HIST 415 Senior Seminar Salem Witch Hunt (3 credits) Syllabus Fall 2020

Prof. Pavlac

I. Description:

This course is designed to integrate discipline-specific knowledge into a culminating senior experience. Students will be required to analyze and discuss all facets of historical presentations, including scholarly works and public history. Each student will make an in-depth public presentation demonstrating historical research, study, or professional involvement. This course offers senior history majors an opportunity to both sum up their undergraduate historical study and prepare for life beyond graduation.  

II. Purpose:

Department Mission, Curricular Statement on the Senior Seminar –
The Senior Seminar is the department’s capstone experience, a course meant to highlight the knowledge and skills that history majors have gained over the course of their undergraduate careers. As such it is intended both to demonstrate and encapsulate your major achievements after many hard years of work. In fact, all of your work in the department culminates in this class. The Senior Seminar should also set the stage for the realization of educational goals that will come to fruition in your career(s), whether related to history or not, and in your lives as informed citizens of the world. 

The Senior Seminar revolves around the production of a substantial piece of original scholarship that goes beyond—in terms of quality and depth—traditional coursework and the historiographical and research material you have produced in Research & Methods and other seminar-style classes. HIST 415 is built around the doing of professional history: researching a topic, gaining necessary historiographical knowledge to contextualize your project, researching and interpreting primary sources materials (often archival), and positioning your work among that of your peers and other professionals.

The process of creating a substantial piece of original scholarship will call upon skills you have cultivated in your career at King’s: critical reading (assessing the value and subject position of sources); writing; information literacy (the use of research databases and the understanding of how to properly use and cite sources); oral communications, etc. The end goal is that you demonstrate “capstone” understanding of the practice of history. In short, you will model what it means to be a professional historian, able to “do history” and to make a contribution to the field.

In this course, you will be encouraged to consider various historical problems or subjects which interest you but which are related to the areas of specialization of the instructor, in this case the Salem Witch Hunt. You will familiarize yourself with key literature related to these problems, identifying and annotating a substantial bibliography of secondary literature. You will then in stages craft a research paper and poster presentation connected to it.

History Department Student Learning Outcomes:

• Student will demonstrate and apply knowledge of major historical subjects, themes, and concepts.
• Students will critically engage sources and assess historiographical arguments.
• Students will illustrate their participation in these historical conversations by producing original scholarship.

Course-Level/Instructional Objectives:  
Capstone achievement in this course means,

• Students will gain holistic knowledge and thematic understanding of the history of the Witch Hunts in the colonial period of the United States. 
• Students will also develop an appreciation for the complexity of historical knowledge about witchcraft history. 
• Taken together you will use the above knowledge to make informed and original historiographical arguments about some aspect of American history.
• Students will develop critical thinking skills through the analysis of primary and secondary sources, discussion with other students and lecture and presentation materials. 
• Students will use these skills to synthesize materials for the final paper, and be expected to learn how to articulate these ideas in a coherent manner, in both written and oral form. 

III. Requirements

A. Academic Integrity:

Review the academic honesty policy concerning cheating and plagiarism, differing levels of violations, and your moral, ethical, and legal obligation, that assignments "submitted for credit as a part of a course in fulfillment of a college requirement are the original works of the student." (click here for more information from the Student Handbook).  Also see <Help stop Plagiarism!>.

B. Class Schedule:

Before class, consult the schedule, below and/or the Moodle listing for what is to be covered on any particular week or day. Regularly consult the sechdule to plan for assignments due. Although this syllabus present the basic content and requirements of the course, the professor reserves the right to change anything (e.g. assignments, point values, topics, due dates, grading policy, etc.), at any time, at his discretion.

C. Reading:

The readings are intended to provide you with important factual and background information before class, a basis for discussion during class, and to be used as review and reference works afterwards.

1. Obtain the following books:
Pavlac, Brian A. Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials. NB: Bison Books, 2010.   ISBN 978-0-8032-3290-7. Bring this book to the classes during which we discuss it, or any time you may have a question about it.

Turabian, Kate L. Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-2264-3057-7. EVERY CITATION for EVERY ASSIGNMENT must follow the examples and guidelines in this book. Improper citations will negatively affect your grade. Bring this book to every class.

See the website for study guides and other learning aids.

Other readings will be assigned according to the schedule, below and on the Moodle page. In this class (and in all of your classes) you should prudently mark up, underline, highlight, and otherwise annotate your texts as you study. For this class, you are required to do so.  Thus it would be best if you purchased/rented/leased/borrowed a clean un-marked-up copy of the Witch Hunts in the Western World text (whether new or used). For books from the library (WHICH YOU SHOULD NOT MARK IN AT ALL!) you should make notes in a word processing program, some of which you will turn in.
You should critique any source as you read it. If you own the text, while you are reading, use one or more highlighters or pens to mark up portions of the text. You might use marks similar to those used by the professor in his assessment of your own assignments, found here.  You might consider different colors for (a) historical facts, terms, dates, (b) important points or details, or (c) key explanatory phrases and sentences (d) significant quotes or lines.
For library books, make careful notes on a computer, or on paper to be re-written into a computer later.

You might write comments in the margins about the following:

• key points of the page
• connections between themes, ideas, or subjects in different parts of the text
• ideas you agree with
• ideas you disagree with
• reactions provoked by the text
• points or subjects of particular interest to you
• points or subjects you would like to know more about.

Carefully reading and noting texts is so important that the instructor applies this method of evaluation:
During the classes for which the Witch Hunts in the Western World is discussed, the instructor will ask you to hold up your book open to a certain page, and evaluate how well it has been marked up.

If you have a used textbook that has already been marked up, see the instructor by the second class so that solutions can be found for your use of the textbook and subsequent evaluation.

D. Class Participation & Attendance Policy:

Participation and attendance are necessary because discussion provide the essentials for achieving class goals and objectives. Thus a portion of your grade (about 25%) will depend on your in-class performance, aside from graded assignments. You are required to attend each class, arrive on time, remain attentive, maintain proper classroom decorum, respond to questions, and participate in discussion and small-group activities. At this level of learning, you should be self-motivated to learn and able to construct your own plan for acquiring knowledge and sharing it with your fellow learners (the instructor included).

In class, you are encouraged to take notes and ask questions. Since mature engagement with our society's past and present problems and controversies requires knowledge of current events, students are expected to be informed about significant current events. Students will be required to regularly present on course readings and materials they found in their own research experiences in Status Reports and Discussions with the Instructor, described below.

During in-person class, electronic devices may only be used for tasks and information relevant to the classroom activity and may not distract you or other students. Only with the instructor's permission may any aspect of class or its participants be recorded, only to be used for your own study, and the recordings must be erased when the class is finished. During online class, you are not to be using any other app or program without explicit authorization by the instructor. Do not get distracted.

Any student who has a learning disability, physical handicap, and/or any other possible impediment to class participation and requirements (whether or not vetted by the Academic Skills Center https://www.kings.edu/academics/support/skills_center) should meet with the instructor within the first two weeks of classes to establish available accommodations.

If, at some point during the semester, you must discontinue the course, whether due to poor performance, illness, or some other cause, be sure to follow proper procedures for withdrawal through the Registrar.

E. Absence Policy:

Since participation and class attendance are necessary, if you miss a class you must complete an Absentee Assignment (see below).
If you arrive at class late, after attendance is taken, you must personally request that the absence be turned into a tardy mark; otherwise an Absentee Assignment (see below) may be required. Students who need to leave a class early, except for an emergency, should notify the instructor before class begins.
Missing a class falls into two categories, excused or unexcused, either of which requires submission of an Absentee Assignment (see below).

1. Excused absences are due to college activities, an emergency, or extended illness. They require a notification by the appropriate College official (coach, director, etc.). If you know in advance, you should consult with the instructor about making up/turning in missed work; otherwise contact the instructor as soon as possible after your return. They should have no negative impact upon your grade.

2. All other absences, for whatever reasons, are unexcused, but do not require any written documentation. Things happen. More than a few, however, may lower the class participation portion of your grade.

After any absence, you are also responsible for requesting any hand-outs and already-returned assignments from the professor or borrowing notes from other students.

A two or three unexcused absences should not significantly affect your grade, if you turn in your absentee assignment.  Always, your health is your first priority. If you are sick, stay away from class, and seek proper treatment and rest before returning to class.

At the moment, you should be sure to reserve time on the afternoon (2:30-5 pm) of November 18 to make your public poster presentation.

F. Absentee Assignment:

Since participation and class attendance are necessary, if you miss a class you must complete an Absentee Assignment so that the instructor may evaluate whether some learning has taken place.
For an Absentee Assignment, you are to write one paragraph of between 200 and 325 words, discussing the topic of the day.  Use some specific details.
Write the paragraph in a Microsoft Word document. At the top of the page put your name and the date of the class missed. Send the document as an attachment by e-mail to the instructor (bapavlac@kings.edu), using "Absentee Assignment" as your subject line. These papers are ungraded, without points, and not returned; yet failure to complete Absentee Assignments will significantly lower your grade, perhaps resulting in failure of the course. 
Deadlines: The assignment(s) should be sent to the instructor by the beginning of the next class after you return.

G. Discussion Assignments, Status Reports, and Scheduled Meetings with the Instructor:

You are responsible at his stage of education, to be a self-starting motivated learner. Discussions of what you have read will be the main in-class method of instruction. Therefore keeping up on reading is essential. To help i your preparation and education, three variations will be carried out as scheduled through the semester.

A. For the first few weeks, "Discussion Assignments" will help you focus and learn from your reading. Instructions for these are detailed in handouts available on Moodle.
B. For your "Discussion of your research status" you must give an approximately five-minute presentation of the current progress of your research.  You will be evaluated on the clarity of your presentation, the apparent amount of work achieved, and the indications of thought about future progress. You must be able to answer questions about your project.  You must ask questions of other students for their presentations. You should, if possible, offer help to other students with their projects. 
C. For any "Scheduled meeting with Instructor," you will meet during scheduled class time or some other mutually agreeble time individually with the instructor. Again you should present at least a five-minute summary of your progress from your last discussion or meeting. These sessions also offer a chance to ask questions about your subject.

H. Major Research Assignment:

Outside of the classroom you will research and write a major written assignment, on the Salem Witch Hunt, culminating in an essay of ten-to-twelve (10-12) pages of text (not counting cover page and bibliography) which argues a specific thesis about the Salem Witch Hunt.

Purpose:
Sources often present different, even conflicting, views about people and events in history. Examining various source problems will assist you in distinguishing facts from opinions. You will manage information, evaluate different historical opinions, analyze arguments, organize your thoughts and present them in a clear written form in order to better understand an historical process.

To properly guide you through the research process, various assignments (with more detail on handouts available on Moodle) will be required of you during the semester as follows:

1. Discussion Assignments (10 points each)
2. Tentative Prospectus (10 points)
3. Timeline (10 points)
4. Preliminary Annotated Bibliography (25 points)
5. Working Thesis (10 points)
6. Primary Source Analysis (25 points)
7. Outline and Revised Thesis (25 points)
8. Revised Annotated Bibliography (35 points)
9. Peer Review of Rough Draft of Paper (20 points)
10. Peer Review of Poster Presentation (20 points)
11. Poster Presentation (75 points)
12. Final Draft of Paper (100 poinrs)

Make sure you follow guidelines for Paper presentation: Instructions for turning in papers

DEADLINES:

Completing assignments on time is an important aspect of your course work.  You yourself must hand in each written assignment at the beginning of class on the dates as listed in the schedule, or as soon as possible after an absence.
You may not earn credit for a part of a written assignment until the previous part(s) have been submitted.  The grade of any assignment you turn in late will lose at least 10% after the beginning of the first class, 20% after the second, and 35% after the third. No late assignments will be accepted after the last day of classes, except for the final research paper which must be turned in on time for you to receive a grade for the course. 

IV. Grades:

You earn your grade through work done for this course.  You are responsible to understand why you have achieved a certain grade and what you can do to maintain or improve your grade.  You are encouraged to consult with the professor during office hours or by appointment both before and after exams and written assignments. 
Click here for a Grading Policy with more information on the parameters of evaluation and grading. For more information on grades, see your Student Handbook and the College catalog.

For your protection, in case of errors of recording, you should keep copies of all exams and assignments until you have received official notice of your final grade.  Any and all materials done for this course may become the property of the professor, who may use them for assessment, evaluative, scholarly, or research purposes. 

Your final grade will be based on a percentage (above 90%=A, 80-89%=B, etc.) of the sum of the assignments. Different assignments will be worth certain point values.

Most important, this course and your entire education should be about learning to be a better human being, not merely earning grades and fulfilling requirements.  The grades and requirements, however, are imperfect means toward that noble end.  Please consult with the professor about how you can succeed. 

Should the College cancel classes, still do work according to the schedule below, until otherwise instructed by the professor.
Should the College have a compressed or half-day schedule, still do the work according to the schedule below, turning any required work in at the next class, until otherwise instructed by the professor.  Meeting time under a compressed schedule will be determined. 

All topics and assignments on the schedule are tentative; the instructor may change them at his discretion.  For proper and current information consult the syllabus on the web or Moodle, or ask the instructor.  

Requirements | Moodle

Written Assignments | Grading Polic

Paper Presentation instructions for turning in papers

Although this syllabus presents the basic content and requirements of the course, the professor reserves the right to change anything (e.g. assignments, point values, topics, due dates, grading policy, etc.), at any time, at his discretion.  All these requirements, remember, are to help you to learn.