The good news is, you save $60 or
$90. The bad news is, you are going to have to work harder
because of it.
Dull as they can be, textbooks fulfill a
vital role in a survey course: they cover all the bases. They may not
cover any one topic well, but neither do they overlook anything
important. With a textbook you get the tour bus approach to the past,
with a little taste of everything. The downside of the tour bus is
that you explore nowhere in detail. If you want to look at something
at length, because it has caught your fancy, too bad. Back on the
bus!
I have abandoned the textbook for a
variety of reasons, but both you and I have to do the work that was
formerly done by the textbook. While we get to explore, we still need
to try to cover all the bases. After all, if a French tourist spent
six weeks in Idaho then went home, she could say she learned a lot,
but she could not say she had seen America.
This course is about Western history from
prehistory to the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Thirty Years
War. Somehow, you have to read a little about everything important
across that entire 40,000 year span. Your job is to do the reading and
to demonstrate your understanding through a series of assignments,
including class discussion. My job is to construct good assignments
and to evaluate your work, but it's also to let you know what
constitutes "the basics" and show where you might find
information about them. I've done that by my choice of topics for
assignments, my choice of online readings (including my own essays),
and by providing some standard reference tools such as the timelines
or maps.
In a traditional class, you read the
textbook(s), attend the lectures, and that's it. You know the
boundaries of what's expected. This class works a little differently.
You have a core set of expectations: participate in discussion, and do
the assignments. I have provided a set of resources online, but I
expect that you will read as much as you need to read in order to
do what's assigned.
How much is that? I cannot say, for the
amount one person reads to gain understanding will be different from
the amount another reads. This varies not only by native intelligence
but also by how fortunate you are in your choice of reading
material.
The trouble with online information is
that certain topics get done to death while other topics are quite
neglected. The Net reflects the preoccupations of humanity in general,
which are *ahem* not entirely academic in focus. For all its terabytes
of information, the Net does not contain all of what can be found in
any freshman college history book. I've done my best to show the gaps
and to provide ways for you to fill them. That's one of the reasons
for the short writing assignments and in-class presentations. But you
will certainly wind up consulting physical books. If you happen to
have a history textbook around the house, you will no doubt find it
useful. There are several in the library and I recommend
consulting those.
If you want to buy one I recommend:
1) A
History of World Societies, by John McKay, Bennett Hill and John
Buckler, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ISBN: 0395944899.
or
2) The
Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Volume I to 1740,
Hunt, et al. 2001, Bedford/St. Martins ISBN 0312183690.
Why am I doing this? Two reasons.
First, I like to experiment. I like to
try new ways of teaching. By listening to the students about what
works and what doesn't, I improve as a teacher and keep engaged with
the process.
Second, the Net will catch up. Is
catching up, with more material available every month. Abandoning the
textbook two years ago would have been out of the question. Having
everything online brings certain benefits and I want to explore the
possibilities now, while the new teaching environment is in
formation.
So, you are part of an experiment. Or,
more accurately, you have joined a group of explorers. Maybe you are
just looking to fill a core credit. Maybe you want only to hop on a
tour bus and be led around the main highways of history. There's
nothing at all wrong with that. But if that is what you want, you had
better drop my class. Because here, we're treking cross-country,
relying more on a compass heading than an itinerary. And you're being
led by an outfitter who insists on doing things the right way. If that
appeals to you, then welcome! I am quite sure you will both learn a
lot of history and learn things of personal interest.