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Hist 200: Section 03 The West in Global Perspective Samford University, Spring Semester 2006 TR 08:00-09:50am DBH 217 ________________________________________________________________________ Contact Information Professor: Dr. Barry Robinson Office Hrs: Monday/Wednesday mornings, Tuesday/Thursday 1:30-2:30pm, or by appt. Office: DBH 314 Office Phone: 726-4318 Home Phone: 414-9654 (Anytime before 11:00pm) E-mail: bmrobins@samford.edu ________________________________________________________________________ Course Description and Objectives An examination of the development of Western Civilization in its global setting since 1500 through its political, social, economic and scientific evolution. History 200.03 will explore this “global setting” through five case studies from different world regions, including Latin America, Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. Course lectures outlining key themes in the transformation of Western Civilization will be counterposed with readings and discussion of the historical development of these regions and their interaction with the West. Our principal objective will be to explain the interaction of Europeans and their cultural descendants with non-western societies around the world during the last five centuries. Students should develop a general knowledge of some basic historical patterns of the modern world, as well as some intellectual tools for understanding parts of it in detail. A number of class sessions will focus on the sources of European colonialism and nationalism, moving chronologically from 1500 to the present. Many class days will also be spent covering the history in microcosm of one of our five regional case studies. We will approach these case studies through a “great roads” theme – that is, sampling the history of a region by studying who and what went up and down one major transportation corridor. This lets an instructor talk about important institutional developments (for example, the hacienda in Mexico) while still keeping things at a human scale (descriptions of two specific haciendas, for example, one owned by Santa Anna and one by an ill-fated British-American couple). The five regional roads, each with its accompanying book, are listed in the next section. ________________________________________________________________________ Readings I. LATIN AMERICA (Mexico’s Veracruz to Mexico City corridor): Stuart Scwartz, Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico [ISBN: 0312393555] II. EAST ASIA (Japan’s Tokaido from Tokyo to Kyoto): Oliver Statler, Japanese Inn [ISBN: 0824808185] III. SOUTH ASIA (the Grand Trunk Road from India’s Kolcota to Pakistan’s Lahore): Rudyard Kipling, Kim [ISBN: 0140183523] IV. AFRICA (South Africa’s Durban-to-Johannesburg corridor): Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom [ISBN: 0316548189] V. THE MIDDLE EAST (network of roads from Damascus south to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Nile Delta): Amal Rifa'i, et al, We Just Want to Live Here: A Palestinian Teenager, an Israeli Teenager -- an Unlikely Friendship [ISBN: 0312318944] ________________________________________________________________________ Assignments and Grading 50% Exams (15% - First Exam, 15% - Second Exam, 20% - Final) 20% Daily Reading Quizzes (2 lowest grades dropped) 25% Research Project (Paper and GIS Presentation) 5% Poverty Simulation / Museum Assignment I. Reading Quizzes (20%) There is no general textbook for the course. However, the five regional readings are crucial to success in the class, and students are expected to complete all assigned readings by the day listed in the schedule. Daily quizzes will be administered in both an individual and group format, with the 2 lowest grades for each student dropped at the end of the semester. (~20 Quizzes, with 2 lowest grades dropped). II. Poverty Simulation / Museum Assignment and Film Reviews (5%) All students are required to choose between: Option A) Participate in the Poverty Simulation experience on March 27th (Details in class) Option B) Travel to and spend at least one hour on the third floor of the Birmingham Museum of Art, perusing the China & Japan rooms, the South and Southeast Asia rooms, the Africa room and the MesoAmerica rooms. The instructor will give specific instructions and help arrange transportation of those without closer to time. III. Research Project: Paper and GIS Presentation, details provided in class (25%) IV. Exams. All exams will contain essay, ID, and mapping components (50%) 15% First Exam 15% Second Exam 20% Final (Partially Cumulative) *Extra Credit Opportunity: Monday 24 April, at 7:30pm, in Reid Chapel. Rushton Lecture address by Stanford Professor Larry Diamond, a prominent figure in academic and policy circles. The topic has not yet been formulated, but it will draw on Dr. Diamond's experiences with democratrization in Iraq and other African and Middle Eastern nations. ________________________________________________________________________ Grading Scale A 93.0 - 100% A- 90.0 - 92.9% B+ 87.0 - 89.9% B 83.0 - 86.9% B- 80.0 - 82.9% C+ 77.0 - 79.9% C 70.0 - 72.9% C- 73.0 - 76.9% D+ 67.0 - 69.9% D 63.0 - 66.9% D- 60.0 - 62.9% F 00.0 - 59.9% ________________________________________________________________________ The GIS Approach This semester, History 200 will include a Geographic Information System (GIS) approach, since the instructors are currently working with some other Samford faculty members on a National Science Foundation sponsored grant to spread such “information literacy” through the general education curriculum. GIS translates (loosely) as computerized mapping, though it is really a data management scheme organized by location. Think about how computer hardware and software has transformed the actual writing of history (word processing programs) as well as the researching of history (internet searches; databases such as JSTOR that you can query; internet chat rooms on specialized topics of research). In just as radical a fashion computers are transforming the way maps are used in the study and teaching of history. Traditional maps have been 2-D paper maps hung on a wall or printed on a page in a book – to a fixed scale, voiceless, static. Now with computers and increasingly sophisticated software (such as the ArcGIS recently installed in most computer labs on campus) you can interactively navigate around in them, change scale on the fly by zooming in or out, query individual features as to name or other attributes, turn on, off, colorize, etc., whole layers of features such as roads, railroads, rivers, urban areas, and much more. None of this high-tech mapping will ever replace traditional historical training in the use of proof, the construction of historical argument, the drive to get to primary sources, and so on – but just as with word processing, electronic databases and the internet, it promises to transform the way history is written and taught. Plus, you can apply these GIS mapping skills widely to other fields than history, another reason that it seems appropriate to add to a general education class. To make a long story short, built into this semester are some GIS mapping sessions involving visualizing our international “great roads” along which modern history moved. The first of these will be of the Veracruz-to-Mexico City corridor. This will include computerized “fly-bys” as if you were piloting your own personal plane over and through the landscape. Later in the semester small group research projects will be driven by and then presented in such a GIS format. There will be study sheets and some classroom and computer lab introduction to each of these. Students will need to bring a 256mb flashdrive to each GIS lab session (entering freshmen will have been issued one). ________________________________________________________________________ Schedule* * Reading assignments should be completed by the class day for which they are listed. Schedule subject to adjustment during the semester. Date Readings Topics 1/26 NONE Introduction, Global Convergence and 3 ‘Isms 1/31 Victors & Vanquished Part 1 New Worlds In and Out of Europe / 16th-18thc Colonialism (pp. 245-246, 1-15, and 29-34) 2/2 Victors & Vanquished Part 2 Case study #1: The West from the Mexican Perspective (pp. 40-43, 49, 79-80, 100-126) Mexico Map / Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica – Conquest – Colonial Mexico – 1848 2/7 Victors & Vanquished Part 3 Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment / Mexico, (pp. 127-181) 1848 – Present 2/9 Victors & Vanquished Part 4 GIS lab / Age of Revolutions (pp. 182-229) 2/14 Statler endsheeets, chpts. 1-2,4 Age of Revolutions / The West from the Japanese Perspective 2/16 Statler chpts. 5-7 Japan / Industrial Revolution 2/21 Statler chpts. 10, 13-14 Liberalism & Positivism / Exam Review 2/23 NONE FIRST EXAMINATION 2/28 NONE Cultural Nationalism-19th-20thc Colonialism / WWI 3/2 Kipling map, chpts. 1-4 The West from the Indian/Pakistani Perspective 3/7 Kipling chpts. 5-8 Indian Subcontinent cont. 3/9 Kipling chpts. 9-12 Indian Subcontinent cont. 3/14 Kipling 13-15 GIS lab (8-9) / Socialism 3/16 NONE WWII in Global Perspective [SPRING BREAK March 20-24, no classes] 3/28 NONE Exam Review 3/30 NONE SECOND EXAMINATION 4/4 Mandela map, chpts. 1-8 The West from the South African Perspective 4/6 Mandela chpts. 9-12 South Africa 4/11 Mandela 13-17 South Africa / GIS lab (8-9) 4/13 Mandela chpts. 18-26 Nationalism simulation/game 4/18 Rifa’i Part 1 Cold War and Since 4/20 Rifa’i Part 2 West from the Middle Eastern Perspective *Extra Credit Opportunity: Diamond Lecture, Monday 24 April, 7:30pm, in Reid Chapel 4/25 Rifa’i Part 3 Middle East Continued 4/27 Rifa’i Part 4 Middle East Continued / Current Geopolitics 5/2 NONE Case Studies Conclusion / GIS lab 5/4 NONE GIS research presentations: Mexico, S. Africa, Japan 5/9 NONE GIS research presentations: India, Middle East Tuesday, May 16, 2006 8:00am FINAL EXAMINATION Other important semester dates: Jan. 26 - 10:00 a.m. required university convocation Jan. 31 - last day to Drop/Add without financial penalty Mar. 13 - last day to withdraw without academic penalty April. 25 - last day to completely withdraw from semester without academic penalty ________________________________________________________________________ Attendance Policy: Students are expected to attend every class session. As you are only able to drop the lowest two daily readings quiz scores, excessive absences will hurt your grade. Additionally, more than 5 total absences will result in a grade of FA. Exceptions will only be made in the event of a serious illness or emergency in which the student provides documentation from the Dean’s office requesting an exception to the policy. Unless prior arrangements are made with the professor, it will be the student's responsibility to determine what was missed during their absence and to arrange for any necessary remediation. Academic Integrity: The Samford Honor Code governs all work done in this course, written or otherwise. In all cases students are expected to present original work, or to properly acknowledge the source of information gathered from other sources. Please refer to your copy of the Student Handbook for a more complete discussion of the importance of academic integrity. If in doubt about a particular issue, consult the professor. Disabilities: Samford University complies with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Students with disabilities who seek accommodations must make their request by contacting Disability Support Services, located in Counseling Services on the lower level of Pittman Hall (telephone number: 726-4078 or 726-2105). Instructor will grant reasonable accommodations only upon written notification from Disability Support Services. |