History B351 (C283) and H509 (C294)
Barbarian Europe 200-1000 AD
Spring 2004
Instructor: Professor
Demetrius Glover
Class Time: Monday 5:45-8:25 pm
Office Hours: Monday
Wednesday12:15-1:00, 4:30-5:30
And by Appointment
Office: CA 243-B
Office Phone: 278-9021
E-mail: deglover@iupui.edu
Purpose
This course immerse students in the portion of academic history
spanning from the decline of the Roman Empire to the formation of the first
Europe. Going beyond the standard historical
narrative and conceptual framework of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,
students will grapple with the problems of doing history and develop upper
division level reading research, writing, and analytical thinking by engaging
primary resources and secondary literature through discussions and written
assignments.
Required Texts
Roger Collins. Early Medieval Europe 300-1000. 2nd
edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.
Augustine. The Confessions. Translated by F.J. Sheed,
Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1993.
Procopius. The Secret History. Translated by G.A. Williamson.
New York: Penguin Press, 1982.
Einhard and Notker. The Two Lives of Charlemagne Lives.
Translated by Lewis Thorpe, New York: Penguin Press, 1969.
The Song of Roland.
Translated by Glyn Burgess. New York: Penguin Press, 1990.
Exam 30%
There is one
exam, a cumulative oral final exam. The
exam is worth 30% of the final grade.
The exam tests the students’ knowledge and understanding of the entire
body of lecture and reading material.
The undergraduate students’ exam will be a 45-60 minute oral exam. At the start of the course students will be
provided with a list of four questions; at the final exam the students will be
required to produce a fifteen-minute (estimated time) answer to one of two questions
chosen at random by sortition, and they will also be required to answer
follow-up questions to their initial answer for the remaining time. The exams will be held from May 4th
to the 8th. Undergraduate
students will have to organize themselves into groups of either four to
five. They should study together and
will take the exam as a group together.
Graduate student exams will follow the same format but be 30-45 minutes
duration and be one-on-one.
Source Critiques 20%
Each student
must write two five-page papers on either The Confessions, The Secret
History, The Two Lives of Charlemagne, or The Song of Roland. Each
is worth 10% of the final grade. Each
student must write their first one on either The Confessions or The
Secret History, and they must write their second one on either The Two
Lives of Charlemagne or The Song of Roland. The subject of these source critiques are
open. There is only one question that
your essays and the discussions should center around: What does this material tell us about the
historical period (and/or the author) that produced it?
Discussions 20%
There are four
days of class time devoted to discussing the primary sources (The
Confessions, The Secret History, The Two Lives of Charlemagne, and The
Song of Roland). Each day of
discussion is worth 5% of the final grade.
Attendance and participation in the discussion is mandatory to receive
credit. Again, there is only one
question that your essays and the discussions should center around: What does this material tell us about the
historical period (and/or the author) that produced it? Each student should come to class with a
series of important points about the material and questions that they would like
to propose to the class for discussion.
Undergraduate Research Project 30%
All undergraduates are
required to do a ten-page research paper on a specific topic, theme, or event
that is within the chronological and geographical limits confines of this
course. This paper is worth 20% of the
final grade and is due on April 26th. The research paper must be based
predominately on primary sources--meaning literary and archeological evidence
produced at or near the time of the research topic. To assist and guide the successful completion
of the research papers, the course requires that students turn in three
progress reports on their essay. Each is
worth 3% of the final grade. The first
is a 250-word Paper Proposal that describes the topic and the essential
issue that is to be investigated, and this is due February 2nd. The second progress report is 500-word
Primary Source Description that describes the key primary sources for
examining the issue and explains what they contribute to the thesis of the
essay. The third progress report is a 750-word
rough summary rough draft of the larger ten-page essay. You may have noticed that this breakdown
fails to account for 1% of the final grade.
This one point is a free on the condition that all three progress
reports are turned in on time. If a
student fails to turn in any one progress report he or she sacrifices this
point. All written assignments must have
1 inch margins and twelve point type.
Graduate Historiography 30%
The Graduate Students in this course must write a twenty-page
historiography on some topic within the chronological and geographic boundaries
of this course. In short a
historiography is an essay that analyzes the history of the how academic
historians have written about a topic.
To be truly representative of the history of the scholarship, the writer
of a historiography must examine at least twenty book and articles on a subject
and hopefully some of these span beyond those written in English. They must also meet the same three progress
report deadlines and requirements of the undergraduate research papers but with
graduate level complexity and scholarship.
The first is a 250-word Paper Proposal that describes the topic
and the essential issue that is to be investigated, and this is due February 2nd. The second progress report is 750-word
Secondary Source Description that describes the seminal works for examining the
historiography of the topic and explains what they contribute to the thesis of
the essay. The third progress report is
a 1000-word rough summary rough draft of the larger twenty-page essay. You may have noticed that this breakdown
fails to account for 1% of the final grade.
This one point is a free on the condition that all three progress
reports are turned in on time. If a
student fails to turn in any one progress report he or she sacrifices this
point. All written assignments must have
1 inch margins and twelve point type.
Attendance 10%
In accordance with university
policy, Attendance in this course is mandatory.
Students are expected to attend every course lecture and
discussion. During the ten class
lectures, attendance will be checked ten times.
Each absence deducts one percent from the final grade.
Class Topics and Reading Schedule
With a one-class-per-week schedule,
we are forced to cover a lot of information each day of class. To reach the chronological goals of this
course we will often read and discuss multiple chapters in the textbook each
week. It is essential that each student
come to class having read and prepared themselves to discuss the issues raised
and elaborated in Roger Collins’s text.
Under each date a reading assignment from the textbook is listed. Students should have those selections read by
that day of class. There are very few
lectures in the course. The intellectual
challenge in this course is reading, understanding, and analyzing the material
each day of class as the students work on a larger research project that
requires them to apply the same skills.
January 12, 2004
Lecture 1:
Introduction to History
Lecture 2: Rome Down
to 180
January 19, 2004
No Class: Martin
Luther King Day
January 26, 2004
Topic: Rome and the
Savior Effort of the Fourth Century
Readings: Collins,
Chapters 1 and 2
February 2, 2004
Topic: The Fall of
the Roman West
Readings: Collins,
Chapters 3, 4, and 6
Paper Progress:
Paper Proposal Due
February 9, 2004
Topic: Barbarian
Christianity?
Readings: Collins,
Chapters 5 and 14
February 16, 2004
The
Confessions Discussion
The
Confessions Source Critique
Due
February 23, 2004
Topic: The Germanic
Successor States I
Readings: Collins,
Chapters 7 and 10
March 1, 2004
Topic: Byzantium
Readings: Collins,
Chapter 8
Paper Progress:
Source Description
March 8, 2004
Topic: Islam
Readings: Collins,
Chapters 9
March 15, 2004
No Class: Spring
Break
March 22, 2004
The Secret
History Discussion
The Secret
History Source Critique Due
March 29, 2004
Topic: The Germanic
Successor States II
Readings: Collins,
Chapters 11, 12, and 13
Paper Progress:
Paper Summary Due
April 5, 2004
Topic: The Early
Carolingians
Readings: Collins,
Chapter 15
April 12, 2004
Topic: The
Carolingian Achievement
Readings: Collins,
Chapter 16 and 18
April 19, 2004
The Two Lives
of Charlemagne Discussion
The Two Lives
of Charlemagne Source Critique
Due
April 26, 2004
Topic: The Vikings
and the Carolingian Decline
Readings: Collins,
Chapter 17, 19, and 20
Paper Progress:
Final Paper Due
May 3, 2004
The Song of
Roland Discussion
The Song of
Roland Paper Due
May 4-8, 2004
Oral Examinations
(individual and group times to be scheduled)