On this page you will find the syllabus for J. B. Owens's fall 1999 upper-division undergraduate and graduate course THE SPANISH EMPIRE. To move to other pages, indicated in this text by special highlighted areas, use your mouse or hit the Enter key when the cursor is in one of these areas, depending on the type of browser you are using. If you need to contact me, you may send a message to my e-mail address (owenjack@isu.edu) or do so now by activating 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.
NOTE: You must have obtained the required ISU computer account before the class session on Monday, 30 August. If you have not done so, you will be required to drop the course.
NOTE: For your own good, no one who expects to do well in this course should be carrying over SIXTEEN CREDIT-HOURS this semester, fewer if you are working more than 10 hours per week.
If you let me, I will even turn your examination essays and paper into dialogues, in which you can participate to improve the quality, and therefore the grade, of your work (see below).
The material in both sections of each examination will be developed from the questions included with the class sessions and reading assignments, from material presented in class, and from our dialogue this semester on the electronic discussion list (see below). A preparation page will be available a week before each examination. All examinations will be comprehensive with, in the case of the second and third, an emphasis on the material since the previous exam.
All examination responses must start from an understanding of the assigned readings. Each exam will be worth roughly 20% of your final grade. Look at the evaluation standards for essays.
Students will be excused from exams for illness or death, usually their own, or for any reason for which the president would excuse a student (I can tell you what those are; ask me, not him). However, no excuse will be given unless the instructor is notified PRIOR to the exam. A make-up exam will be necessary. The format of make-up exams will be entirely essay.
Questions? Please put your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.
NOTE: Periodically throughout the semester, you will be required to submit partial project reports to me and to the SpEmp discussion list (see below).
Because only one student will be allowed to work on a particular topic, we will have a lottery on Wednesday, 1 September, to determine the order of selection. Come to that class with a list of several topics, selected from the list of locations, about which you would like to do research.
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 pm on Friday, 10 September. 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.
Because you must begin your research immediately after you have selected your topic, we will discuss the project in class on Monday, 30 August. Prior to this class, therefore, you MUST have read the project page and the pages on essay evaluation standards, on bibliography and citation style, and on plagiarism.
For this course, there are strict standards, explained on these pages, 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 your research paper, make sure you come to the class on 30 August PREPARED TO SEEK CLARIFICATION of anything on these four pages that you do not understand.
To understand better the goals of the History Major, you should read the page on the History Major at Idaho State University, especially the PREFACE and STUDENT OUTCOMES sections.
Questions? Please put your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.
I will be happy to raise queries in the texts of your essays on the first two exams if you will submit a copy of them to me via e-mail, and, if it is submitted sufficiently before the due date, of your project paper. You may then rewrite your essays and paper to respond to these queries (as well as dealing with flaws of style and content), improving the quality of what you have written and earning a higher grade. You should clarify with me the meaning of my queries before you begin your revisions. If you are already aware of writing problems, you are encouraged to make use of the university's free writing lab for assistance both during the preparation of the first version of the paper and during any revisions of your work. There will be no limit to the number of times you can rewrite your essays.
Questions? Please put your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.
Of course, I will spend substantial amounts of time both before and after your class sessions in room 344 of the Liberal Arts Building, just around the corner from our classroom. Yet we both know that often our schedules will not mesh sufficiently for us to have adequate time to sit down for a discussion of your ideas, questions, and writing. The solution: Send your ideas, questions, and writing problems to my e-mail address (owenjack@isu.edu), and I promise to respond just as soon as I can. Moreover, by handling the matter in this way, I will have more time to consider what you are saying, check on facts and bibliography, and respond clearly in writing so that you will have a record (I will keep one too).
But it gets better than this. Naturally, I will respond to anything of a personal nature with an individual response to you alone. However, many of the questions and comments I will get, about the research paper for example, will be of importance to everyone in the class, and I will, therefore, post your message and my response to everyone. That way I, and you, will derive much more benefit from my interactions with students outside of class. We will be able to have this type of communication because we will all be members of an on-line discussion list, to which I now turn.
Questions? Please put your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.
As soon as possible, send an e-mail message to:
I will respond on SpEmp (The Spanish Empire discussion list) to your queries about course material and the research project.
But we won't stop there. In addition to your questions, you are welcome, indeed encouraged, to post statements of your ideas on particular subjects, messages of an informational nature (e.g., the times for group study sessions in the Student Union or College Market), and YOUR responses to the questions and requests for help of other students.
You MUST DEVELOP traits that encourage positive forms of interaction among class members if this course is to be a satisfying experience for you and others. In addition to developing necessary cognitive and expressive skills, History Majors should learn how to collaborate with each other, how to discuss the work of others in constructive, supportive ways, and how to make use of feedback about their own work in order to improve its quality.
Your participation in the dialogue of the list will account for roughly 20% of your final grade. Therefore, you can seek the assistance you need and get credit for it, and you can do so in a way that is compatible with your schedule and life-style. You must RESPOND PROMPTLY (within 72 hours) to any on-line questions I ask you.
NOTE: Periodically throughout the semester, you will be required to submit partial project reports to the list.
Because Internet discussion lists are rapidly becoming a major component of the activity in all fields, you must learn how to use them well. For suggestions on how to ensure the high quality of your messages and of the responses to them, turn to the page on Using Lists Effectively. You may also find it intellectually useful and stimulating to join a relevant international list, at least as an observer (a "lurker" in Internet language), and you will find sources of lists of these lists on the Internet Resources page in the section on Scholarly Links of Interest.
Questions? Please put your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.
Failure to take good notes from the beginning will trouble you throughout. Also, the note-taking process will convert your class attendance from a passive activity to an active one, which is essential for learning.
You may make an audio recording of class sessions if you wish, but these will be of most use to you if you also take complete written notes and use the recordings only to clarify points poorly expressed in the written version.
Questions? Please put your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.
CONSIDER: "One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we
all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end
in the end having lived only one."
-- Clifford Geertz
All contents copyright © 1995-99. J. B. Owens All rights reserved.Revised: 29 July 1999
URL: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/syllabus.html