary Source Template #3. “Eisenhower Administration and the Dilemma of Race in US Foreign Policy” and “Massive Resistance and the Civil Rights Awakening” (available in Content, “Articles,” on D2L). Locating secondary sources (academic interpretations). Historical context and scholarly dialogue. How to write a secondary source annotated bibliography. Creating intro paragraph, thesis, and outline. Preparing for Exam #1.

For next class: Research and Write: Search UWM databases and locate secondary sources (scholarly articles) related to your topic. Select two academic journal articles, and write using Secondary Source Template. Write draft title, draft introductory paragraph and outline for final paper. Begin Take Home Exam

Wed, June 10For This Class: Due Secondary Source Template. Draft title, draft intro paragraph, and outline.

Discussion: Secondary sources (academic interpretations), historical context and scholarly dialogue. Workshop on title, intro paragraph, and outline. From outline to draft of paper.

For next class: Research and Write: Take Home Exam, Draft of final paper

Mon, June 15For This Class: Due  Take Home Exam. Draft of final paper posted to D2L by midnight.

Discussion: Writing useful responses to drafts. Writing workshop.

For next class: Research and Write: Student Reviewer Suggestions (3-5); continue revising your draft of the final paper.

Wed., June 17 LAST MEETING, ATTENDANCE MANDATORY

For This Class: Due  Student Reviewer Suggestions (3-5) + your current draft of the final paper.

Discussion: Workshops on paper drafts. 5 minute (or less) oral presentation about your final paper. Course evaluations.

Final Paper Due Saturday, June 20, at 6pm, to Joe via email attachment.

The Final Research Paper

The final paper is a 10 page (minimum) essay that synthesizes the primary and secondary materials selected, evaluated, analyzed, and written in the earlier parts of the class, plus any further primary and secondary sources you collected. The final paper should assemble the best of your thinking about the primary and secondary sources into a coherent argument or interpretation. What did you learn after the research and writing? How would you turn this into a conversation with other historians? How will you narrate the significance of these primary and secondary sources to your audience? The final paper is not simply a remix of your other class writings; it must make a clear intellectual extension from the earlier writings, towards a more sophisticated awareness of historical understanding.

Goals:

1. Critically evaluate primary and secondary sources.

2. Increase the student's capacities for making informed and independent evaluation pertaining to the nature of historical knowledge, language, and representation

3. Increase the student’s understanding of the complexities and varieties of history

4. Increase the student’s capacity for synthesizing across differing bodies of knowledge.

5. Organize the results of these syntheses and analyses into a coherent order, and write in a clear and logical style appropriate to the discipline of history

6. Gain competence in citation and notation for research papers

Requirement, Format, and Grading:

Within the body of a well-written, thoughtful, and elegant essay of 10 pages or more:

  1. Describe the primary source(s) you selected for analysis.
  2. Place the primary source(s) in relation to several significant contexts based on the secondary sources you selected.
  3. I will be impressed by papers that take up one or more “varieties of historical thought” or subfields.
  4. I will be impressed by papers that answer at least 2 of the research questions that you generated in the Primary Source Annotated Bibliographies, or explain why certain important questions cannot be answered by the primary and secondary sources you have selected.
  5. In your analysis, be sure to explain:
  6. Why your primary source is telling or important
  7. What we (the audience) can understand about the events/ideas surrounding the source’s creation through reading them
  8. How the source reflects or demonstrates larger themes or problems in the past
  9. Papers shorter than 10 full pages will be discounted proportionally; e.g., an 8 page paper will begin with 8/10% (80%) of a full grade.
  10. Double space the paper using Times Roman (or similar font), 12 point, 1-inch margins, with numbered pages.
  11. Footnote (Chicago style) all materials from which you quote or to which you are indebted for a fact or an idea. There is no need for a bibliography.
  12. The grading rubrics for this assignment will be distributed in class as a handout; See the schedule for due dates.

This assignment constitutes 25% of your final grade.

Final Paper Due Saturday, June 20, at 6pm, to Joe via email attachment.

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