Grade Components:

PROFESSIONALISM  (15%):

Your active participation in class activities and discussion are crucial to the success of the course.  You are expected to come to class fully prepared to discuss the day’s readings; this includes bringing copies of your reading assignments so that you can support your ideas with specific examples, as well as your notes and questions on the material.  You will be graded on the quality of your contributions to our class discussions.  You cannot earn an excellent grade (A) in a discussion-based class like this one if you do not regularly contribute to our discussions.  Simply attending class without any further involvement in our discussions will result in a participation grade of “C” or “Satisfactory.”

You will be given the chance to evaluate your participation and make a case for what participation grade you deserve several times during the semester.  This is a chance for you to reflect on your involvement in the class, and to let me know how you feel you are doing.  I take your personal assessment very seriously.

Professionalism also means doing your best work and turning it in when it’s due. No excuses, no explanations, just doing the work on time. It’s a remarkably easy thing to do and absolutely an essential element of any definition of professionalism.

It also means showing up to class and on being on time. It means treating each other with respect.

Quizzes and response papers (25%)

To insure that students have the opportunity to demonstrate that they have processed the assigned readings, each week there will be either an in-class quiz, a paragraph summary assignment or a short response paper. The short quiz is just that, ten or so multiple-choice questions about the readings.  The (250-word) response paper will address a prompt and employ document analysis and accurate contextualization. You will receive two handouts on constructing a response paper.

paragraph summaries (20%)

Paragraph summaries will offer a one-sentence summary of each paragraph of the assigned readings (Taylor, Hammalainen, and Hahn).

Summary of Journal Articles  (20%)

Each student will summarize two of the four journal articles assigned in this course. Everyone will be responsible for reading the articles. These 1000-word summaries will place the article in historiographic context, outline the basic argument, summarize the narrative, and offer a critical perspective of the article. Students will be assigned one article from the first half of the course and a second from the second half. You will receive a hand-out describing one potential structure for this assignment.

Midterm (10%)

Final Project  (10%)

Each student will complete a five-paragraph assignment.