History 4230
History of Christianity in the West
Spring 2016
Prof. Norm Jones
Office: M303a
Office Phone: 797-1293
Office hours: Thursday 2:00-4:00 or by appointment
UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING FELLOW:
Texts:
DiarmaidMacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
For readings see each Assignment.
GOALS
This course is a survey of the history of Christianity from the time of Christ to the present with a focus on the history of Christian spirituality in the West. It will emphasize three major themes:
1) how Christianity has shaped Western culture
2) how Western culture has shaped Christianity
3) how to analyze religious life and systems
Upon successful completion of the course you will be able to explain how people at various times, civilizations, and places have defined and lived their lives as Christians. The course progresses chronologically from the inception of Christianity until modern times.
History 4230 is a Depth Humanities/Arts [DHA] course, as well as a Communications Intensive [CI] in the University Studies Program. These designations mean that it helps prepare students to meet the Educated Citizens Goals expected of all graduates of USU, preparing them to live in a complex, global society, to think carefully and critically about human interactions and motivations, and to communicate clearly.Link(Links to an external site.)
This course is a part of the University's overall Degree Profile that assures graduates and employers that our students are educated to communicate clearly, to think critically, and to deal with complexity, no matter what their majors may be.
As an upper division History course, it participates in preparing students to meet the Department’s goals. Grading will be done using a rubric that reflects the values of the History Department's goals. These goals are:
Historical Knowledge
Goal: Understand a wide range of historical information
identify the key events which express/define change over time in a particular place or region
identify how change occurs over time
Goal: Explain historical continuity and change
describe the influence of political ideologies, economic structures, social organization, cultural perceptions, and natural environments on historical events
discuss the ways in which factors such as race, gender, class, ethnicity, region and religion influence historical narratives
Historical Thinking
Goal: Recognize the pastness of the past
explain how people have existed, acted and thought in particular historical periods
explain what influence the past has on the present
Goal: Emphasize the complex nature of past experiences
interpret the complexity and diversity of situations, events and past mentalities
compare eras and regions in order to define enduring issues
Goal: Emphasize the complex and problematic nature of the historical record
recognize a range of viewpoints
compare competing historical narratives
challenge arguments of historical inevitability
analyze cause and effect relationships and multiple causation
Historical Skills
Goal: Develop skills in critical thinking and reading
evaluate debates among historians
differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations
assess the credibility of primary and secondary sources
Goal: Develop research skills
formulate historical questions
obtain historical data from a variety of sources
identify gaps in available records
Goal: Develop the ability to construct reasonable historical arguments
construct in writing a well organized historical argument
support an interpretation with historical evidence from a variety of primary and secondary sources.
THE ASSIGNMENTS
The assignments are detailed in the syllabus. It has been designed to make learning as easy and coherent as possible. The short discussion of each week's material is really a summary of what I want you to understand about that section of the course. The study questions are designed to make you think about particular aspects of the section’s work, to read carefully, and to integrate what you read in to a single framework. You will notice that I often ask you to use the evidence from the original sources in answering the study questions, and that they often take their point of departure from a scholar's observation. In preparing these I hope that you will begin to understand how an historian derives a reasoned, coherent knowledge of the past.
Before you attempt to outline the answers to the study questions work out the definitions and significance of the vocabulary terms. Then match the terms with the essays. You will find that most essay questions will require the use of a few vocabulary words. When I grade I look for the vocabulary terms in the essay; if they are not there you have not used the appropriate terminology (or evidence), and your grade will suffer accordingly.
You will find an essay assignment made for most weeks. The point of these exercises is to teach you to read an historical source as an historian would, to write well, and to use the vocabulary. In writing the essays you ask questions of the documents that will expand your knowledge of the subject.
TESTS AND GRADING
You will be expected to write seven essays, worth 50 points. Two of these essays will be chosen randomly over the length of the course and graded. These weekly essays are rough drafts for the final essay. You may also earn 5 extra points if your weekly essay is chosen as one of the "best of the week." All of the essays will be used as preparation for writing the Final Essay, a 5 page paper that distills the essence of the course. This Final Essay is worth 300 points.
5 Essays 250 points
2 Graded essays 100 points
Final Essay 300 points
______
Total Possible 650 points
I do not grade on a curve; you will get exactly what you earn. If you earn more than 93% of the possible points you will get an 'A'; 90-93% an 'A-'; 87-90% a 'B+'; 83-87% a 'B'; etc.
WRITING YOUR ESSAYS
THIS IS A DEPTH HUMANITIES/COMMUNICATION INTENSIVE COURSE SO YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO THINK AND WRITE USING THE METHODS OF THE HUMANITIES.
In writing your essays make sure that it has an introductory paragraph that says what the answer will be, a body in which evidence is mustered to demonstrate why the answer outlined in the introductory paragraph is the right answer, and a conclusion which reminds the reader of the question, the answer, and the evidence. I am aware that books could be written on any of my questions, but I do not expect your essays to be more than two pages in length.
For each section of the course there is a vocabulary list. These terms are ones that you will need to know to follow the course of the history under discussion, and, importantly, to answer the essay questions. In those weeks when there is an essay assigned, I will look for the vocabulary terms used correctly in your essays. You can also see the vocabulary as a sort of outline of the topics that will be covered in lectures.
The class will be divided into groups and each group will read and critique the papers of another group. These critiques will be used as the basis for selecting the best paper read in each unit. The person chosen as having written the best paper will receive 5 bonus points.
If an essay is not turned in you will lose 50 points for each missing paper. If you do not participate in critiquing papers, you will lose 20 points for each occurrence.
The papers must be posted to the Canvas course web site by noon on the day on which they are due.Each Essay should be two pages in length, not including notes (there must be notes!).
METHODS OF INTERROGATION AND PROOF
The essence of historical training is knowing how to interrogate documents. When confronted with something written or made in the past, the historian immediately asks a series of questions to determine its historical value. These questions operate on several levels. Of course,the first is "What does it say about X?" This leads to "How does it relate to Y and Z?" and "Can it be trusted to tell the truth about X, Y, or Z?" This may lead to "If it is lying or inaccurate, what can we learn from the causes of its inaccuracy?" A good historian asks imaginative variants of these questions constantly, placing the evidence from each document into a pattern of relationships with other evidence, building a structure of evidence that is then interrogated, too.
Ultimately, the historian looks at the fruits of all these questions and asks the ultimate question
"How does this explain A-Z?"
These essays are designed to strengthen your historical interrogation skills by asking you to create an argument from the documents provided.. Some documents are highly self-conscious.
The published writings of St. Augustine or John Wesley were created for a specific purposedetermined by the author. Letters have other purposes, with different audiences. And somedocuments are historically unconscious--that is, the historian uses them for purposes not intendedby the author. A document like the canons of the 4th Lateran Council, for instance, was not meant to be used as historical evidence or an argument for anything.
The historian sees everything as historical evidence. Jacob Burckhart, the great nineteenth century Swiss historian, encapsulated the approach I want you to learn. He wrote
"And all things are sources--not only books, but the whole of life and every kind of spiritual manifestation."[1]
There are series of questions that should be asked as you think about the documents you are reading. As you prepare to write your essays ask:
1. Who wrote it? This is not necessarily about who held the pen, but for whom was it written.
2. Why was it written? For personal satisfaction?Out of piety?To sell something? Look at its rhetorical style, which will lead you naturally to question number 3.
3. Who was its intended audience? With whom was it designed to communicate? If you read a document originally delivered in Latin, what can you assume about its audience? And if it is a papal decree?Or an apologetic? This question is key to understanding how the historical information it contains may be understood.
4. Why was it preserved? The survival of historical evidence often tells a great deal about its purpose and use, both at the time and later. The fact that a book exists in many, many contemporary copies, for instance, helps us gage whether the author's ideas reached many people.
5. Given its purpose and audience, what may it be trusted to tell us? John Foxe wrote his famous "Book of Martyrs" as a piece of Protestant propaganda, designed to glorify them and vilify Catholics. Although he had high historical standards, his choice of rhetoric makes it clear that we could not trust him to tell us good things about Catholics; however, he may be trusted with stories of his heroes, as long as we remember that the wants them to appear in the most noble light.
The Proof: Constructing foot or end notes
Historians cannot argue without supporting evidence, so the essences of the historical method is found in demonstrations of the link between the historian's argument and the evidence the historian is using. These links are demonstrated in foot or end notes. Therefore, in the essays you must cite any sources you use. Use superscript Arabic numerals to indicate the presence of a note. Notes should always come at the end of a sentence, after the terminal punctuation.2
In citing them follow these rules:
1. A first citation of a source must be a full citation in this form:
Author's first and last named [ed. or trans.] Title (Place of Publication: Date of
Publication),[volume], page #.
Thus a reference to a monograph might read:
Norman Jones, God and the Moneylenders: Usury and the Law in Early Modern England (Oxford: 1989), 23.
2. If citing an article in an edited collection the note should look like this:
Aristotle, Politics, in Donald V. Gochberg, ed. Classics of Western Thought. The Ancient World 4th ed. (New York: 1989), 369.
3. If you wish to cite an article in a journal the note should include:
first and last name of author, "title of the article," name of the journal issue number (year), page #.
Thus:
Kenneth Bartlett, "Papal Policy and the English Crown, 1563-1565: the Bertano
Correspondence," Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (l992), 643-660.
4. After you have cited a work once you need not cite it in full again. Instead use a short title form containing the author's last name, abbreviated title, and page number:
Jones, Moneylenders, 369.
5. If you have consecutive citations to the same work you should use Ibid., the abbreviated form of the Latin word Ibidem, meaning "the same." Thus, having already cited Jones, your notes
would look like this:
1. Jones, Moneylenders, 369.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 373.
6. To cite something found on the World Wide Web, first give the normal bibliographic citation and then give the location, as in this hypothetical:
Richard Hooker, "A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and how the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown," (1585), page, at Accessed July .., 20...
THE FINAL ESSAY
This final essay, worth 300 points, is a summary of the writing you have done for the class, answering a question about the patterns in the history of Christianity made visible through the course. It will depend heavily on the essays you have already written.
The essay will be no longer than five typed, double-spaced pages. It must have foot or end notes.
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism, which is the presenting of other people’s work (published or unpublished), includinganything taken from the Internet, as your own work (in other words, without the proper citation)will not be tolerated. There are very serious repercussions for plagiarism. Plagiarized papers will receive a failing grade, risk failing the entire course, and, in accordance with University policy, you will be reported to the Dean’s office and to the Disciplinary Officer in Student Services. Multiple infractions can result in your expulsion from the University.
Students with Disabilities
“In cooperation with the Disability Resource Center, reasonable accommodation
will be provided for qualified students with disabilities. Please meet with me
during the first week of class to make arrangements. Alternative format print
materials (large print, audio, CD, or braille) will be available through the
Disability Resource Center.”
Disabled.pdf The DRC is located at University Inn 101, and is open from 8:30am to 5:00 pm. M-F. Ph # 797-2444.
[1]1 Jacob Burckhardt, Über das Studium der Geschichte, ed. Peter Ganz (Munich, 1982), 171-2.as quoted in Jürgen Grosse, "Reading History: On Jacob Burckhardt as Source-Reader," Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999), 534.