Introduction
>We sometimes think best when we ask "What if?" Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt attempts to imagine a world in which the 14th century bubonic plague killed 99% of its victims (instead of merely 30-60%). Can we imagine a world without Europe? More specifically, can those of us who are interested in politics imagine such a world? Perhaps the only way we can is to understand how Europe has contributed to our understanding of power and weakness, freedom and obligation. This course begins with the Europe of the 14th century and traces how past developments have affected politics in ways that continue to shape life not only in Europe but in the rest of the world. As Europe struggles with its own identity and undertakes one of the most fundamental transformations in its history, we must look back in order to look forward.Goals
The course is designed to help you achieve the following four objectives:
- To learn the basic outline of political development in Western Europe in the twentieth century;
- To understand the implications of this development for those living in the region and for the rest of the world, and to understand the meaning of such important concepts as liberalism, conservatism, fascism, nationalism, social democracy, Christian democracy, European integration, globalization, and the institutional arrangements of multi-party, parliamentary democracies.
- To be able to apply those concepts to concrete problems within particular countries and in the relationships between particular countries;
- To write well. This includes both a clear, engaging writing style and organization that gets to the point yet does not oversimplify.
Methods
Every class period will involve an integrated mix of lecture and discussion. Lectures will touch on and complement the readings assigned for class. In-class discussions will tie together the lectures and readings and give you the opportunity to add your own insights about the questions we are discussing and to help you get inside the heads of the people we read about and understand why they acted as they did. The exams will give you the chance to show what you have learned (and the incentive to learn it). The five writing assignments will challenge you to think more deeply about particular topics covered in the course and to apply what you have learned to real situations. They will also help you develop your ability to construct cogent arguments and to write with clarity and precision.Assignments
The following list of assignments and expectations should give you an idea of what you will need to do in this course and how I will evaluate your work:
| Category | Method of evaluation | Assignment | Due | Value | |
| Each | Sum | ||||
| Facts and Concepts | I will add results from weekly tests into a single numerical score and grade it on a curve in line with the distribution of paper grades. | Quizzes | TBA | ||
| Application, Writing, and Research | I will grade papers for responsiveness to question, quality of thesis statement, argument, evidence, organization, and grammar and syntax! See more on how I grade. | Two-page diagnostic reflection paper | TBA | ||
| Three-to-four page guided paper | TBA | ||||
| Three-to-four page guided paper | TBA | ||||
| Six page research paper or Wikipedia entry | TBA | ||||
| Research presentation | |||||
| Participation and Attendance | I will evaluate your responsiveness classroom discussion | Attend and participate in every class. | All semester long | ||
| Overall | Failure to complete any of the above assignments during the course will result in a grade of F. | 100% | |||
There are also a few other assignment-related considerations worth your attention:
- Map Quiz: The course will also include a map quiz that will require you to identify important countries and geographical landmarks on a map of the Western Europe. The map quiz will be offered at least three times during the semester. Your performance on the map quiz will not affect your grade, but you must pass it in order to pass the course.
- Question of the Day: I will begin every class day with a single question that will be easily answerable if you did the reading and virtually impossible to answer if you did not. At the end of the semester I will tally these up and factor them into your grade.
- Debates and Presentations: At several points during the course, I will ask you to adopt a particular political position (which may or may not be your own) and to defend that position. This will entail at least one 5 minute presentation to the class and a spirited defense of your position when it is attacked during other presentations by other students. We will also be using active simulations of European Union politics in which you will be expected to play a vocal role.
- Daily News Updates: As part of the course, I will ask you to follow political developments in a country or group of countries of your choice (with some limits). To keep you up to date, I will ask you to subscribe to the New York Times Online and choose the "International Headlines" option (6 is the maximum number of headlines you can ask for) and to The Economist weekly political review. When matters arise that affect your country or countries, I may ask you to relay the news to the class and explain its significance.
- Writing-Intensive Option: Students who wish to use this course to fulfill a writing-intensive requirement may substitute a 20-page research paper for the two guided papers. A five-page outline along with a bibliography will be due on the date of the take-home midterm exam (October x), a draft of the first half of the paper will be due in lieu of the first guided paper (November x). The final version of the paper will be due on the same day as the second guided paper (December x). If you wish to use this option, you must talk to me by the due date of the 2-page reflection (September x).
The first of these weekly tests will test your ability to
locate all the major countries in Europe on a blank map.
Click here for world maps in .pdf
format (566KB searchable) or jpg
format (154KB, not searchable) or a slightly different set of
maps including including, another world map in .jpg
format (50KB, not searchable)
and more detailed maps of
Africa
and Europe,
Asia
and North
and South America. There are also several helpful
on-line geography quizzes to be found online that will test
your knowledge well beyond the limited list of countries below.
Papers. Good writing is good thinking. Writing is one of the most important things you can learn while you are at Wayne State. Although this is a large class you will still have two good opportunities to practice and refine your writing. These will determine fully half of your grade.
Content and Style. Good writing is good thinking. Writing is one of the most important things you can learn at university. Therefore, papers will be marked and graded as if this were an English class. If you are having problems, please take the opportunity to talk with me about possible remedies and I will do whatever I can to help. You can find on-line guides to writing in the English language at the Grammar and Style resources website and at Wayne's Academic Success Center on the second floor of the Undergraduate Library. There is also a very good website called "The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing" which is a companion to Michael Harvey's book of the same name, and has excellent coverage on a variety of writing questions including paper arguments, style, organization and plagiarism. I have also received the permission from a few former students to post some examples well-written student essays that I have received in the past at Wayne, in the hope that these may offer some guidance.
If your ambition extends beyond writing correctly to writing well (and I hope it does), you cannot ask for better guides than the following two authors:
- William Zinsser, On Writing Well, Chapters 2 through 4.
- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language
Citing your sources. In our information-based society, ideas are as precious as the gold of earlier eras. Stealing someone else's ideas is no more acceptable than stealing someone else's possessions, and it will get you in a lot of trouble. But why steal something that is already free? The only cost to you as a student for using somebody else's ideas is that you must give them appropriate credit and that is very easy to do. If you get any idea from any source, you must cite that source, even if you do not use the same wording. In other words, you must cite the source even if you rewrite it in your own words. Furthermore, if you use an author's specific wording for more than three words in sequence ("In the beginning...", you must put the words in quotation marks. For more guidance, I have adapted guidelines written Dr. Noel Parker of the University of Surrey on when and why to cite others' words. In general, please simply follow the adage: 'when in doubt, cite your source'" (Cason 1998). The previous sentence is a case in point. I found the quotation on the web-site of Prof. Jeffrey Cason at Middlebury College. If this syllabus had a section for Literature Cited, it would contain the following entry:
Cason, Jeffrey. 1998. Course Requirements. Available WWW:
http://cweb.middlebury.edu/ps103a-s98/requirements.html [Accessed 17 August 1999].For the sake of clarity, I will require you to follow a particular format for citations. My choice is the author-date method as defined in the Chicago Manual of Style, which I have used in the example above. The format consists of a parenthetical reference within the text (Author Year of Publication, Page Number) and a full elaboration of the reference in a Literature Cited section at the end of your paper. I have put full guidelines for citation on-line, but I would also be happy to give you a printed copy.
If you have any questions or doubts about what to cite, you must contact me before you hand in a paper with questionable references. It is better to use up a grace day or two to come up with your own ideas and properly cite those that you take from others than to risk your grade--perhaps even your college career--by needlessly using somebody else's ideas and failing to credit them. Of course the most serious problems with citation are not accidental omissions but intentional efforts to save thought and effort by simply copying what somebody else has already done.
The consequence of plagiarism is automatic failure
The paper assignments in this course cannot be answered by anything you can buy or copy whole from the internet or fellow students, and I have become extremely adept at identifying the sources of plagiarism. Unfortunately, there have been enough attempts (none successful) that I must now subject papers to a random screening process involving test-based search engines and the surprisingly discerning services of the university's web-based plagiarism detector. In the unlikely event that a student still finds it necessary to plagiarize, I will deal with such incidents in accordance with the provisions of the Student Due Process Statue specified in the university's Academic Integrity statement, which you can obtain online at: http://www.otl.wayne.edu/pdf/2006_july_aibrochure.pdf.
Format. Unless you have prior approval from me, you must prepare your papers and take-home exams on a word processor in one of four formats: text (.txt), rich text (.rtf), Microsoft Word (.doc) or Word Perfect (.wpd). Papers must be double spaced, with reasonable font size (10-12) and margins (1 inch), and within the specified length guidelines. All these guidelines are there for your benefit as well as for mine. A paper that is too long bears evidence of inability to be concise and organized. A paper that is too short suggests that something is missing. Finally, think for at least a moment about aesthetics. Before submitting a paper that is messy, crammed together or otherwise unreadable, think about how it will affect the mood of your instructor--upon whose evaluation depends your grade.
Electronic Paper Submission. Papers are due by 4:30 p.m. on the specified due date. Unless you have discussed alternatives with me, you should submit each paper electronically through the Digital Drop Box that is available under the "Tools" section of the course page on Blackboard (http://blackboard.wayne.edu). This will provide a formal record of the paper's submission including a time and date stamp. It also allows you to submit your papers from home or work. Unless we have agreed ahead of time I will not accept papers sent solely by email because there is no way to verify claims that papers have been sent.
Deadlines. Students will have a total of three days (72 hours, to be precise) of grace which can be applied in any combination to any of the first four assignments (but not to the final because I have a limited time in which to submit grades). You may allot your 72 hours among the papers in any way you want. (You can, for example, submit one 72 hours late and all of the rest on time. Or you can submit one 10 hours late, one 20 hours late and one 42 hours late. Any combination is acceptable as long as the total does not exceed 72 hours). Plan ahead, because in exchange for this flexibility, I will hold you to high standards of punctuality. Once grace time is used up, grades for late assignments immediately drop by a full letter (making a B into a C, for example) and continue to drop by one grade for each 24 hour period of lateness. There will be no exceptions, barring written evidence of trauma or tragedy. Be forewarned that papers handed in late may not be handed back to you as promptly as those handed in on time.
Evaluation. An excellent paper must demonstrate a strong argument expressed in a coherent thesis statement and developed in an organized fashion using appropriate argument and evidence. Grammar and syntax are also crucial. I will grade papers as if this were an English class. An abundance of grammatical and usage errors can have a severely negative effect on your grade. If you have questions, I have prepared an extremely detailed account of how I grade written work.
Speaking Assignments. It is essential that you acquire the ability to talk about what you have learned without putting others to sleep, bewildering them, or insulting them. Those of you who have spent any time in the business and academic worlds will know that this skill is insufficiently widespread. As part of this course, I will therefore require you to give a formal presentations at the end of the semester. Your presentation should follow the model used in business and academic settings. If you are not familiar with that format, do not worry. We will discuss it at great length.
Participation and Attendance. Class attendance is mandatory. More than three absences can result in a penalty of one full letter grade. Habitual lateness is indistinguishable from absence and will incur the same penalty. While you are in class, I expect you to be fully engaged. This means that you must have a willingness to respond to my questions (which will be constant) and to ask questions of your own. Unprepared rambling, stony silence, or regular absence can reduce your grade. You must also demonstrate a respect for the comments and questions of others.
Final Grades. These depend on you, but you should know that I am a difficult grader and award grades of "A" only to work that could be regarded as exceptional in any university in the country. I regard grades of A- and B+ as appropriate for work that is very good but not exceptional. No student can receive a passing grade without completing all required assignments; it is not enough simply to do well on most assignments and leave one or two undone.
Accessibility
Every student should have the best possible chance to engage in learning. If you are registered with the Educational Accessibility Services office, please see me during the first week of class so that we can determine how I can help you. Please bring your paperwork from EAS to our meeting.
Books and materials
This course will make heavy use of on-line resources to save you some money, but there are two books you might wish to purchase. Because they are not required, I cannot order them through the bookstore. You may also want to look for them through local used book stores such as John K. King's Bookstore, 901 W. Lafayette, 961-0622, or online used or new booksellers (see the links below)
Rebirth, by Cyril Black. I recommend this book to you if you want to learn the full historical context of what we will be discussing:
- Cyril E. Black, et al, 2000, Rebirth: A Political History of Europe Since World War II, Westview Press
Kings or People, Reinhard Bendix's . The readings are on-line, but I suspect you would be more comfortable with the actual book.
- Reinhard Bendix, 1980, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule. University of California Press. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/offering/list/-/0520040902/used/1/002-2885912-4792030
This is, of course, not the only material we will be using. All the rest of the materials used in the course are available in three forms:
-
on line at this website, or
-
in photocopy form in the main office of the political science department
-
in cd-rom format from me (ask me for a copy)
As part of the course, I will also ask you to follow contemporary political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. To keep you up to date, you may find it helpful to subscribe to the New York Times Online and to The Economist weekly political review. These are free and they are not mandatory, but they are perhaps the best way to spend your precious media-time. And while you are at it, throw your TV out of the window (after checking first to make sure that no one is standing below).
Schedule
This list represents a minimum set of readings for the course. I reserve the privilege of making additions over time, but I promise to inform you about any such changes well in advance.
Section IV: United Europe, Global Problems
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