Category Archives: hist 102 (Fall 2008)

Essay #3 report

The grade distribution for this assignment was a noticeable improvement overall: roughly equal numbers of every grade from F to C+, and a few more B-level grades. It wasn’t good for everyone, of course, but the median was at the bottom of the C range instead of borderline C-/D! Lots more people taking the textbook as a second source, using historical context more carefully, and a lot more people addressing a specific question, instead of doing a summary.

Some thoughts on improvements yet to come:

  • The comment I’m writing most frequently is some variation on “good start, but you need more evidence and more thought before you’re done.” In other words, you seem to be getting the idea of the assignment down, but you need to go well beyond the minimum word count for it to be an effective essay.
  • The grammatical problem I’m seeing most frequently (and I don’t grade on these, but it is coming up a lot) is the their/there/they’re problem.
    • “There” is a place, and goes with “here and there.”
    • “Their” is a possessive plural, “his, hers, theirs”; or you can think of it as the possessive form of “them”, just as “his” is the possessive of “he” and “hers” is the possessive of “her.”
    • And “they’re” is the contraction of “they are”

I will include the best essay of the batch below the jump as soon as I get home and scan it in, so look for an update sometime tonight. It’s an interesting paper: very short, actually, but extremely effective; more importantly, the author takes a very specific position on the document and the history it represents, and draws on a solid body of evidence to prove the elements of that position. My most obvious criticism of it was that the thesis isn’t as strongly or clearly stated as it deserves, but it’s definitely there and the argument is strongly focused on proving it. It could also have been longer, more detailed and thoughtful, but it’s very good as it is, and very nicely demonstrates how you can use a document without summarizing or quoting from it extensively. (Of course, quotation and summary have their place, depending on what case you’re trying to make!)

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Adjustments to the schedule

As with last time, I think a little more time on the essays is called for, especially since there’s almost no chance that we’ll be done with the French Revolution context by the end of today. So the essay will be due Friday, the 17th. However, it is very important that you read The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen for Wednesday the 15th, as we will be discussing it directly.

Here’s the direct link to the schedule and here’s the essay assignment page.

Test 3 Report

There wasn’t as overwhelming a favorite this time: Opium had the strongest showing, picked by almost 3/4ths of you. It was followed closely by urbanization, monocultures and industrialization. If you’re keeping score, you’ll note that all of those were terms from Chapter 20 which, in spite of offering fewer choices, was the clear favorite. The most popular terms from Chapter 19, just around the 50% level, were Queen Nzinga and Peter the Great. The least popular terms were David Ricardo, Manchus and mestizos, Treaty of Westphalia and James Cook.

The high score this time was 27, the lowest of the semester, so far. The good news is that the ratio of A-level grades was clearly up as a result; the ratio of D-level grades was also up, though. The median was on the B/B- borderline.

Grade Minimum Distribution
A+ 27
A 25.3 25%
A- 24.3
B+ 22.3
B 19.6 35%
B- 17.6
C+ 15.6
C 12.9 30%
C- 10.9
D+ 8.9
D 6.2 15%
D- 4.2
F 0

Here are some good answers, as a reminder of what I’m looking for:
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Study Terms for Chapters 21 and 22

The full list is here.

Chapter 21
Alessandro Malaspina
American Revolution
Brazil
creolism
Dutch East Indies
juntas
Marathas
overseas Chinese
Qianlong Emperor
Robert Clive
Seven Years’ War
Sioux
Thomas Jefferson
Wahhabism
Xinjiang		 Chapter 22
Adam Smith
anti-clericalism
Baron de Montesquieu
Catherine the Great
Code Napoleon
Denis Diderot
Edmund Burke
Encyclopedia
French Revolution
George Friedrich Handel
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Immanuel Kant
James Cook
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Johann Gottfried Herder
laissez-faire
Napoleon Bonaparte
noble savages
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Romanticism
Voltaire

Typo Alert

There’s a typo in the text. Normally I don’t worry about these, but when it’s a name that only appears once … anyway, on p. 707 where it’s referring to “the corrupt favorite” of the Qianlong Emperor, the name is given as “Hensho” when it should be “Heshen” (or “Hoshen” in the old Wade-Giles system, which is probably where the typo came from).

Test 2 Results

The high score without extra credit was 30. This makes the calculations of lower grades pretty easy: nice round numbers.

Grade Minimum Distribution
A+ 30
A 28.5 15%
A- 27
B+ 24.5
B 22 45%
B- 19.5
C+ 17
C 14.5 35%
C- 12
D+ 9.5
D 7 5%
D- 4.5
F 0

The most popular terms were:

  1. Columbian Exchange
  2. maize
  3. smallpox & Martin Luther
  4. sugar
  5. weeds

The least popular terms were Manchu, Siberia and Rene Descartes.

Essay #2 Results

The grade distribution for the second essay was actually worse than the first, though there were a few more higher-end grades this time. A few thoughts:

  • The document analysis questions are starting places, not a checklist for your final essay. You should think about these questions before you write your essay, and the more interesting answers might well form the core question/thesis of your essay.
  • This is not a book report: summary is not the point. Discussing evidence which does not relate to your thesis detracts from your grade, not enhances it.
  • I can tell the difference between a simplistic question of fact and an interesting question of interpretation and analysis; you don’t get a lot of credit for asking questions that can be answered by a simple reading of the plain text.
  • Never assume that a document is telling the truth: always be prepared to explain why you trust it, particularly when there’s reason not to.
  • “If they hadn’t discovered…. we’d never have ….” is a terrible argument in most cases. If, for example, Columbus hadn’t discovered the Americas, someone else would have, probably within a few dozen years. If Newton hadn’t explained gravity, someone else would have, probably Leibniz. Sometimes a delay of a few decades really matters (the atomic bomb is one obvious example) but sometimes it really doesn’t.

Since I’m spending considerable class time (Friday and Monday) on the historical context of the document for the next assignment (due next Friday), I’m going to keep the due date as is. I’m sorry that I won’t be available for office hours Tuesday or Wednesday, due to the Jewish New Year, but I will be checking email fairly regularly, and I will have office hours on Thursday, 10-12.

To give you a better idea, a model for your papers, I’m including below the text of the best paper from this time around. It’s not perfect (and I corrected a few spelling/grammar issues, just to keep things clear) but it has a strong thesis, a good command of the relevant evidence, makes judicious use of the textbook for supporting context and is interesting, to boot. I don’t recommend mimicking or copying, but it is a good example of the kind of thinking and writing which I want to see a lot more of.

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Test 2 Extra Credit

You got half a point for picking something, and half a point for answering “why.” Right answer? Any of them, if you make a case for it

Number who chose each and my favorite answers:

Aside from maize, the most important new food from the Americas was:

  • Chili Peppers (12): “This was another plant that was a valuable food source because it gave unprecedented flavor to bland European food. This also expanded to other places besides Europe like southeast Asia, such is why Thai food is so spicy.”
  • Chocolate (20): “was very popular in trade and a lot of people desired it. Helped make new foods was grown in different places than origin. Helped in slave trade and imperialism.”
  • Peanuts (5): “Oil was able to be extracted from the peanuts for cooking.”
  • Tomato (3): “It obviously had a huge influence in Italian food.”
  • Vanilla (4): “without vanilla we would not have my favorite ice cream”

Study Terms for Chapters 19 and 20

The complete list of terms for the semester can be found here, and the sample answers from the first quiz are here

Chapter 19

creole
Dahomey
Janissaries
Jean Bodin
law of nations
Manchus
mandarins
maroons
mestizos
Mughal dynasty
Niccolo Machiavelli
nuclear family
Peter the Great
Qizilbash
Queen Nzinga
Safavids
sovereignty
Topkapi palace
Treaty of Westphalia

Chapter 20

botanical gardens
breadfruit
David Ricardo
industrialization
inoculation
James Cook
Marquis de Condorcet
monocultures
Neo Europes
opium
quinine
scurvy
steam power
Thomas Malthus
urbanization