twelve things you need to know about this course

1.The course has three lectures per week, scheduled for MWF at 11. There will be time for questions and some discussion in the lectures.

2. In addition to the lectures, there is a required weekly workshop. There are two times for the workshops, Wed and Thu at 7 pm, and you will receive an email asking you to indicate which time(s) fit your weekly schedule. The workshops begin the second week of the semester.

3. Please note there is a study guide (requiring written responses) for each week’s workshop. Your responses are due 24 hours before your workshop and are to be submitted as an email attachment of a Word file (no other format will be accepted). So that I can keep track of whose work is whose, it is important that you name each file as LastNameWeek#.

4. While you are attending a lecture or a workshop on zoom, please keep the audio muted except when you are speaking and please keep the video on.

5. In the absence of a textbook, the lectures serve as your primary source of information about “what happened when and where in the world since 1492.” For this reason, educational success in the course requires regular attendance and focused listening and, as you judge best, note-taking.

4. If you miss a lecture, you need to make up the lecture in my office hours (or by appointment). Please make-up any missed lecture as soon as possible, so you are prepared for the subsequent lectures. Barring exceptional circumstances, any student who misses more than four scheduled class meetings will be dropped from the course.

5. You are not permitted to make or share any recordings of class sessions; the only exception to this will be for learning accommodations, which she be arranged directly with me before any recording is made.

6. Starting in Week IX, the weekly documents will include movies, which will be screened on campus, as will be announced on the syllabus. While I have not yet made a final determination of what movies will be assigned this year, movies may have more emotional impact than written texts. Note, moreover, that this course concerns human history since 1500ish, which is to say it concerns oppression and atrocities involving class violence, gender violence, racial violence, ethnic and nationalist violence, sexual violence, as well as violence based on sexual identities. Many of these issues will be represented and probed by the films. If you have particular concerns regarding disturbing content, please discuss them with me. In this regard, you may find it helpful to read summaries of each film on IMDB, in Wikipedia, or somewhere else, before we screen the films—though keep in mind that reading such capsule summaries may expose “spoilers” that impact your viewing experience. Each of you, as adults, should make the choice that is best for you in this regard. Let me add that there are also some moments of joy, pleasure, solidarity, and liberation in the histories we will study and the movies we will see. Some moments. I do think it is important that students have access to the knowledge needed to work through the films and opportunities to discuss them, as part of that process of working through them. I thus try to be available after each scheduled screening for a post-viewing discussion, in addition to the weekly workshop.

7. For each lecture, I will identify a small number of key terms. These will be provided in lecture and posted on the course website. These key terms both highlight the most significant points of each lecture and, taken together, provide a "conceptual tool kit" for the analysis of human societies, cultures, and histories. This “conceptual tool kit” is designed to provide you the resources you will need for advanced courses in both Anthropology and History.

8. A week or more before each exam, I will provide a study guide: all the questions that will be on the exam will be on the study guide.

9. Emails from me about the course will go to your college email address; you are responsible for checking that email account regularly.

10. All written work must be thoroughly revised and meticulously proofread before it is turned in. Authors and readers owe each other mutual respect: the author (you) to provide as readable a text as possible; the reader (me) to give your words full attention when reading. When that mutual respect is exercised, good communication happens.

11. During the semester, I will recommend other events—talks by visiting speakers, for example. By attending those “recommended extras” and then speaking with me about it, on your own or with other students, you will have the opportunity to earn extra credit.

12. Your course grade will be calculated on the following basis:

Weekly Study Guides	20 Points
Course Engagement	20 Points
Midterm Exam I	15 Points
Midterm Exam II	20 Points
Final Exam	25 Points

Student Learning Outcomes: students who successfully complete this course should:

Be able to identify contingency in human affairs, particularly through comparisons across space and time; and concomitantly, should be able to distinguish phenomena that are relatively invariant from those that are not.

Be able to relativize—or doubt the absoluteness of—taken-for-granted concepts in their own lives (notably "gender," "race," and "ethnic" identifications) and taken-for-granted institutions and domains in their own social world (such as "the family" and "the economy").

Be able to identify (in particular circumstances) how cultural categories contribute to and reproduce relations of power and inequality.

Be able to demonstrate an understanding of chronology (what happened when, and how earlier events and ideas influence later events) and the degree of precision needed in giving time locations (e.g., days, months, years, decades, and so on); and be able to apply chronological thinking to subject matter in other disciplines.

Be able to identify and critique the deployment of historical narratives and memory in the public sphere.

Be able to communicate confidently and articulately in a classroom discussion.

Be able to formulate rigorous definitions and explanations of key terms in social, cultural, and historical analysis.