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Class Participation
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20%
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The success of this class hinges on the active
participation of all students. Your
participation grade can be broken down to three component parts. The first
one accounts for approximately ½ your participation grade and the remaining
two together constitutes the other ½.
1. Participation includes coming prepared to class
(having done the readings and being ready to contribute to the discussion),
listening attentively to others, offering your own insights, and raising
questions for exploration. You are
expected to be alert and attentive for each class session.
2. You must participate in the workshopping of drafts on
November 19 and December 3. This
means giving detailed, written comments to the student with whom you are
partnered, as well as oral comments during discussion to all other members
of the class.
3. For each of the weeks when we have common readings
assigned, several students will be charged with playing a leading role in
facilitating discussion. This means: (a) coming particularly prepared for
discussion and ready to help keep it moving; the expectation is that you
will have read and thought about the texts, given consideration to how they
piece together, and reflected on what questions these texts raised when
viewed against one another. (b) Because we are covering such a broad sweep
of times and places, you likely will find it beneficial to do a small amount
of additional research on the general historical context, whether it be
ancient Babylonia or colonial India, and come prepared to share your research
with your classmates. It is not necessary for you to go down some rabbit
hole of research. A tertiary source on the order of an encyclopedia or a
textbook should suffice.
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Assignment 1
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5%
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Unit 1. Writing is
often described as a muscle. To develop it you have to use it and the more
you use it, the better you’ll get. The semester culminates with a lengthy
research paper, but we’ll begin to cultivate the skills you’ll need to use
for that with a brief writing assignment that asks you to offer an analysis
based on a discrete body of sources, both primary and secondary. Write one paragraph (approx. 1 page) in
response to any one of the relevant questions to consider at the end of Anderson, chapters 2 or
7. Due Sept 3.
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Assignment 2
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10%
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Unit 2. Last week, assignment 1 was returned to you.
Read the comments and the copy editing suggestions carefully. We all have
room to improve as writers and a great deal of one’s success as an
historian depends on being able to write clearly, logically, and
accessibly. With these general comments, as well as the specific
suggestions you received in mind, write
one paragraph (approx. 1 page) in response to any one of the relevant questions
to consider at the end of Anderson,
chapters 4, 6, or 7. Your objective here is to think carefully about both
content and form. Due Sept 17.
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Assignment 3
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10%
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Unit 3. As you develop as a writer
and historian, you will become increasingly aware of how others write,
construct arguments, and analyze sources. This week you have four possible
scholarly articles that explore the question of the impact of the West on
the non-Western world’s medical practice and health at the apex of European
imperialism. Reflect on comments you received on assignments 1 and 2 as you
write two pages on the scholarly
article that you have chose, conveying in narrative form the following: the
author’s main argument; sources; contribution to the literature on
medicine/health and world history; the article’s strengths and weaknesses.
Due Oct 15.
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Assignment 4
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15%
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Time
to get down to business with your research project. Don’t panic. We will
spend much time in class brainstorming possible ways to construct a topic
and there is a more detailed description below (under “Final Paper”), but keep
in mind (a) a central goal of this class is to cultivate your skills using
primary materials; (b) another goal is to view medicine and health beyond a
conventional, some might say provincial narrative focus on Western Europe
and North America and to break free of the useful, but at times cramped
confines of the nation-state. Your paper must put forth a topic that examines a question related to
medicine and/health in a comparative, international, or transnational
context. Write a preliminary
title, one paragraph project prospectus, and bibliography,
using full Chicago
Manual of Style citation format and separating primary and secondary sources
in the bibliography. Your project prospectus should explain clearly you’re
your research question is, perhaps offer a tentative thesis, and suggest
how your sources will speak to the question at hand. Due Oct 29.
Note that the History
Writing Center
offers online resources regarding proper citation and other writing issues
relevant to this and subsequent assignments. You are strongly encouraged to
avail yourself of the Center’s resources throughout the semester (see p. 1
of syllabus for Writing
Center contact
information). The Chicago Manual of Style is available online via
www.lib.uiowa.edu.
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Paper Draft
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15%
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You should strive to turn in the best possible, most
polished draft you can. “Draft” does
not mean “first draft.” For the
purposes of this assignment, it means getting your paper as far along as
you can. Doing so will allow you to
get the greatest benefit from your colleagues’ feedback, rather than
squandering their time and effort on work you could do for yourself (such
as cleaning up sloppy spelling and grammar). The more time we can spend discussing the
ideas of your paper and the style of presentation, the better the final
product will be. For that reason, the
instructor hopes to incentivize putting effort into the draft by making it
worth a significant percentage of your final grade. Strong drafts will demonstrate
considerable effort, be as complete as possible, and show that the student
has made a serious progress toward the final paper.
Drafts should be
typed, 12-point font, double spaced, with one-inch margins all around. They should include a descriptive title,
properly formatted footnotes according to the Chicago Manual of Style, and a
bibliography. Due Nov 12 (Group 1) or Nov 19 (Group 2).
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Final Paper
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25%
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A main objective of this class is to produce a
significant piece of writing based largely on primary sources. This project is an opportunity not only
to go deeper into the history of one historical problem, but to develop the
tools to work with different kinds of documents. It is also a chance to hone your writing
style and to learn how to properly cite sources, skills that you will translate
into your other history classes.
The research paper’s subject must deal with medicine,
disease, or public health in world historical perspective. What is meant by this is that the topic
should bring two or more cultures into dialogue or contact across national
or regional boundaries. You should
not restrict yourself to the borders of a single nation-state, but come up
with a topic that illustrates the movement of medical knowledge, disease,
practices, practitioners, or patients across time or space. You can undertake a truly transnational
topic, or, if your interests lead you toward a comparative project, that is
also acceptable. Any time or place
is open for inquiry, but you will find it considerably more difficult to
identify primary sources for certain times and places than others.
The paper should be approximately 15 pages long and draw
largely on primary material. These
sources can be newspapers, journals, diaries, memoirs, diplomatic
correspondence, textbooks, medical treatises, or other forms of eyewitness
testimony. Films, music, literature,
and other forms of artistic expression can be sources as well. You can also draw on primary
documentation cited in secondary sources, as long as you cite the source
appropriately. You may need to be
creative and a bit of a sleuth, because of the limited availability of
English-language sources for certain topics. Of course, if you have facility in
another language, you are urged to make use of it, if relevant.
Final papers must be typed, 12-point font, double
spaced, with one-inch margins all around.
Footnotes and bibliographies should be consistently and properly
formatted according to the Chicago
Manual of Style.
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