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History 2301 Fall 2010 World History to 1500 CRN 12106 Dr. Németh-Jesurún ENTIRELY ONLINE About the Course Course Description: As a way to reduce chaos, bring order, and organize life, humans that lived before us developed systems of government, society, and religion. Their governments enabled groups of people to live together and interact, or not, with others around them. Social systems positioned individuals in their world, and dictated their role in it. Finally, the religions of the world helped human beings deal with the stages of life, such as birth and death, as well as with the incomprehensible changes in their world. CLASS OBJECTIVES and OUTCOMES The purpose of this course is to help you understand the various cultures, their traditions, and their development in the ancient world. This will be accomplished in several ways. Lectures and the textbook will provide the background material, or context, in which events and trends occurred. The original source material will give you each writer’s individual perspective on a particular issue of importance to the chapter. Additionally, through online discussions students will be shown how to analyze and evaluate the primary source material. By the end of the course, you should be thinking historically and analyzing primary documents in a rigorous fashion. This will be accomplished through the weekly assignments and the writing assignment. CLASS PHILOSOPY This course provides the student who takes it with a degree of flexibility that is unavailable in the traditional classroom setting. You choose when you read and answer discussion questions as long as your work is completed by the due date. In a very real sense, your learning is self-directed and self-motivated. You must be a "self-starter;" by that I mean someone who works without being nagged. You must monitor your own performance in the course. What you take away from the course will in large measure be determined by how much time and effort you put into it. Since this course is entirely online, you need to be computer literate. If you are not good on the computer, this may not be the course for you. This course is taught on the UTEP's Blackboard platform. If you need assistance with Blackboard you can visit the Atlas Lab located in UGLC, Room 202. Approach the Help Desk and tell them you need assistance with your online course. REQUIRED READING LIST Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Beginnings Through the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1: by Tignor, Adelman, Aron et al. (Norton), ISBN 13-97803939 25487 COURSE MATERIAL and ASSIGNMENTS In this course, the lectures and other visual material are provided for you. It will be your responsibility to read and process this material. You will be called upon in your assignments and exams to show your proficiency with the material. Downloading and reading lectures once will not be sufficient. Since this is an online course, weekly discussions on each chapter of the textbook will be conducted in small groups on group discussion boards. Each week, each group will submit a short document answering a set of questions that I will provide. If a group shrinks due to student or faculty member drops, I reserve the right to reconfigure the group. Additionally, you will complete a geography exam, a writing assignment, and two essay type examinations for the midterm and the final. World History to 1500 Course Calendar Fall 2010 Drop Deadline 10/29 Exam: 3 P.M. Friday 12/3 through 9 P.M. Saturday 12/4 Please make advance arrangements to take the exam at this time on a secure computer system. Just as in a job, deadlines are just that--due dates by which you need to complete the required work. Your postings to your group's discussion board are due by midnight, Wednesday. Group Assignments are due on Thursday, by midnight. If you fail to post on time or do not post at all, you will receive no credit for that assignment. If the group fails to post an assignment, no one in the group gets credit. For simplicity's sake, each week starts with Sunday's date. Date 8/22 Subject Reading Due Date Syllabus Quiz, Plagiarism Quiz, Ch 1 pp 3-46 midnight 8/29 & Assignment 1 on your own! The first chapter and lecture give you background about how and where human beings developed as they did. 8/29 Geography Exam midnight 9/4 The logic behind this is to make sure that you know where the places you are studying are located. You must study and take the exam on your own time! 9/5 Rivers, Cities, and First States Ch 2 51-93 9/9 Assignment 2 first group assignment! The chapter and the lecture provide you with an overview of how early humans fed and clothed themselves and how they gravitated toward river valleys. 12 Nomads, Territorial States, and Micro-Societies Ch 3 97-156 Assignment 3 Here you will see how humans responded to wide-spread drought, the domestication of the horse and the advent of the chariot. 16 19 First Empires and Common Cultures in Afro-Eurasia Ch 4 141-180 Assignment 4 Here too we see how humans responded to environmental change which in turn led to new settlements on the edge of larger kingdoms. 23 26 World Turned Inside Out Ch 5 183-228 30 Assignment 5 This chapter and lecture focus on the political upheaval that arose with great intellectual advancement. Just as today, new ideas threaten entrenched individuals, groups, and institutions. 10/3 Shrinking the Afro-Eurasian World Ch 6 231-272 Assignment 6 We tend to think that globalization is something unique to our time, but this is false. Here we will see how AfroEurasia became linked. 10 Take home Midterm Examination 17 Han Dynasty and Imperial Rome Ch 7 275-318 Assignment 7 China and the Roman Empire perhaps seem worlds apart, which they were, but only in terms of geography. This close examination of both demonstrates many similarities in development, even as differences are also pointed out. 24 The Rise of Universal Religions Ch 8 321-363 28 Assignment 8 In the west, we know about the rise of Christianity, but concomitant with its development was religious ferment in Africa, China, and Mesoamerica. 31 New Empires and Common Cultures Ch 9 367-414 11/4 Assignment 9 The rise of Islam, its spread, and its impact on the Middle East and beyond are discussed here. 11/7 Becoming "The World" 10/7 midnight 10/15 Ch 10 417 468 21 11 Assignment 10 This is the world of Marco Polo and one with which we are familiar--trade. Traders brought with them many things besides the goods which they sold or those they bought. Their influence, just like that of American food, cinema, and music today, extended far beyond the markets where they did business. 14 Crises and Recovery in Afro-Eurasia Ch 11 473-508 Assignment 11 Individual illness is bad enough, but when an entire continent succumbs to plague, the outcomes range far and wide. 21 Writing Assignment 28 Review on your own. Final Exam: 3 P.M. Friday 12/3 through 9 P.M. Saturday 12/4 28 11/28 by midnight.