Course Requirements
REQUIRED BOOKS (available for sale in the
UNCG bookstore):
1. C. Warren Hollister and Judith Bennett, Medieval Europe: A Short
History, 9th edition (McGraw-Hill, 2002) [ISBN 0-07-112109-9]
2.Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary
Sources, trans. and ed. Simon Keynes
and Michael Lapidge (Penguin Classics, 1983) [ISBN 0140444092]
3. Chretien de Troyes, Lancelot: the Knight of the Cart,
trans. Burton Raffel (Y.U.P., 1997), 0300071213
4. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, ed. Betty Radice (Penguin,
1974) [ISBN 0-14-044297-9]
5. Jean Froissart, Chronicles, ed. and trans. Geoffrey Brereton
(Penguin Classics, 1968) [ISBN 0140442006]
6. On-Line texts. The bulk of your primary source reading will be located
on-line, either at my web-site or at the
superior academic site known as the On-Line
Medieval Sourcebook. For each text I have indicated the URL where
that text may be found. If you have trouble using the internet, please
see me for assistance. Please note that the on-line version of this
syllabus will have direct hyper-links to these texts.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
1. Attendance and Participation (10% of your grade)
I care about attendance and will reduce the grade of those who frequently
miss class without first obtaining permission. Discussion and participation
in class can only help your grade. Try to make at least one comment per
week: if you get in the habit of offering your ideas and opinions on the
readings, you will find that your appreciation and understanding of the
material will grow.
2. Assignments (10%)
Every other week or so I will ask you to write either a short (1 page)
response piece to the readings or several (1-2) sample identifications
(as practice for the exams).
3. Three Essays, worth 50% of your total grade (10% for the first, 20%
for the second and third)
These essays will be generally of 3-5 pages, although individual assignments
with separate guidelines will be distributed in class. I will require
you to revise two of these three essays, although you may, if you wish,
revise all three. Revisions must take into account my comments on
structure and method and must be accompanied by a one page explanation
of how you have revised the paper and the ways in which you have improved
it (ie., tell me what you did and how this has made the essay better).
You are responsible for choosing which of the three essays you will revise.
Note: revisions are due 10 days after you have received my comments on
the first draft.
a. First Essay: due Thursday
February 5 (10% of your grade)
A short (3 page) essay in which you demonstrate your skills at constructing
an argument. I will ask you to construct and defend an argument
concerning either the Life of St Martin or the excerpts from Gregory of
Tours concerning Frankish queens.
b. Second Essay: due Thursday
February 26 (20% of your grade)
This essay will ask you to effect a comparison of two kings. You will write
4 pages in which you compare kings Charlemagne and Alfred.
c. Third Essay: due Thursday
April 8 (20% of your grade)
For this essay you will choose an article written by a modern historian,
read it, identify and comment on its argument, and then discuss how it
modifies your understanding of the primary sources we have read concerning
its subject. This will be a 4-5 page essay. I will supply a list of
recommended articles, but it will be up to you to choose and locate that
article.
4. Final Exam: Thursday May 6, 8-11 AM (30% of your grade)
The format of this exam will be partly take-home and partly in-class.
You will bring two already-written essays to the examination session, at
which point you will answer several additional identifications and short
answers.
GRADE BREAKDOWN:
Attendance and Discussion:
10%
Assignments
10%
First Essay (argument)
10%
Second Essay (comparison)
20%
Third Essay (historiography)
20%
Final Exam:
30%
THE ‘LEGAL’ STUFF
1. In case later consultation should prove necessary, students are
asked to keep copies of all graded assignments until the end of the semester
(at least).
2. All course requirements must be completed to receive a grade for
the class. This means that you will fail the course if you don’t, for instance,
turn in the exam essay.
3. Regarding late work .... Assignments are due on the date and at
the time listed on the syllabus; if a crisis (such as illness) arises,
it is your responsibility to contact me. If you do not contact me,
the work (when eventually received) will be substantially penalized.
Contact may be made by phone, email, or a note left in my mailbox in the
History Department (219 McIver). And while I provide my home phone number
at the top of the syllabus, I will be annoyed if you call me at home after
9 PM.
3. PLAGIARISM: Plagiarism is a type of cheating, and occurs when a
person passes off (whether intentionally or un-intentionally) someone else’s
words or ideas as their own. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense,
which, in its most overt forms, can result in formal disciplinary action
by the university (at the most extreme, this might include expulsion).
This is a notoriously thorny area for students. Many students unintentionally
commit plagiarism by ‘borrowing’ ideas, interpretations, and/or actual
words from other authors. Make sure that your words are your own,
and that your interpretations are also your own. If you find yourself
using someone else’s words or ideas, make sure you have given him/her credit
by using a footnote, endnote, or parenthetical citation. Note: my comments
in class do not need to be cited.
4. BE CAUTIOUS in using websites. Many students feel that they can
obtain the ‘answer’ (or even a good interpretation) concerning a historical
problem by simply looking it up on the web. While the web has many uses,
this is almost invariably a fatal strategy. Looking for someone else’s
ideas is no substitute for your own analysis. Some observations from the
instructor’s point of view: 1) use of a web-site without citing it (even
if it is crap) is plagiarism, which, if detected, can result in serious
academic penalties (see above); 2) instructors can often detect uncited
use of a website when either the writing style of the student’s paper changes
drastically, or when facts/ideas/dates/people not discussed in class or
in any of the assigned readings appear in an assignment. Again, I don’t
want to discourage you from gaining more perspectives by using the web.
What I’m saying is that ultimately you are being evaluated on your analysis
of the assigned readings, not on your ability to plug some web site’s ideas
into your essay (an action which will result in severe punishment - see
the next point).
5. The Big Whammy! If I detect the uncited use of someone else’s
words or ideas in an egregious fashion in any of the formal assignments
for this course, I will be extremely upset and very disappointed. The student
in question will receive a 0 (zero) on that assignment. Depending on circumstances,
I reserve the right to take further disciplinary action as necessary. I
state this rather severely only to warn you. All writing should be your
own. It is unacceptable and unethical to cut and paste or borrow ideas
or facts from other sources without giving full credit to the author of
those words/ideas.
CITATION OF SOURCES
For any written assignment defined as a formal writing assignment (ie.,
all the essays required in this course), you are expected to provide specific
citations to the texts that you use in support of your paper.
What are citations?
In general: they are bookmarks
for the reader, allowing him/her to return to the source you have used
to make your point. They also serve as acknowledgments of the sources
you have used (particularly so that your reader does not think you are
passing off someone else’s ideas as your own)
In practice: citations are
brief statements of the author and/or title of the work you are referring
to, along with a reference point (usually a page number) within that work.
For example, if you wanted to make a parenthetical citation of Hollister’s
opinions of King John in a paper, you would include a citation such as
this .... (Hollister, p. 256).
Types of Citations
1. Parenthetical citations: appear in parentheses directly after the
words to which they provide reference. Parenthetical citations usually
include the author’s last name and the number of the page to which you
are referring). For example, “Juhel of Mayenne was only 20 years old or
so when he founded the priory of Marmoutier in his castle keep (Barton,
p. 369).” The words in quotation marks are what you’ve written; but
since you’ve taken this information from another source, you need to indicate
that source. Here the citation appears in parentheses to some book by Barton
at p. 369. NOTE: parenthetical citations are informal; they are acceptable
(sometimes) in student writing, but never appear in formal academic work.
2. Formal citations (endnotes or footnotes): this is the way that
scholars cite their references. The format of a footnote is indistinguishable
from that of an endnote; the only difference between them lies in where
they appear on the page (footnotes at the bottom of each page; endnotes
in a separate list at the end of the paper). Modern word-processing
makes it childishly easy to create either sort of note; look (usually)
under the ‘insert’ pull-down menu of your word-processor and you will find
a choice for ‘footnotes/endnotes’. When you create one, a superscript
number will appear in the body of your text where you created the note.
That number is meant to alert the reader that he or she ought now to redirect
his/her eyes either to the bottom of the page (footnote) or the back of
the paper (endnote) for the relevant citation. NOTE: although word-processors
allow the creation of superscript note numbers as roman numerals (e.g.,
i, ii, v, xiii), this is to be avoided. Always make sure you are creating
arabic numerals (e.g., 1, 2, 3). [see the end of the next paragraph for
examples]
What appears within the foot- or endnote is also important. For a book,
you ought to include all of the information you would provide in a bibliographic
entry: author, title of book (underlined or italicized ), and publishing
information (place published, publisher, date published). If the work to
which you are referring is an article, the format is slightly different:
author, title of article (in quotation marks), title of journal (italicized
or underlined), volume number of journal, and year of journal. Either
way, you will also need to include the specific page number to which you
are referring the reader. If you are citing a web-site
(or on-line text), the rules are less clear. If the on-line material is
clearly derived from a book, then you ought to provide all of the usual
information one expects for a book, but you should add the URL and the
webpage title; if the page lacks proper bibliographic information, provide
whatever you can. Here is an example of a endnote to a book. [1]
Here is an example of a citation to an article. [2] (note
that a footnote would look the same, but would simply appear at the bottom
of each page of your essay/paper). Here is an example of a citation
to a web-site. [3] Foot or endnotes are always
preferable to parenthetical citations.
WHEN must you provide a citation?
1. Whenever you use an author’s words directly. In this case,
the author’s words must appear in quotation
marks in the body of your essay and the citation should appear
immediately after the closed quotation mark. For instance, in the
following made-up sentence I quote myself and use a parenthetical citation
to a made-up work: “As the noted medieval historian, Richard Barton,
once said, ‘Medieval History is cool’ (Barton, p. 297)’.”
2. Whenever you have paraphrased a source (that is, taken the
gist of it and reworked it into your own
words) or when you refer to an episode from a source (for example,
“In the relief clause of Magna Carta, the barons demanded ....”).
Because you are not using the exact words of the original text, you have
some leeway about where you place the citation. Place it either at the
end of the paragraph or immediately after the relevant portion of your
paper.
3. Whenever you mention a fact or event that is not generally
known. Lots of confusion can and does exist
about what is and what is not ‘generally well-known.’
Use common sense. You don’t need to cite Hollister if you state that the
Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066 (this is a famous and well-known event/date).
More obscure material might require a citation.
-------------------------------------
ENDNOTES:
1. Mary W. Smith, Footnoting for Fun and Profit (Boston: Academic Press, 1980), 44.
2. John Q. Doe, “How to Create Footnotes,” Journal of Scholarship 15 (1999), 219.
3. Cartulaire de l'abbaye cardinale de la Trinité de Vendôme, ed. Charles Métais, volume 1 (Paris: A. Picard et fils, 1893), 1:14-18. Translated from the Latin by Richard Barton and published on-line under the title “Land Tenure and Family Conflict: the Honor of Vendôme, c. 1006-1040,” at http://www.uncg.edu/~rebarton/vendome.htm