| University of South Alabama History Department Telephone: 460-6210 (leave message if necessary) Web page: http://www.southalabama.edu/history/faculty/monheit |
Dr. Michael L. Monheit
Office: 377 Humanities Bldg E-mail Dr. Monheit - The Quickest Way to Reach Me |
ALL
STUDENTS ARE REQUIRED TO USE TURNITIN.COM
TO SUBMIT THE FINAL PAPER DRAFT.| THEMES OF THE COURSE: This course is intended to offer you some insight into the earthshaking religious changes of the sixteenth century: the varieties of religious reform which have come to be known collectively as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. We will look closely at the lives of the Protestant reformers Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and of the Catholic reformers Ignatius Loyola and Teresa of Avila. We will further consider the appeal of the variety of religious doctrines to different groups of people, and the relationship between political and religious change. COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Midterm, Wednesday, March 2nd, one hour, 25% of grade Paper Rough Draft due, Wednesday, April 6th, (Optional, ten points extra credit on paper grade) View Paper Guide with Suggested Topics View Paper Critique Form. Rough Draft critique and paper returned to student, Wednesday, April 13th Final Paper due, Wednesday, April 27th, 25% of grade Final, Wednesday, May 11th, 6 - 8 pm, in classroom, 35% of grade. In-Class Quizzes, announced and surprise, 15% of grade. No make-ups are given for individual quizzes, but I drop the lowest grade quiz -- if you miss one, that will be your dropped grade. A second missed quiz will count as 0%. Paper - 25% of grade will be 7-10 pages. You will be asked to write a paper on a topic that you will choose from a list of suggested topics I will provide. You may also choose a different topic in consultation with me. You will study a theme in original writings from the Reformation (primary sources) translated into English. You may choose to write a rough draft and exchange it with another student on the day set aside for this purpose, and receive ten points added to your paper grade. You must both write a substantial rough draft and critique another student’s paper. Please note that you will be required to submit your paper to Turnitin.com in electronic format. View Paper Guide with Suggested Topics View paper critique form. Attendance - Attendance is not required, but I take attendance and you will receive extra credit for your attendance as follows: 0 absences: Three points added to your overall average. You must arrive and leave on time. 1 absence: Two points added to your overall average. You must arrive and leave on time. 2 absences: One point added to your overall average. You must arrive and leave on time. 3 or more absences: no extra points. You are responsible for finding out from other students about the contents of lectures and discussions you miss, as well as about announcements in class concerning quizzes, changes in deadlines, etc. Class Participation - You will receive extra credit for participating in class discussion. Frequent participation can earn you an extra half-grade credit (five points extra credit), and could make the difference between an A or a B, a B or a C, etc. In exceptional cases, you can improve by a whole letter grade. You will have regular opportunities to discuss the assigned and optional readings for this course. I will frequently give you questions to think about for the next day's readings. If you actively participate in class discussion, you will come out of the course with a much more sophisticated understanding than if you simply listen to lectures and discussions. Moreover, since your class-mates also benefit from lively class discussion, your participation helps your fellow students as well. You are expected to prepare the readings carefully in time for the class hour in which they are to be discussed. Please bring the day's readings to class with you. Please don't be afraid of making mistakes or of "looking foolish." No athlete ever became a superstar who didn't start out playing her or his sport awkwardly or clumsily, and the same principle applies to history -- although you may be more adept at "playing" history than you think! The more chances you take, the more you will improve. In my evaluation of class participation, you will do better by speaking up than by keeping silent, even if what you say shows that you had some difficulties in understanding the reading. GRADING: 90 and above = A 80 to 89 = B 70 to 79 = C 60 to 69 = D 59 and below = F I welcome students to come by during my office hours to discuss the course material. I enjoy talking to you. SEE MAP TO MY OFFICE. You need not be having a problem to come by. Of course, if at any time you are having difficulties understanding the material, working on your paper, or with any other aspect of the course, I want you to come talk to me about the problem. It is quite common even for seniors to run into difficulties in their studies. If you cannot come during my office hours (listed at beginning of syllabus), please speak to me after class or leave a message in the History Department with the best times to reach you and I will be happy to arrange an appointment. REQUIRED READINGS, Available in Student Bookstores: Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History, Penguin, 2003. Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols, Cambridge 1986 Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations Sourcebook, Blackwell, 2000. Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris, Oxford, 1991, (paper edition). MacCulloch, The Reformation, provides a comprehensive overview of religious reform, both those Protestant movements that involved an outright break with the Catholic Church, and those that worked within it. In addition to reading the pages assigned in this book, use it as a basic reference manual. When you come across an unfamiliar name, place or event, look it up in the index or consult the maps in this book. Eire, War Against the Idols, focuses on an issue that will be a central theme of this course: the role of religious images in Christianity. Traditional Catholics, early reforming Catholics (such as Erasmus), Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholic reformers who responded to Protestant reform like Ignatius Loyola and Teresa of Avila all held different attitudes to images and the role of physical objects in religious life. Their differing attitudes often were central to the hostility some of these groups felt toward others, and even contributed to outbreaks of violence between them. It is very well written and provides excellent background on most of the different religious movements we will be studying. Lindberg, European Reformations Sourcebook, on-line documents and hand-outs distributed in class, provide many primary documents -- writings by people who lived "back then." They are intended to give you a sense of how people lived and thought, and also to let you see some of the source from which historians like MacCulloch and Diefendorf have derived their knowledge. Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, is a fascinating study of the often bloody conflicts in Paris leading up to the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, in which Catholics in Paris and many other regions of France killed several thousand Huguenots (French Calvinists). Class discussion will innclude interpretation of these documents, so that you will begin to actually "do" history, not simply absorb historical knowledge. Much of this course involves learning to improve your reading and writing skills. Try to adjust your reading speed according to the difficulty of the material. You may sometimes find that it takes an hour to grasp five pages of reading, at others that twenty minutes suffices for ten or fifteen pages. It is important to look up difficult words in a good dictionary. This is normal, and is nothing to be ashamed of. If you are having difficulty with studying, please see me. Tutoring is available in the History Department and at the Writing Laboratory on campus. |
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