A History of the World since 1300 @ FIX University Cultural Campus

A History of the World since 1300

Jeremy Adelman

This course will examine the ways in which the world has grown more integrated yet more divided over the past 700 years.

Course Schedule

---

All suggested readings are from Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World: From 1000 CE to the Present (Third Edition) (Vol. 2).

Week 1: September 16

Lecture 1: Peoples and Plunderers
Lecture 2: Warfare and Motion 
Suggested Reading: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, chap. 11

---

Week 2: September 23

Lecture 3: Clashing Worlds
Lecture 4: Atlantic Worlds
Suggested Reading: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, chap. 12
Global Dialogue: Robert L. Tignor

*

Guide to Writing & Evaluating Assignments

---

The writing assignment for this course enables you to compose original short essays and formulate arguments in response to questions drawn from the contents of the lectures and book.  Please consult the syllabus for the appropriate weeks’ lectures and readings.  Material for these essays should be drawn from lectures and recommended readings from Worlds Together, Worlds Apart.  Here are the important criteria that we will use in writing and grading in the discipline of history.

Writing your essay

Evidence

This criterion gauges your ability to recall and use historical examples and data.  History is, in my view, an empirical discipline informed by theory.  The ability to marshal evidence effectively is an index of the skill of the historian.  Here are some questions to consider as you write and assess your peers:

1. Is the evidence well chosen to prove the point the author is trying to make?  If the example does not illustrate the point being made, it is not well used.  (It may be fascinating, or even prove another point – but these are not relevant).


2. Is the evidence drawn from more than one national or regional case?  If it’s not, how do we know if the point is one about a “global” process?  You must seek to select evidence going beyond single cases to involve multiple case studies.  The number of cases will vary depending on the type of question and the strategy of your answer.  So, if you are asked to compare responses by societies to some kind of change (disease or technical innovation, for instance) you must show the range responses according to the multiple cases you think reflect your argument.  If the question is more about connections (explain how diseases moved around the globe), then you have to think more about the “globe” as a unit involving multiple cases – and you have to choose the number and depth of description depending on your answer and the amount of time/space allotted.

Argument

You are expected to make an argument.  An argument is not just an assembly of carefully chosen examples or fascinating data.  An argument – to put it simply – means answering the question, often explaining how or why a certain event or process happened.  But history seldom has one “correct” answer – especially for thorny problems.  Mostly, you are being asked to take a position regarding a big debate in history in which there may be multiple answers and or positions.  The challenge you face is to take a position and defend it.  Here’s an absurd example: “Were empires good for world trade?”  Possible answer: “no, because they forced everyone in colonies to throw away their extra butter when really they could have exported their surplus butter.  For instance, in Chile, the people from the island of Chiloe had warehouses of butter, while merchants from Japan sailed the Pacific Ocean looking for sources of butter for their people….”  What are the properties of this argument?  It has a clear answer, it explains why this answer works, and uses evidence to bolster it.  Make your case.

---

Here are some strategies to avoid:

• Don’t just say, “it depends.”  People like these kinds of answers when they don’t really have an answer; it only begs the question: “it depends on what?”  Tell us “what” mattered in history and why.


• Don’t assemble a lot of evidence that may be interesting and well told if it doesn’t add up to an argument.  If you find yourself throwing a lot of detail into your prose without any declarative sentences that explain the relevance of the evidence, then you are probably not making an argument.


• Don’t make an argument you don’t think is true.


• Don’t present a reader with competing arguments and hope they can make up their mind.  Oftentimes, there are several persuasive arguments that you think have merit.  It’s fair and sometimes even advisable when you are genuinely compelled by rival arguments to outline more than one – but you must explain the merits and demerits of each argument and identify where on balance you stand.  The reader wants to know what you think.

---

Exposition

This criterion addresses how well you have crafted your argument.  A reader’s ability to appraise (and enjoy!) thinking about someone’s ideas depends to a large extent on a paper’s clarity and consistency.  When you write, consider the reader.  If you are disorganized, jumbled, or contradict yourself, you will not have made your point.  Your reader will not understand even the best evidence or original idea if they are not expressed logically and clearly.  Consider some of these questions:

1. Is your prose clear?  It always helps to state your case; do not assume that readers should be able to impute what it is.  Then defend your case.  If your argument requires several steps, explain to the reader how and why you are proceeding this way.


2. Is your argument consistent?  Your points should not contradict each other; nor should they be irrelevant to each other.  A strong suggestion is to plot an outline of your essay before you begin to write your prose.  This outline should serve as your step-by-step guide to the logical build-up of your essay.

---

Rubric for peer assessment

Peer assessment is an interactive process in which evaluation is a teaching device AND a learning tool.  By reading the essays of others, you are contributing to their understandings of how well they have mastered historical material and formulated an argument and the areas where they might improve for the next essay exercise.  You are also learning for yourself; peer assessment enables you to reflect upon on your own strengths and challenges – as well as gain an enhanced understanding of the topic – by comparing your work to others. 

We do not allocate aggregate grades for your work; rather, scores represent evaluations based three different criteria, which apply to your work as well as others’.  Here are three criteria to evaluate your peers: evidence, exposition, and argument.

You are invited to share your assessments in two ways.  First, we offer you a point scale of 1-3 to enter according to each criterion.  1 means you are a struggling; 3 means you are a rock star.  Sometimes you can be a rock star on evidence but struggle when it comes to your argument.  Most often, however, the three criteria tend to reinforce each other – or undermine each other if you are leaning towards the number 1 of the spectrum.  In instances where there is no answer or concern about plagiarism you may enter a value of 0. You must assign an numeric value for each criterion. Here are the descriptions for each point entry to help guide you. When you are grading peer assessments you will use the following point values:

EVIDENCE

3 points - Clearly supports the argument and balanced across multiple cases to explain a global or connected process.
2 points - Related to the argument but the number of cases is insufficient to explain a wide-ranging process.
1 point - Inadequate material and/or evidence does not fit the argument.
0 points - no score

ARGUMENT

3 points - A clear response to the question in the terms posed in the assignment.
2 points - Attempts to respond to the question but the argument does not stand apart from the evidence; there may be some confusion or indecision in the response.
1 point - Argument is unclear, full of contradictions.
0 points - no score

EXPOSITION

3 points - Clear and eloquent.
2 points - Not all sections of the essay are clear; difficult to see the relationships between different parts of the essay.
1 point - Writing is unclear, prose is disorganized or inconsistent.
0 points - no score

The second way you can share your assessent of each criterion is an open field that invites you to enter more qualitative comments and an explanation for your score.  (Like: “Really clear argument, especially about the role of butter in history” or “Your use of metaphors can be confusing,” or “your evidence is too focused on one case in the world, try broadening your examples in the next essay”).

Plagiarism

You have agreed to the Coursera Honor Code as part of your enrollment for this course. All in-lecture quizzes and essay assignments must be your own work. Your submissions for the written assignments must be your own work, not copied from another student or an online resource such as Wikipedia. If a substantial portion of a submission is copied without attribution from another source, that is considered plagiarism. Any plagiarized work will be rejected. The essence of plagiarism is to claim someone else’s work as your own. You may include summaries or quote from outside materials on the written assignments, so long as you provide clear attribution of the source. If you are concerned that an assignment you are evaluating is not a student's original work, you can express your concern in any of the comment fields of the rubric. You may select a value of 0 if you find evidence of plagiarism.