Dossier Highlights

Assignments & Grading

<p>The assignment system in this course is based on <strong>specifications grading</strong></p>

• You choose your grade by selecting from the assignment features below. I will grade these on a pass/fail basis; you pass if your submission meets all of the requirements for the grade level you select.
• You get 3 one-use no-questions-asked resubmission tokens. Each token can be used to either resubmit a failed timeline assignment or to let me know in advance of the assignment deadline that you would like to submit an assignment late (we'll negotiate the exact lateness).
• Your attendance and participation in class are required. To give you the best chance at getting the grade you want, we will engage in activities that dedicate class time to developing your timeline entries. You get 3 absences, also no questions asked. Each absence above 3 will result in a 1% reduction in your end-of-semester grade.

This approach lets you prioritize your workload, gives you some leeway as you master the basics of medieval history, and lets me grade and hand back comments quickly and efficiently.

Timelines & their features

(60 pts, 12 submissions at 5 pts each)

In week 1, you will choose a category to focus on throughout the semester.

Starting in week 2, you will identify 2 items of interest from our reading each week and use these as the basis for 2 entries to your timeline. These entries can come straight out of our reading or be related to it.

A timeline entry drawn from a historical text can have a number of different features, starting with the most fundamental and proceeding to the most historically complex. Find the line with your preferred grade. Your timeline entry should fulfill all of the features up to and including the line with your preferred grade on it.

Historical periodization papers & their features

(final paper, 40 pts divided across 2 drafts & a final)

The last 4 weeks of the semester are focused on using the timeline to make historical argument about change and continuity. Historians have defined the Middle Ages not as a single 1000-year period but as several chunks of time (early, central, high). Now it's your turn. You'll use your timeline--and your classmates' timelines--to decide how to divide the Middle Ages into meaningful periods, identify what makes those periods internally consistent and what breaks in historical trends mean breaks between periods. (Also you can give the different periods fun names.)

• Week 13: a bullet point outline with full-sentence thesis statements for each section, 5 pts
• Week 14: a combo outline/word-barf draft of at least 1500 words, 10 pts
• Finals week: a final paper, 30 pts

At minimum, a periodization paper should have a clearly labeled division of periods, and each labeled period should be:

• tied together by trends that shape the relationship between periods
• guided by a clear argument statement that explains the individual trends that define that period and why that definition is historically accurate.
• illustrated with specific examples and accompanying citations from sources, along with a clear summary in your own words of how that example illustrates the trend under discussion in that period
• careful to assess the perspective of each source's author, with a specific example drawn from that text that illustrates your assessment.
• Readable and clear prose. Read the essay out loud to yourself. If you can't understand it, I probably won't either.

Grading is based on how many trends you use to illustrate historical change (period breaks) and continuity (internal consistency within a period), how many sources you use to illustrate those trends, how much outside scholarly information you bring to bear on those trends, and how much you put into discussing this synthesis of historical change and source material.