San José State University
Department of History
History 100W: History Writer’s Workshop
Section 1, Spring 2015
3 Unit Course
Libra R. Hilde
Instructor:
Office Location:
DMH 215
(408) 924-5512
Telephone:
Libra.hilde@sjsu.edu
Email:
Office Hours:
Class Days/Time:
Mondays 3:00-4:00 p.m., Wednesdays 3:00-4:30 p.m., or by
appointment
MW, 1:30-2:45 p.m.
DMH 165
Classroom:
Faculty Web Page
Copies of course materials can be found on my faculty web page
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/libra.hilde/hist100W
Course Description, Goals, and Learning Outcomes
The aim of this course is to help students learn to communicate well, a skill of utmost
importance to any history major and the defining characteristic of a graduate of a good
university. Overseeing the educational quality of general education curriculum at San
Jose State University, the Board of General Studies (BOGS) has determined the goal of
all 100W courses: “Students should demonstrate proficiency in advanced college level
writing, including reading and writing articles, essays and documents dealing with broad
issues, and specific concepts in their fields for both specialized and general audiences.”
More specifically,
1.
2.
3.
4.
“Express in writing complex ideas clearly and correctly.”
“Integrate reading comprehension and writing competence, using outstanding models
that deal with general and specific issues in the discipline.”
“Read and write analytically and imaginatively.”
“Organize and develop essays and documents for both professional and general
audiences.”
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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5.
6.
7.
“Write extemporaneously in subjects in the discipline and related fields.”
Apply “editorial standards of the discipline when citing primary and secondary
source materials.”
“Organize, compose, revise and edit” drafts of essays.
The History Department requires that students have taken and passed History 99 to gain entry
into History 100W. If you take History 100W without having taken the prerequisite, History 99,
you risk earning no credit for the course and having to take it again. In addition, the department
will not allow students to take History 100W in the same semester with History 102 or History
100W after History 102.
History 100W emphasizes English writing skills, trains writing in the history genres, and
introduces basic research requirements that you will need in order to take upper division courses
in the history major. In effect, while research is still an important component, proficient writing
is now emphasized. The new learning objectives of the Department of History, which pertain to
the class are:
1. Students analyze critically the thesis and argument/interpretation in different genres of
history.
2. Using modern bibliographic data storage sites and systems and traditional (print) sources,
students systematically collect and appraise the historical significance and uses of
evidence of various kinds of primary sources.
3 Using historical literature and primary sources, students write history essays according to
the standards of technique, citation, essay composition (writing process),
argument/interpretation, and use of evidence, which are consistent with college-level
writing in the discipline.
Before you leave this course, you will become a much improved writer in the history genres,
a better critical reader of both primary and secondary sources, as well as a more organized and
critical researcher.
Please be advised that this course will take a good deal of your time. It may be the most
difficult course you take this semester and it may be the most difficult course that you have taken
to date. That is to be expected because it is a foundation course for the discipline. Historians
produce historical interpretations about the past. In order to produce these interpretations, we
write. Writing is not easy, but it is the highest intellectual skill that a professional can achieve in
the humanities and social sciences. If you master the skill sufficiently to meet the standards of
others in your discipline and enhance the pleasure of readers, you join a select club. The entry
dues to this club are high, as they should be.
Required Texts/Readings
Appiah, ed., Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl (Harriet Jacobs), 2000.
Sourcebook (distributed electronically).
Recommended Texts
Diana Hacker, A Writer’s Reference.
Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations.
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Other equipment / material requirements
Library Liaison
Nyle Monday is the library liaison for history students. Contact him at 808-2011 or
Nyle.Monday@sjsu.edu
Classroom Protocol
My classroom protocol consists of one simple rule: don’t be dumb. You would be amazed at
what you can see from the front of a classroom. Chances are, if it is rude and disruptive, I can see
it even if you think I cannot.
Dropping and Adding
Students are responsible for understanding the policies and procedures about add/drop, grade
forgiveness, etc. Refer to the current semester’s Catalog Policies section at
http://info.sjsu.edu/static/catalog/policies.html. Add/drop deadlines can be found on the current
academic calendar web page located at
http://www.sjsu.edu/academic_programs/calendars/academic_calendar/. The Late Drop Policy is
available at http://www.sjsu.edu/aars/policies/latedrops/policy/. Students should be aware of the
current deadlines and penalties for dropping classes.
Information about the latest changes and news is available at the Advising Hub at
http://www.sjsu.edu/advising/.
Assignments and Grading Policy
Essay Foundations
In the first weeks of this class, you will have intense instruction in the analysis of different types
of primary sources and the history writing process (major thesis-minor thesis, outlining, topic
sentence construction, transitioning, evidence placement, and summarizing), as well as history
citation technique. You will be required to complete a short paper based on the sources you most
enjoyed working with, and will also write an essay in class based on a prompt. The in-class essay
tests your extemporaneous ability to use writing process with facility.
History and the History Genres
In the first four weeks of the semester you will be introduced to different primary sources (letters,
diaries, legal and political documents, images, and more) and you will focus on textual analysis.
You will learn how to analyze sources and construct an argumentative essay. You will write an
essay based on the sources you find most compelling. The following five weeks, you will be
working with the same types of reading/writing exercises, and writing an essay using primary
sources on American Slavery (this essay could be an intellectual, social, or political history).
During the last five weeks, you will be researching and completing reading/writing exercises for
an individual research essay. Ideally, your topic will be SJSU or local history (or some other
local history topic with the permission of the instructor), using archival evidence from the Special
Collections of SJSU at King Library.
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Copyediting
In this class, you will learn the fine art of copyediting. On appointed days, you should
come to class with a clean and complete draft of the assigned essay. (Partial drafts will
cause your own copy-editing grade to suffer as a consequence.) Your fellow students
will copyedit your draft in class, and you will do the same for theirs. You will take the
draft home, revise it, and return the next week with the final product ready for grading.
You will have three sessions to copyedit your fellow students’ assignments, and you will
be graded on the copyediting that you do. Why? The only way to learn how to improve your
writing is by learning how to rephrase, reorganize, correct, and critique other writing. When you
are able to do this on other papers, you will do this automatically on your paper. You will learn
to craft the paper, instead of just dumping off an unfinished piece of writing on your professors’
desks. I will grade your copyediting of fellow students’ work for completeness, exactness, and
helpfulness to a potential point total of 25 per paper.
Presentations:
At the end of the course, each student will give a 3-7 minute oral presentation on their research
paper. You will be expected to stand up in front of the class and deliver a statement that should
include a description of your topic, how you discovered the topic, the evolution of your research
and sources, your thesis/argument, and findings. You should prepare your remarks but avoid
reading from a paper. Visual aids are not required, but encouraged. Expect to answer a couple of
questions from the audience.
Turnitin.com:
All written work done outside the classroom must be submitted through turnitin.com. In order to
have your paper graded and to receive credit you must submit it through turnitin.
In addition you will submit a hard copy. Only final papers must be submitted to turnitin.com
Course Parameters:
This course will be run as a seminar. Therefore, you will be expected to read the course
assignments on time and participate actively in class discussion. You will also be required to
attend the visit to the library. Because participation in such activities will figure heavily in the
final grade, poor class attendance will count against you.
The university requires that each student write at least 8000 words during the
semester. I estimate that the total written product for the class is about 8500 words. All
papers are to be typewritten, except the in-class essay. A late paper will be marked
down a third of a grade per day. In order to pass the class, all three essays must be
completed. A student who hands a paper in over two weeks late will fail the course.
Copyediting (25 each)
Three Papers (5 pp, 50 points/ 10 pp., 100 points/ 15 pp, 150 points)
In-Class Essay
Other reading/writing assignments
Participation
Presentation
Total
The grading scale for this course will be:
97-100= A+
87-89= B+
77-79= C+
93-96= A
83-86= B
73-76= C
90-92= A80-82= B70-72= CCourse Name, Number, Semester, and Year
75 points
300 points
50 points
100 points
50 points
25 points
600 points
67-69= D+
63-66= D
60-62= DPage 4 of 9
A student with a semester average below 60 will fail the course.
SJSU mandates that a grade of Incomplete be granted only when a student has satisfactorily
completed a substantial portion of the course requirements and is unable to complete the course
because of an accident, illness, or some other event beyond the student's control.
Note: While 100W courses are now graded with the full range of letter grades (A-F),
students must pass with a C or better (C– not accepted) in order to satisfy the CSU
Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement.
Success in this course is based on the expectation that students will spend, for each unit of credit,
a minimum of forty-five hours over the length of the course (normally 3 hours per unit per week
with 1 of the hours used for lecture) for instruction or preparation/studying or course related
activities including but not limited to internships, labs, clinical practica. Other course structures
will have equivalent workload expectations as described in the syllabus.
University Policies
Academic integrity
Your commitment as a student to learning is evidenced by your enrollment at San Jose State
University. The University’s Academic Integrity policy, located at
http://www.sjsu.edu/senate/S07-2.htm, requires you to be honest in all your academic course
work. Faculty members are required to report all infractions to the office of Student Conduct and
Ethical Development. The Student Conduct and Ethical Development website is available at
http://www.sjsu.edu/studentconduct/.
Instances of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Cheating on exams or plagiarism
(presenting the work of another as your own, or the use of another person’s ideas without giving
proper credit) will result in a failing grade and sanctions by the University. For this class, all
assignments are to be completed by the individual student unless otherwise specified. If you
would like to include your assignment or any material you have submitted, or plan to submit for
another class, please note that SJSU’s Academic Policy S07-2 requires approval of instructors.
Campus Policy in Compliance with the American Disabilities Act
If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, or if you need to make
special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please make an appointment with
me as soon as possible, or see me during office hours. Presidential Directive 97-03 requires that
students with disabilities requesting accommodations must register with the Disability Resource
Center (DRC) at http://www.drc.sjsu.edu/ to establish a record of their disability.
Student Technology Resources
Computer labs for student use are available in the Academic Success Center located on the 1st
floor of Clark Hall and on the 2nd floor of the Student Union. Additional computer labs may be
available in your department/college. Computers are also available in the Martin Luther King
Library.
A wide variety of audio-visual equipment is available for student checkout from Media Services
located in IRC 112. These items include digital and VHS camcorders, VHS and Beta video
players, 16 mm, slide, overhead, DVD, CD, and audiotape players, sound systems, wireless
microphones, projection screens and monitors.
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Learning Assistance Resource Center
The Learning Assistance Resource Center (LARC) is located in Room 600 in the Student
Services Center. It is designed to assist students in the development of their full academic
potential and to inspire them to become independent learners. The Center's tutors are trained and
nationally certified by the College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA). They provide
content-based tutoring in many lower division courses (some upper division) as well as writing
and study skills assistance. Small group, individual, and drop-in tutoring are available. Please
visit the LARC website for more information at http://www.sjsu.edu/larc/.
SJSU Writing Center
The SJSU Writing Center is located in Room 126 in Clark Hall. It is staffed by professional
instructors and upper-division or graduate-level writing specialists from each of the seven SJSU
colleges. Our writing specialists have met a rigorous GPA requirement, and they are well trained
to assist all students at all levels within all disciplines to become better writers. The Writing
Center website is located at http://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/about/staff/.
Peer Mentor Center
The Peer Mentor Center is located on the 1st floor of Clark Hall in the Academic Success Center.
The Peer Mentor Center is staffed with Peer Mentors who excel in helping students manage
university life, tackling problems that range from academic challenges to interpersonal struggles.
On the road to graduation, Peer Mentors are navigators, offering “roadside assistance” to peers
who feel a bit lost or simply need help mapping out the locations of campus resources. Peer
Mentor services are free and available on a drop –in basis, no reservation required. The Peer
Mentor Center website is located at http://www.sjsu.edu/muse/peermentor/
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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History 176, Spring 2013, Course Schedule
Table 1 Course Schedule
Week
1
2
Date
January 26
Introduction and Course Overview
Introduction to the course, historical genres, types of sources, predatory
reading
Homework: reading secondary sources, taking notes, asking questions
(Bynum)
January 28
Read sources (Hammurabi, etc.)
In class: textual analysis, forming a topic and argument (asking questions
of sources), thesis (major and minor).
Quick Diagnostic Writing Sample
February 2
Due: thesis statement for first paper
In class: discussion of sources, refining a thesis, topic sentences, gathering
evidence, essay structure
February 4
3
February 9
February 11
4
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
February 16
February 18
Due: 2 pages of draft
In class: group work on papers, gathering evidence, writing an introductory
paragraph, quoting sources.
In class: revision, citation, writing a conclusion (worksheet)
Due: Full draft of first paper
In class: Copy-editing
Homework: Read Douglass (notes)
In class: discussion of Douglass
Due: Final Draft of first paper (remember turnitin.com)
Paper self-evaluation
Guest Lecture: Dr. Guannan Li
5
February 23
February 25
6
March 2
March 4
Homework: Read Jacobs (notes)
In class: discussion of Jacobs
In Class: discussion of Douglass and Jacobs, small group work
Choosing a topic, defining an argument
Due: thesis statement for second paper
In Class: Gathering Evidence
Group work on papers
Due: outline for second paper
In class: topic sentences, integrating evidence, transitions
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Week
7
Date
March 9
March 11
8
March 16
March 18
9
10
March 23
March 25
March 30
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
In-Class Essay
Due: Five pages of second paper
Library: Research workshop with Danelle Moon in Special Collections
Due: full draft of second paper
In Class: Copy-editing
Spring Recess
Discussion of Research paper
April 1
Due: Final Draft of Second Paper
In Class: Paper Self-Evaluation
11
April 6
Individual Meetings
12
April 8
April 13
April 15
13
April 20
April 22
14
April 27
April 29
15
May 4
16
May 6
May 11
Individual Meetings
Due: Thesis Statement and Outline
Discuss Secondary Sources
Research
Scheduled small group appointments with professor. Students need to bring
outline, five pages of draft, and at least two primary sources. Be prepared to
defend argument in the group.
Small Group Meeting
Small Group Meeting
Small Group Meeting
Due: Final draft of research paper
In Class: Copy editing
Presentations of final essay topics
Presentations of final essay topics
May 13
Presentations of final essay topics
May 18
There is no Final Exam for this course, Final Papers will be due on
Monday, May 18th, by 4:00 p.m.
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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