This page explains the student project for J. B. Owens's fall 2002 upper-division undergraduate
and graduate course, History 360/560, The Spanish Empire. This course is part of the
core curriculum in comparative and world history of the Department of History, Idaho State
University. The sole purpose of this page, and all of the related pages on this server that are linked
to it, is to provide an orientation for those students enrolled in History 360/560.
You may return to the course main page
or to the syllabus.
The Spanish Empire: Student Project
Due date: at the beginning of class on Tuesday, 19 November.
This page explains the student research project for J. B. Owens's fall
2002 upper-division and graduate level course The Spanish Empire.
Questions and comments may be sent to me at my e-mail address
(owenjack@isu.edu), or if you prefer, you may send me a message now by
selecting this button: Mail Now. If
you use the latter option, be sure to include your name and e-mail address
in the text of your message.
The Place
This project will allow you to master some of the interlocal, interactive
networks that were created and developed during the first global age,
1400-1800 C.E. This course focuses on the activities of officials and
subjects of Iberian monarchs, particularly the rulers of Castile and
Portugal, who played majors roles in the development of many of these
networks. Many of these people lived and worked in the domains outside of
the Iberian Peninsula, and the majority would never set foot in Europe.
You will first select a place on which you would like to do research from
the suggested list of
locations. Because only one student will be allowed to work on a
particular location, we will have a lottery during the first class session
to determine the order of selection. If you have extensive experience with
some relevant location, I will, as much as possible, reserve that place
for you.
The Dataset
You will produce a dataset, which describes the routes that linked your
assigned location with other places. Your dataset will take the form
described on the page Old World Trade Routes
(OWTRAD): Notation System, developed by Dr. T. Matthew Ciolek of The Australian
National University, Canberra.
For your dataset, you will provide adequate metadata (data about data),
using the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
standard. You can see how your metadata will appear by looking at any
of the OWTRAD datasets prepared with Dr. Ciolek's notational system: for
example, see Spanish
Pilgrimage Routes dataset. If you wish a quick look at another type
of metadata, using the Dublin Core standard, simple view the source page
for this text (select View and then Page Source, if you are using a
Netscape browser). If you wish more information, look at this Frequently
Asked Questions file.
With your dataset, you will also contribute gazetteer data, which will
become part of the overall gazetteer of the datasets for the class. To
see what this gazetteer will look like, examine the Gazetteer of
georeferenced nodes of long-distance communication routes.
To start you on your way, you will use the Alexandria
Digital Library (ADL) Gazetteer Server to determine the geographic
coordinates of your assigned location. You will print two copies of your
results, and you will submit one of those (put your name on the page) to
me at the beginning of class on Tuesday, 3 September. During the first
class session, on Tuesday, 27 August, you will receive instruction about
how to do this part of your project.
When you submit your dataset, you will also submit a short essay in which
you will explain how the economic, political, and cultural interactions
made possible by these routes helped shape the history of your selected
location. Citations in this essay must correspond to the standards of the
bibliography and
citation style and plagiarism pages.
To explain more fully the technical aspects of your research, and the
reasons for doing such work, you will be given, during the first class on
Tuesday, 27 August, a copy of J. B. Owens and T. Matthew Ciolek, "Routes:
Assembling Data About the Connective Tissue of a Global Monarchy"
[Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies: Bulletin
27,1 (spring-summer 2002): 12-22].
Bibliography
A preliminary bibliography, in ASCII ("plain text," "DOS text") for your
project must be sent to my e-mail address (owenjack@isu.edu) by 1:00 p.m.
on Tuesday, 10 September. You must include at least FIVE relevant
articles from scholarly journals. I have provided a partial list of
relevant scholarly
journals in the ISU collection. The bibliographic form must correspond
to the course style
sheet. Failure to submit this bibliography on time will give you a
GRADE OF "0" for the project as a whole.
You should discuss with a reference librarian at the ISU library what
resources are available to compile a bibliography about your assigned
location during the period 1350-1825 and how you should design an
effective bibliographic search strategy.
For those working on Latin American locations, you may wish to use the Handbook of Latin American Studies,
which the ISU library also as on CD-ROM. Although the latter version is
not current, it is still quite useful for this project because among the
best sources will be various "travel" accounts, many of which were
published long enough ago to be indexed in the HLAS.
In addition to using the ISU library
catalog, you will also find it useful to do a subject search of major
research collections with outstanding holdings related to your assigned
location. For example:
If you locate an item, which is not held by ISU but which appears
particularly useful for building your dataset, a description of a journey
through the place, for example, carefully note all of the relevant
bibliographic information, the call number, and the name of the holding
library. You will need this information to request the item through the
Interlibrary Loan service of the ISU library. Notice the "Request" button
on the upper right side of the ISU library
catalog page.
You may also find it useful to consult online archives of historical maps.
For example, see the David Rumsey
Historical Map Collection and the Discovery and
Exploration section of the Library of Congress American Memory
project.
Due Dates and Project Reports
This dataset is due, in digital form, at the beginning of class on 19
November. This project will be worth roughly 15% of your final grade.
NOTE: Periodically throughout the semester, you will be required to submit
partial project reports to me and to the Spanish Empire
discussion list.
Because you must begin work on the project immediately, we will discuss it
in class on Tuesday, 3 September. Prior to this class, therefore, you
MUST have read this page, the Course Analytical
Approach, the Old
World Trade Routes (OWTRAD): Notation System, and J. B. Owens and T.
Matthew Ciolek, "Routes: Assembling Data About the Connective Tissue of a
Global Monarchy" [Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical
Studies: Bulletin 27,1 (spring-summer 2002): 12-22; distributed in
class on 27 August].
Standards
For this course, there are strict standards, explained in the three pages
linked to the next paragraph, for essay content and form, for the style of
bibliography entries and notes, and for the citation of any words or ideas
that are not your own. Because failure to observe these standards
precisely will lower significantly your grade on the assigned work
involved (to "0" in the case of plagiarism), make sure you come to the
class on 10 September PREPARED TO SEEK CLARIFICATION of anything on these
three pages that you do not understand.
Before the class session on 10 September, read carefully the pages on essay evaluation
standards, on bibliography and citation
style, and on plagiarism. It is
particularly important that you understand the page on plagiarism because
you will be submitting your examination essays in digital form, which
makes it easy to detect plagiarism through digital searching techniques.
You may return to the main
course page.
All contents copyright © 1995-2002.
J. B. Owens
All rights reserved.
Revised: 22 August 2002
URL: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/routes.html