Download CRN 12106 - World History to 1500 (ONLINE)

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.