|
|
Freshman Seminar on the Colonial & Revolutionary History of the Southern Tidewater History 150W-4 James P. Whittenburg The syllabus below is a small excerpt from the
course Web site available at I've offered this freshman seminar on Saturdays for the last four years. For the fall of 2001, we'll try Thursdays from 11 am to 3 pm. This isn't your typical class. For one thing, the schedule says we meet from 11 to 12:20 in Wren 02, then in James Blair Hall 331 from 12:21 until 3:00. Well, Wren 02 is actually the "Wren Kitchen," the basement room under the Great Hall, which we'll enter via a door from the outside on Richmond Road side on the building. James Blair 331 is one of my offices! We really don't need a classroom for more than half-an-hour on most Thursdays because our sessions will take place, in whole or in part, "on site" at the places mentioned on my web page. Now, travel time can be tricky, and I hate to rush students when we are on-site, so I plan to shoot for getting people back in time for 3:30 classes. There will be two required Saturday fieldtrips that will start early (like 8:30 am) and finish late (like whenever we get home). If these admitted eccentricities are deeply troubling, I'd recommend dropping the course. Finally along these lines, there will be an OPTIONAL SUNDAY BARBECUE at the Ruins of Rosewell Plantation (more on this later). I've always held discussions in this class over an extended lunch hour (comes from my association with archaeologists over the years). In my opinion, the food has added considerably to the fun of the course, and I'd like to retain the feature, but we will probably have to picnic much of the time. Well, pizza or Cheese Shop sandwiches next to the York or James isn't exactly onerous. Typically, I'll take orders for food by email and you can reimburse me. When we eat at restaurants, I'll put the entire bill on a credit card and, again, you can reimburse me. Costs beyond the food will include computer disks, photographic supplies/services (optional), and admission fees to some of the museums. Most of the museums (Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown/Yorktown Foundation, National Park Service, and the several churches) will let us in FREE or nearly so. The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities charges $3 for Bacon's Castle. Berkeley and Shirley plantations along the James River in Charles City County charge about six bucks each, and Westover asks a three-dollar contribution to tour the grounds only. Rosewell will set you back one dollar. Saturday trips to places like Monticello or Mount Vernon would be pricier, but in overview this is "heap cheap," especially in view of.... Readings: Everything is available FREE on-line! Click on a title in the syllabus
and you'll get the text (still under construction: 8/13/01). As
you'll be creating webpages for this class, you may wish to purchase
a guide to Netscape (make SURE it covers Composer), but experience
tells me that you can get along quite well without one even if you
don't know beans about computers. You might also want a copy of
Michael Olmert's Official Visitor's Guide to Colonial Williamsburg,
but you could just as easily get along with the two Colonial Williamsburg
websites: http://www.history.org
and http://www.pastportal.com.
Check out the many computing guides at the college bookstore, which
also stocks the guide to CW. Requirements & Grades: Students generally want to know every little thing about the grading system. Truth be known, it is all pretty-much a subjective process and in the end I evaluate the totality of your work over the course of the semester. Admittedly, many students find this ambiguity unsettling during the semester, but few seem to think the grades unfair in the end. Keep in mind that A grades are reserved for EXCEPTIONAL work, and to win an A for the course means hitting on just about all cylinders just about all of the time. The grade of Bcovers a much wider range of perfectly acceptable, even superior, performance. Any student who scrambles over all the course requirements and delivers even a modest effort should have no trouble attaining a C--acceptable, but undistinguished. To receive a final grade lower than C, a student in this class would simply have to stop trying. As I am incapable of higher mathematics, I have devised "the rule of quarters." Each component of the course will determine 25% (more-or-less) of your grade for the course: I. Electronic Journal (25%):
For the journal in this class each student will build a web page
that contains images pertaining to, accounts of, observations from,
and reactions to our field trips, readings, and class discussions,
one entry for each week in the semester. Many of the pages from
last year's class are still available. You might want to take a
look. Just click here: Fall of 2000. Some of the very best pages
were the work of students who had absolutely no computing experience.
I encourage the use of Internet resources and the online databases
available in Swem Library. I'd also use web search engines. The
"Google"search engine--especially with its "Find
Images" twist--is a great resource. You may also use interviews
with interpreters, museum staffers, archaeologists, and other experts.
I hope you will use some "art" of your own-digitized photos,
for example-but there is plenty available on the web or in books
and magazines that you can scan. Postcards can provide some amazingly
good professional art for 25 cents a throw. NO COMPUTING EXPERTISE
IS ANTICIPATED--I'LL TEACH YOU ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO
KNOW. YOU DON'T EVEN NEED TO OWN A COMPUTER--THE MACHINES IN THE
W&M LABS ARE JUST FINE. The only technical requirements are
that you include these elements in each week's section: text, art,
and at least one link to an Internet site that bears on the topic
for the week. As a bonus, participating in this seminar's electronic
journals project will earn you certification for the undergraduate
computing requirement in history. I'll shortly ask you about convenient
times for a few lab sessions intended to get you off and running
on the creation of these web pages. Thereafter, I'll gladly work
with you as needed one-on-one in my office to create and maintain
your website. Be as creative as you like in using the web, but be
assured that a highly developed set of web-authoring skills is NOT
necessary to success in this course. What you say is the key, and
the greatest tool you have is the English language. It is the medium
of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, Edmund Morgan, and Laurel
Thatcher Ulrich. It is free to you for the taking. Don't abuse it.
II: Abstracts of Readings (25%):
Abstracts are time-honored tools for history scholars in which one
distills a piece of scholarship into a minimalist statement of the
author's thesis, offers insightful affirmation or criticism (sometimes
both), and comments on the significance of the piece--all in no
more than 600 words. You will be responsible for writing one such
abstract each week. I've marked either one or two readings from
each week's batch with this notation "(ABSTRACT)." If
there is only one that week, it is the only option; if I've marked
two, select one from the pair. Send the abstract to me as an attachment
to an email by 5:00 Wednesday. Any word processor will suffice.
Let me be clear about something: None of the readings are optional--whether
or not I ask you to abstract a piece, you are responsible for having
read it and understood it so that you can discuss it during class.
III. Class time Oral Reports (25%):
Each of you will undertake two oral reports that stress the presentation
of factual information linked in some way to the week's topic. The
research should be easily accomplished from readily available material
on the net, in Swem Library, and at the Colonial Williamsburg Research
Library (where you will be welcome, by the way, and where you will
have borrowing privileges). I'll be happy to guide you to additional
places to look. My purpose is to have you become familiar with a
few of the most basic sources of factual information about early
American History and to provide in your reports some "take
off points" for class discussions. You'll get the topic assignments
one week ahead of time. I'll expect you to email me an outline of
the report by 5:00 pm on the Wednesday prior to your time at center
stage. I'll alert you if anything is amiss. These are to be SHORTreports--no
more than 5 minutes--sometimes delivered before we depart, sometimes
at lunch, sometimes in the middle of a site visit. Thinkof them
this way:You are standing near the punch bowl at a party. Two or
three people come up and demand that you explain your topic to them.
In the space of consuming one glass of punch and two crackers loaded
with Brie, what would you tell them? IV. Class Participation (25%): Here you are subject to my appallingly subjective evaluation of your participation in all class time activities. As much of the discussion for any week will take place over lunch, we'll often do a lot of talking before we even see whatever it is we came to see, which in turn privileges the readings. Indeed, the only preparations I will expect is that you have a firm grasp of the readings. See why the abstracts are so important? By the way, you may NOT refer to the abstracts during discussions. There will be also ample opportunity to talk as we poke around the places we visit and on the way home-any place where we have an opening for an impromptu seminar session. While I do care a great deal about attitude and attendance, I'm also willing to work around problems (like the schedule for the Women's Crew one year), but please talk to me early on. Just In case you missed it, there are no exams in this class. A Note on Guests: I'm delighted to accommodate requests for guests (roommates, for example)--to the extent of our available transportation, which is very limited. Do consult me ahead of time. Guests who can provide their own transportation (such as parents) are always welcome, even at the last minute. Naturally, guests must pay any museum admissions. Schedule The schedule below is tentative, but probably about right, at least for the first six weeks. After that, when and where we go is still up in the air, pending some decisions by people outside the class and to some extent on your preferences. 30 August: 6 September: 13 September: 20 September: 27 September: 4 October: 11 October: 20 October: (First Saturday Fieldtrip) 25 October: 28 OCTOBER: OPTIONAL SUNDAY BARBECUE AT ROSEWELL 1 November: 3 November: 8 November: 15 November: 29 November: 6 December: Saturday Fieldtrips: I thought we'd head to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello for one fieldtrip; to George Washington's Mount Vernon for the other. I'll try to arrange a talk by architectural history Camille Wells at Monticello. Esther White, an archaeologist at Mount Vernon, has offered to give us a "behind the scenes tour" there. Both are well established authorities, both are alums of the college, and both are good friends. If we could manage it time-wise, it would be nice to see either Ash Lawn (James Monroe) or Montpellier (James Madison) when we go to Monticello. Similarly, on the Mount Vernon trip, maybe we could check out Stratford Hall (Light Horse Harry Lee). We need to discuss timing. I'll be out of town on a lot of Saturdays this fall. October 6, 13, & 20 look like my best shots. Look over your schedules. Readings depend on the details. Lunch on the Monticello trip will almost certainly be at the Michie Tavern (nearby); I'll have to ask Esther what works best at Mount Vernon. We'd need to pick up something for supper on the road, but we can leave that hanging. |
