HONORS 240: READING THE PAST PROF. LAWRENCE
FALL 2005: Sections 002 and
003
COURSE
SYLLABUS: THE WORLD OF LATE ANTIQUITY
Late antiquity is the period between the classic
civilization of the
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
·
Class attendance, with discussion and occasional short presentations.
·
Assigned readings.
·
Three short 3-4 pp. papers based on reading and classwork.
·
One self-propelled trip to the
·
One 7-10 pp. research paper, submitted in two drafts.
·
One intro quiz on historical geography, based on an ungraded
map assignment.
·
An in-class essay final exam.
REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS:
·
Procopius, The Secret
History. Penguin classics, trans. G. A. Williamson. 1982.
·
·
Peter Brown, The World of Late
Antiquity. 1989 Norton edition.
·
Hodges & Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of
·
Averil Cameron. The Mediterranean World in Late
Antiquity, AD 395-600. Routledge,
1993.
·
There will be additional readings from the Bible, the Qur’an, ancient historians, and exhibition catalogues.
These will be assigned during the course.
HOW TO REACH ME:
·
Tel. (703) 993-3770, or call
the History and Art History Department office at (703) 993-1250.
·
Email: lbutler@gmu.edu
·
Office: Robinson B340, deep
inside the History and Art History Department.
·
Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays,
CLASS POLICIES
Attendance is necessary; much of the
material will only be covered in slide lectures. You are responsible for getting notes, and
for all consequences of missed classes.
Class participation will affect your grade, if it is conspicuously good,
conspicuously lacking, or continually disruptive. I will be making spot checks of attendance to
help determine class participation grades.
Classroom atmosphere. Courtesy and common sense, please. Talking to friends during lectures, wandering
in and out, cell phones, and eating food are all badly distracting to everyone
else. Chronic chatterers and latecomers
are disruptive, and will be asked to leave the classroom (Oh yes I can do
that—University policy.).
Written work Papers must be written in
good formal English, with full documentation in a standard format, either MLA
or Chicago. All students are expected to
use word-processors with spell-checkers. Please submit papers typed, double-spaced,
and PROOFREAD. Spelling and grammar count, of course. Badly written work will
be downgraded, returned for a rewrite, or flunked, as I see most
appropriate. My policies on what
constitutes “good writing” are given below, in detail. For any sort of help with writing, from
simple questions to systematic tutoring, please contact The Writing Center in Robinson I, Room A116. Call them at (703)
993-1200, or see their phenomenally good web page, at: http://
writingcenter.gmu.edu/
Written work
is due in class, printed out in hard copy.
Email submission of papers is not permitted without
prior, individual approval.
Late work will be graded down five
points per day, including weekend days, out of fairness to everyone. By the final exam, all missing work
becomes F work. Make-up finals and
elaborate medical excuses will require verification with a physician's or
assistant dean's excuse.
English as a
Second Language: If English is not your first
language, I will be happy to help you do your best in the writing
assignments--by previewing papers, offering extra help, that sort of
thing. The final result must be good
standard written English. You may
want to work with The Writing Center in Robinson I, Room A116. Call them at
(703) 993-1200, or see their web page for English language help, at: http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/ . You may also
want to work with the English Language
Institute (ELI). Call them at (703)
993-3664, or visit their website at http://mason.gmu.edu/~eli .
Learning
disabilities
will be accommodated as required according to University policies. Learning disabilities must be documented by
the Disabilities Support Services. It is
the student’s responsibility to get tested, present the documentation to me,
and request accommodations in a timely way (i.e. not on the day of the test;
not after-the-fact). For more information on this, call the
Religious holidays. I have planned this course according to the
Academic
honesty is
expected in all tests and writing.
Please respect the Honor Code, our classroom standards, your fellow students,
and yourself. The Honor Pledge will be
required on all tests. Please report violations to the Honor Committee. See the explanation of plagiarism in the
guidelines for writing.
WRITTEN WORK will be graded according to
the following criteria:
A = Startlingly
good, exceeding expectations, and well-written.
Must be imaginative; NOT given for simply following
directions.
B = Good effort with a good
result.
C = Perfunctory; or, tried but missed the point; or,
did something well but it wasn't the
assignment; or,
good idea but careless or sloppy.
D = Warning: accepted under protest.
F = Unacceptable as college-level work.
Paper grades
will be lowered for lateness, sloppiness, lack of proofreading, bad English, lack of
necessary documentation, faulty logic, or failure to follow directions for the
assignment. Please study the directions
for writing assignments, elsewhere in this syllabus.
Late written
work:
Papers are due in class, in hard copy, on the day specified. After that, late
papers will be lowered five points a day, half a grade. This makes even the best work “F” work after
about ten days. If you need an extension, you must ask for it before the due date, not
on or after, if you want to avoid a penalty. Email submissions are not accepted.
Ungraded assigned work is important, and will
figure into the “class participation” grade.
Any missing ungraded work will
result in the lowering of your final course grade by 5 points!
FINAL GRADES will be based on the
average of your paper, test and class grades, thus:
First quiz: 10%
Three short papers 15 % each, 45% total.
Research paper: 20%
Final exam: 15%
Class participation: 10%
Class
participation grade:
Final grades
may be raised or lowered from strict average in the following circumstances:
·
A pattern of pluses or minuses on the ungraded
assignments; or missing ungraded work. I will lower your final grade 5 points for
each piece of missing ungraded work.
·
I may raise or lower your grade in recognition of significant change
over the course of the semester.
·
TWO MAJOR PIECES OF GRADED
WORK MISSING AT THE END OF THE COURSE WILL BE GROUNDS FOR FAILING THE COURSE
REGARDLESS OF YOUR PRECISE AVERAGE.
·
IF YOU FLUNK THE FINAL EXAM,
WITH AN F ON ANOTHER MAJOR PIECE OF WORK, YOU ARE LIKELY TO RECEIVE A FAILING
GRADE FOR THE WHOLE COURSE. To pass this course you must
demonstrate some mastery of the material--no one passes for just showing
up! Failing to hand in written work, or
failing the final exam means you have not mastered the course material.
DIRECTIONS AND
GUIDELINES FOR ALL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
There
will be three research papers and five short reaction papers assigned for this
class. Specific directions will be
handed out when the papers are assigned.
I expect papers in my classes to be formal academic writing, using
correct standard English and essay organization. They should be presented as finished
products, unless otherwise specified. In
general, all written work for me, or for Art History
in general, must observe the following rules:
Organization: College-level essays are to
be carefully constructed and presented as finished products. They are not just journal entries or
stream-of-consciousness. This means they
must have a thesis of some sort, and present reasoned arguments through the
examination of evidence. There should be
an introductory thesis statement and a conclusion. Paragraphs should be used as a way to
structure the argument so a reader can follow your thinking. An interesting or informative title is
necessary. A funny title is fine. “Art Paper #1” is not.
Mechanics: All papers must be typed and double-spaced,
using a standard font in 10 or 11-point size.
Please stick to plain old white paper and standard fonts. Handwriting is not OK. Quadruple-spacing is
not OK. Writing the whole darned thing in italics or Olde English is not
OK. (Why not? Because italics are to be used for specific
reasons: emphasis and foreign terms.
Because Olde English on perfumed blue paper is
too-too high school). Pictures are nice, but strictly optional. Pictures cannot be a substitute for
writing. Nice presentation is always
welcome, but please be clear that adding pictures will
not affect your grade unless they are explicitly part of the assignment.
Spelling and grammar are expected to
be excruciatingly correct. Use the
spell-checker. I will mark down work for
sloppy spelling and grammar. If the
writing is really awful—ungrammatical, no evidence of proofreading, horrible
spelling, or laughably short—I will not read it. I’ll return it as unacceptable, with an
F. Early in the semester, I’ll allow a
rewrite (for a maximum of C, which is the average of F and A). Late in the semester there will be no time
for a rewrite.
Page
limits should be observed, and should be your guide to the depth of
writing: a one-to-two page paper is pretty much a quick observation, with
thesis and conclusion. Three-to-five
pages means there is time to develop a thesis and argue it through several
paragraphs, considering several different questions, angles or pieces of
evidence. An eight-to-ten page paper
usually includes research (this will be made clear in the assignment), and
anything over ten pages is probably expected to include a great deal of
research.
Citations. Any time you use a source of
information you should consider citing it, to avoid the appearance of
plagiarism. Generally-known facts are
not normally cited. Anything else is,
including a long recitation of facts from one source that you are paraphrasing,
a single opinion stated by another author, and any direct quote.
Example 1: “George Washington lived at
Example 2: “The cathedral was begun in the 1890’s,
and not completed until the 1950’s after several design changes.” This is specialized information, and it must
have come from somewhere unless you just made it up. So please cite your source of
information! If you are paraphrasing a
large amount of information, put a citation at the end of the paragraph. Give a separate citation to each separate
source.
Example
3: “The cathedral looks as if it was
begun in the 1890’s and not completed until the 1950’s with some design changes
along the way.” Clearly your own opinion
(we hope) based on your own observations (we hope). If this is the case, then no citation is
necessary. However, if you only say it
because you read it somewhere, please cite the source. This is the honor system.
Example 4: “This is the finest example of
Romanesque-revival style in the country.”
Oh, says who? If this is your
opinion, please back it up by explaining your assertion. If you are just quoting from someone else,
you need to cite the information.
Example
5: “According to Encarta, this is the finest example of Romanesque-revival
style in the country.” That’s nice—but
you still need to add a footnote or parenthetical reference giving the details,
in a standard citation format.
Citation style: There are several
acceptable citation styles in academic writing, and you probably have been
taught several here and there. Please
use the one you know best, or the one most appropriate to your major. In history and art-history, we usually use
the
http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/resources/
.
B. Plagiarism encompasses the following:
1.Presenting as one's own the works, the work, or the
opinions of someone else without proper acknowledgement.
2.Borrowing the sequence of ideas, the arrangement of
material, or the pattern of thought of someone
else without proper acknowledgement.
The good news:
Plagiarism is easily avoided. Just acknowledge all your
sources, using footnotes or other acceptable form of reference. That’s really
all there is to it. The bad news: Plagiarism on tests and papers is CHEATING
and will be reported to the Honor Committee!
TENTATIVE CLASS AND READING
SCHEDULE
·
Classes will normally be held in the Fine
Arts Building, Room B212 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Section 002 meets from
·
Writing projects will be assigned in
class, with class input on due dates.
· Additional short readings on-line and on reserve will be assigned as appropriate, during the course.
PART ONE: THE LATE ANTIQUE
WEEK ONE: INTRO TO
TIME AND PLACE
Map assigned.
WEEK TWO: THE LATE
Monday, Sept. 5: Labor Day, no
class.
Videos and on-line primary sources, including the Bible, and Josephus, The Jewish Wars, to be assigned.
Look at exhibition catalogues on reserve:
·
Map assignment due.
WEEK THREE: REGIONS
AND QUESTIONS
Last
day to add classes: Tuesday, September 13th.
QUIZ
on terms and historical geography, Thursday, September 15th.
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PART TWO: EARLY CHRISTIANITY
IN SOCIAL CONTEXT
WEEK FOUR: CHRISTIANITY IN THE
Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, review Part One, pp. 82-113.
Look at exhibition catalogues on reserve:
·
Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian
House;
·
The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and
Early Christian Art
WEEK FIVE: CHAOS IN THE
Brown, Part Two, I: “The West.”
Last day to drop classes without dean’s permission: Friday, September 30.
WEEK SIX: THE CONFESSIONS OF
WEEK SEVEN: MUSEUM
PROJECTS
Classes canceled, Tuesday, October
11.
PART THREE: THE BYZANTINE
EMPIRE AND URBAN LIFE
WEEK EIGHT: THE AGE
OF JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA
Cameron, Chapter 5: Justinian.
Look at exhibition catalogue on
reserve: Byzantine Women and their World.
WEEK NINE: MATERIAL
CULTURE AND LITERARY CULTURE
Hodges & Whitehouse, chapter 3, “The Eastern Mediterranean”
On-line primary sources, to be assigned.
Look at assigned sections of the catalogues on reserve:
The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art
WEEK TEN: PROCOPIUS
AND HIS SECRET HISTORY
WEEK ELEVEN: THE
DEMISE OF THE CLASSICAL CITY
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PART FOUR: EARLY ISLAM AND
We will have a guest lecturer during this part of the course. Additional readings will be assigned accordingly.
WEEK TWELVE: THE
RISE OF ISLAM
Brown, Part Two/III: “The New Participants.”
WEEK THIRTEEN:
“MOHAMMED AND CHARLEMAGNE” REVISITED
Primary source on-line: Ibn Fadhlan.
Thanksgiving recess: No class on
Thursday, November 24th.
WEEK FOURTEEN: THE
WEEK FIFTEEN:
SUMMARY, REPORTS, CATCH-UP AND REVIEW
Last day of class/ Review: Thursday, December 8.
Reading day: Monday, December 12.
FINAL
EXAMS:
Section 002 (
Section 003 (