214, Humanities Spring Semester 2009, The Medieval and Renaissance World Instructor: Alison Heston, Section 214.012 Monday Lecture 11:25-12:35 Humanities Lecture Hall Tuesday/Thursday 11:00-12:10 Karpen Hall 033 Office: Karpen Hall 212 (this is a borrowed office from Dr. Cindy Ho) Office Hours: Thursdays 12:15-1:15 or by appointment Email: [e-mail] Phone: [phone] (home), [phone] (cell), no calls after 10:00 pm please Humanities Web Site: http://www.unca.edu/humanities (program objectives and events) Emergency Weather Line: [phone] Call for late start or cancelled classes Required Texts: Fiero vols. 2, 3, and 4: The Humanistic Tradition, 5th ed. (note: Vol. 2 was used in Hum. 124 and Vol. 4 will be used in Hum. 324, so students keep your copies) The Asheville Reader (AR): vol. 2, The Medieval and Renaissance World, 2nd ed. Othello (any edition is fine, including the one in the Bookstore) Sundiata (Niane edition, on sale in the Bookstore) Various texts on e-reserve Any other articles the instructor may assign All readings are to be completed prior to coming to class on the day that information and text will be discussed. Bring at least one question to ask or contribute to discussion. Course Description: Humanities 214 is the 2 in the series of Humanities courses which form the core of the liberal education at UNCA. This course examines the ideas, values and world-views of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, approximately 500 C.E. (Common Era, otherwise known as A.D.) to approximately 1600 C.E., beginning with the fall of Rome and ending just prior to the Enlightenment. We will examine the world-views of Western and Non-Western concurrent cultures in order to gain insight into points of connection between different cultures in regard to religion, value/use of education, art, and how different cultures informed or did not inform one another. It is important to keep in mind that the events, texts, art and ideas from so long ago still influence us today. It will be our task to discern how, why and where we are connected to the past. This course should also encourage you to rethink your ideas about foreigners, religion, the natural world, art and culture. Keep an open mind, be available to new ideas, listen with your heart, expect the unimaginable, allow for the chance to change and your reward will be a fine awakening. There is also a great deal of reading, some of which is difficult and much of which is primary source material. Be prepared to re-read some texts two or three times.
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Course Objectives: Improve analytic skills in reading, thinking, writing and discussion; Recognize and evaluate differing values and world-views, both past and present; Increase your empathy for and understanding of people from different cultures and backgrounds;
Become acquainted with different ethical values and make your own reasoned judgment about ethical problems and issues; Develop the ability to see the connections between different disciplines and methods of analysis; Become aware of your cultural context and the importance of such for the times and writers we will study. Attendance:
Attendance is mandatory in class and at Monday lectures (see seating chart). Please file all the way to the wall so that people do not need to climb over you for a seat. You are expected to sit with your class, sign the attendance sheet (which will be passed around five minutes after the lecture begins), be on time and remain for the entire lecture. There will be an outline posted for each of the lectures on the Humanities 214 website. You should print a copy of the outline and bring it to the lecture for reference. The Monday lecture is great training for developing critical listening and note taking skills, practicing to be a responsible member of an audience, and graciously receiving a gift of knowledge carefully prepared and presented. Do not miss Monday lecturesever. If you fail to sign in, arrive on time or remain the entire time (dont leave for water, bathroom or any other engagement) you will be marked absent. Neither athletic practices nor your need to prepare for another class are excuses for missing or leaving a lecture . You are allowed three unexcused absences. Otherwise, an excused absence must have a doctors note, court document or YouTube footage documenting the spectacular reason why you are not present. I am always reasonable. Talk to me. You will lose 10 points from your accumulated tally for every absence after three. Do not assume that you may have three absences and then an unlimited number of others as excused. If you miss an egregious number of classes (7 or more) I reserve the right to fail you. You have been warned. You are responsible for all notes in the event of an absence (so get the phone number and e-mail address of several classmates). A student can neither effectively participate in discussion nor ask informed and insightful questions if he/she has not completed the assigned readings, taken notes, reviewed those notes and given thought to the days topic. It is important for your intellectual growth and education, as well as that of your fellow students, that you be prepared and present in class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Bring assigned texts to class on appropriate days (always have Fiero). Take notes in class and at Monday lectures. Review your notes after class and fill in any missing ideas or words while the information is still fresh. Quizzes will come from lecture notes, Fiero chapter readings and the Asheville Reader. No make ups for quizzes, in-class writings, mid-term or final No late papers or cultural event responses will be accepted without penalty. Expect to lose substantial points (5) on papers per day late. Notify me if you are ill, hospitalized, in an accident or facing any other kind of emergency and provide documentation at the next class.
The Office of Student Services must document any learning disabilities that affect attendance or punctuality before any accommodation can be made. Participate in class and expect to be called on. We are all in this together and we can all learn from each other if we come prepared to question, comment, connect and encourage. Bring discussion questions to class. Grading:
Your final grade will be calculated on a 1000 point scale and converts by this formula: 900-1000 =A range, 800-899=B range0-599=F, ZERO=plagiarism. Keep track of your points so that you will be aware of your progress and approximate course average. Quizzes 3 Cultural Event Responses 2 Papers 2 Midterms Final Class writings Class recitation Class discussion leader Class participation 15% 10% 20% 20% 10% 10% 5% 5% 5% 150 points (15 points each) 100 points (33 points each) 100 points each 100 points each 100 points 100 points (20 points each) 50 points 50 points 50 points
Communication: I will communicate with you through campus e-mail. Be sure that you are able to receive e-mails on the unca.edu system. I cannot send out individual messages to those who use another account. If you cannot get my communications then you will be at a disadvantage. I will be sending reading questions, paper topics, study questions, various cultural event ideas and other kinds of instructional information. You can communicate with me via email at anytime. If you have questions about papers, tests, events, attendance, gradeswhatever, then email me. Quizzes: (almost) Weekly (always open note) You can expect a quiz about once a week. They will cover information from Monday lectures, Fiero and Asheville Reader selected texts. You will be allowed to use handwritten notes during quizzes as well the Asheville Reader, but you may not use an open Fiero text. A word to the wise: take notes from Fiero in your notebook and you will be ahead of the game.
Cultural Events Response: Due Weeks 3, 6, 15 You are required to attend three cultural events this semester. That means the term beginning January 14, 2009dont write about your Christmas break or a previous vacation. A cultural event might include (but is not limited to) a gallery or museum art exhibition, musical performance, theatrical or dance production, literary reading,
interview with an interesting person (artist, scientist, philosopher, theologian, book dealer, publisher), attendance at a worship service/ceremony other than your own, or anything else relevant to the period we are studying. A cultural event may not include rented movies, sports events, festivals or trade shows. Please make every attempt to do something that is new and interesting to you. If you usually attend poetry slams (for example), then go to an opera or dance. You must vary the type of event you attendone musical event, not three, for example. Check the Humanities Website for approved events. Listen at the beginning of Monday lectures for event ideas. Ask me for suggestions. If you want to do something out of the ordinary, you must clear it with me first and make a case as to why the event is relevant. Furthermore, your cultural event response is not simply meant to be a recitation of the event. Be a reporter, but be a critic too. Think about what the event means to you and how it fits into the objectives of the course. Write a 1 page single spaced paper (meaning about 400 words or more) that accomplishes essentially the following things: *Note the date and location of the event. *Describe the event in detail, noting what took place and what you found most significant/important. Include the main ideas of a lecture or describe a song/scene that affected you in a performance. *Relate what you saw/heard/experienced to the big picture of your life. How did the cultural event connect to the larger fabric of your life and how did it reflect something/some theme we are learning about in HUM214? Did it shed light on a deeper understanding of our contemporary culture? *Attempt to include a connection to an idea or work of art/literature/music we have studied in HUM214. Note the similarities between now and then. Cultural events papers are graded on a 33 point scale: 30-33 points for excellent, 23-29 points for satisfactory, 20-22 points for unsatisfactory, 0 points over one week late without notification. Papers: Due Weeks 5 and 14 You will learn how to analyze primary source material and augment your ideas with scholarly research. Primary sources are those writings and artworks produced by men and women who lived during the era we are studying. The articles in The Asheville Reader, Othello, Sundiata are all primary sources. Fiero includes some primary source excerpts, but is not one itself. We will develop paper topics/ideas as the course progresses. You will engage a text creatively and analytically. You must do some research in order to inform and illuminate your papers, but you will be the significant scholar of your own work. You must use at least 4 secondary sources for each paper, and this does not include websitesalthough scholarly journal article found on the web are acceptable. You must engage the texts. Your paper must be interesting and informative, have a thesis and an argument, be written in standard MLA documentation format. Avoid encyclopedias and Wikipedia as sources. (See: Dr. J. Michael Gillums Dos and Donts for Scholarly Writing at http://www.unca.edu/lit/dosandddonts.htm)
Note: *Your thesis should be concise, specific, and logical. Everything you write should be tested against the thesis for continuity, consistency and relevance. A thesis is a statement that you will support, prove or demonstrate with the rest of your paper. Place it no later than the end of your first paragraph. *One key to successful writing is flow; each paragraph should easily and logically lead to the next. *Write the introduction last. If you write it first, you may find that your paper takes a different direction from your initial expectation. In a similar vein, dont begin writing your paper until youve done your research. *Be judicious in using humor; the research paper should be considered an exercise in formal, scholarly writing. Humor should be in keeping with academic formality: rare, gentle and in good taste. * Follow MLA style sheet for guidance on form, especially with regard to citations, including in-text citations, footnotes and/or endnotes, and bibliographical references. A good online reference can be found at http://www.docstyles.com/archive/mlacrib.pdf. Avoid these problems: * Using the wrong (though similar) word: lose vs. loose; theyre, their and there; led and lead, affect and effect, your and youre, for example. * Misplaced, squinting or dangling modifiers. Walking down the hall, the pictures were amazing. Children who laugh rarely are shy. * Misused prepositions. Say based on instead of based off. Say have would instead of would of. Also, its better to say because of than due to. * Modifying absolutes. A thing is unique or it is not; it cannot be very unique. * Number vs. amount. Fewer pickles, not less pickles. Less air, though, because air cant be counted. * Redundancy. Tell me the reason why this is redundant. Use either reason or why, but not both, even though people say it on television all the time. * Using suppose to or use to instead of supposed to or used to. * Using words correctly; for example, the word aspect is often used as a catch-all word, simply because the student cant think of a better word. Aspect generally requires a conjunction, like of or to, and can refer to a component part of something, a particular view of something, or a general appearance of something. * Parallelism. Items in a list should all be the same part of speech. Dont say, My favorite activities are reading, watching television, and to drive my car. * Superfluous or missing apostrophes. An apostrophe is for making a word possessive, or for making one word from two. It isnt used for making things plural. The word it, however, does not use an apostrophe to become possessive; its always represents a contraction of it is. A singular noun takes an apostrophe followed by an s, and a plural noun ending with s takes the apostrophe at the end. The dogs bone suggests one bone-owning dog, while the dogs bone suggests a canine commune. * Other punctuation problems. Use question marks for questions, not pondering statements. Bad: I wonder why he did that? Good: I wonder why he did that. (Thanks to Professor Lundblad for these suggestions)
Papers will be 4 or more pages single spaced (1200-1500 words) and should have oneinch margins all around. Use Times New Roman, Garamond or Palatino as your typeface, sized at 12 points. Indent approximately one-fourth of an inch at the beginning of each paragraph. Set a header with your name on the left and your course and section number on the right; set a footer with the page number centered at the bottom of each
page. Make sure your name is in top right corner of subsequent pages. I do not want a cover sheet, but you must include a works cited page that is not part of the overall word length. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the day they are due. Late papers will be penalized 5% a day (including weekends). Papers are to be given to the instructor in hand and no electronic submissions will be acceptedif I can find paper, ink and a printer then you can too. If a paper is placed in my mailbox or office and I do not receive it, then the paper has not been submitted. Lost or missing papers are the students responsibility, not the instructors. Please check punctuation, spelling and grammar. This is a 4 credit course. The work load is great and the expectation for the quality of work will be high. All papers will be typed, stapled and on clean copy. Make use of the writing center, have a friend proof read your writing, do not turn in a first draft. Do not beg, borrow or steal anyone elses workacademic misconduct is fully explained in the UNCA handbook and it will be punished (I reserve the right to fail a student for plagiarism of any kind). Class Writings: Periodically Throughout the semester you may be asked to write a response to an interpretive question from the readings or to answer a set of questions regarding a film. Your writing will be graded Excellent (20 points), Satisfactory (15 points), Unsatisfactory (10 points), Failure to complete (0). Exams: Weeks 7, 12, 17 Midterms: Week 7 will cover Fiero Chapters 8-13, AR texts and E-reserve selections Week 12 will cover Fiero Chapters 14-19, AR texts, Dante, Machiavelli, E-reserves Final (during university designated time for course and section) will cover Fiero Chapters 19-22, AR texts, Othello, Sundiata, and some cumulative aspects of the course Class Discussion Leader and Oral Recitation: As Scheduled Each student will be expected to lead class discussion on a selected text throughout the semester. This means that you must present an insightful analysis of the text, prepare questions for discussion and bring anything else you deem necessary for a productive class. There will be a sign up sheet for this the first week of class. You will be expected to lead discussion for about 20 minutes. Academic leadership is an important skill; everyone in the class will lead discussion, everyone will be nervous, everyone will participate and come to class prepared because we are a community of learners. Bring your outline and questions to class in a printed format in order to submit for a score (50 points). You will also be expected to memorize and recite some portion of text during the course of the semester. I will have particular pieces pre-selected. You may choose any piece you like, so long as all texts are selected. We will have two recitation days. It is important to recognize the value of learning by heart and to participate in the oral
tradition that was so significant to the people of this time period. Its also important to learn to project and to speak clearly with good diction and dramatic flare. Your score will depend upon a successful recitation. (50 points) Class Participation: Daily Can you answer a question when called on? Do you contribute to class discussion in a meaningful and helpful way? Are you engaged with the material? Do you demonstrate enthusiasm for the material? Do you encourage other students to participate and respond? Do you bring questions from the readings? You need to read everything assigned in a week before the Monday lecture in order to understand the context and content of the lecture. Then you will need to re-read and review the assignments before section meetings. This means that you will be working a week head. Some of the readings, like Othello, are long and will require quite a bit of time. You are advised to dedicate an hour or more a day to your HUM214 reading. This is a 4 credit course with a great deal of writing, many difficult primary text readings, significant amounts of new material and a large commitment of time for events and projects. Do not fall behind in your work, it will be too difficult to catch up; your classmates depend upon you to be productive, insightful and prepared in discussion. Classroom Respect and Community Expectations: We are a community of learners and pilgrims on a journey through the Middle Ages. Our goal will be to learn the material and to understand it such that we can use it to inform our lives today. We will have different responses to the themes we engage. We will investigate ideas about death, betrayal, love, sex, murder, incest, despair, triumph, God and the Devil. We should have strong feelings and opinions about such hot topics. Our discussions should reflect our passion and will be lively. Opinions will be controversial at times but everyone will be treated with respect and we will use courteous, rational and mature language at all times. Let us pursue answers to difficult questions as a supportive community of learners. A Humanities course is meant to present an occasion for the free exchange of ideas and the investigation of the significant responses. Please turn off cell phones prior to entering class and refrain from excessive or exclusive conversation. No assignments may be turned in electronically. You may e-mail questions or thoughts.
Humanities 214: Spring 2009 Schedule Week 1
(no Monday lecture) Th: 1/15 Intro to class/review of syllabus/ schedule for discussion / recitation selections
Week 2
(no Monday lectureMLK Holiday) Tu: 1/20 READ: Fiero vol. 2, ch. 8 and ch. 9 QUIZ on Fiero ...