LECTURES AND TUTORIALS

As you will note this year MHIS217 will run in flipped format. All the lecture material (90 minutes per week) will be online via the ilearn site. Students are expected to attend just their 60 minute tute every week, after listening to all the lecture material for that week.  For current updates, please consult the MQ Timetables website: http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au.

Students are expected to attend 12 of the 13 tutes offered in this unit. They need to listen to the week’s lectures before turning up to the tute per week. They need also to bring to each tute completed work, set by the lecturer in the online lectures, based on lecture content and on reading. Tutes usually require about 40 pages of reading per week. Undue absences need to be documented with a medical certificate or equivalent. Students need to achieve at least 50% overall to pass the unit.  

READINGS

There is no set textbook (though see recommendations listed in Week One). All essential readings are available via the Unit Readings block to the right. Each week, I have set some essential readings for the tute. There is always also a further reading list, which you may consult for extra work or for guidance in your essays. I have tried to combine primary sources with secondary sources for most of the weeks — sometimes it has gone one way or the other. This is to give you a feel for the mixture of sources that you will be expected to manage in your written work. As mentioned elsewhere, your participation grade is measured by the quality and enthusiasm of your input: be generous; be curious; be brave.

ASSIGNMENTS

Submissions

Quizzes: Internals must submit them to tutes on paper; externals must submit them to the tutor by email by the Friday of each week.

Blog posts: post in blog set up in iLearn; feedback by 5th Oct.

Major Essay: submit via Turnitin in iLearn; feedback by 11th Nov.

Take Home Exam: submit via Turnitin in iLearn

Extensions

Ask early for a legitimate extension if you really need only an extra day or so. If you need longer you will need to apply for special consideration. Any work submitted late without an extension will be penalized two percentage points (2%) for every calendar day late, with the exception of the Take-Home Examination. Take-Home exams submitted late will not be graded and will receive zero.

Applying for Special Consideration

Students applying for Special Consideration circumstances of three (3) consecutive days duration, within a study period, and/or prevent completion of a formal examination must submit an on-line application with the Faculty of Arts. For an application to be valid, it must include a completed Application for Special Consideration form and all supporting documentation. See https://ask.mq.edu.au 

University Grading Policy

http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/grading/policy.html

The grade a student receives will signify their overall performance in meeting the learning outcomes of a unit of study. Grades will not be awarded by reference to the achievement of other students nor allocated to fit a predetermined distribution. In determining a grade, due weight will be given to the learning outcomes and level of a unit (ie 100, 200, 300, 800 etc). Graded units will use the following grades:

HD       High Distinction           85-100

D         Distinction                    75-84

Cr        Credit                          65-74

P          Pass                            50-64

F          Fail                               0-49

Before you submit your essay, please take a look at the following information on writing essays in history. In particular, plagiarism will result in a fail mark without the option of resubmission.

Writing Essays in History: What Markers Look For

When you write essays, it will help to know what we are looking for as we assess your work. In writing essays, you are trying to solve problems. This involves three distinct tasks: 1) posing the question clearly and exploring its implications; 2) answering the question persuasively; and 3) presenting your answers clearly and convincingly.

Like a juror in a law court, you must first figure out exactly what the problem is. If you do not understand the question clearly, and if you are not aware of all its implications, you will find it very hard to solve it. Often, it is a good idea to explain the question clearly in the introduction to your essay.

Second, you must figure out what happened and why. You must do this despite the lies, the evasions, and the sheer randomness of the evidence available to us. Doing this is tricky, so it is not enough just to repeat what the experts say about the past. Your job, like a good juror, is to listen to what the experts say, and then check it by asking what evidence they give, and whether it adds up. Doing this will help you develop your own sense of historical truth and enable you to start building your own vision of the past.

Once you have constructed your answers, you must present them as convincingly as possible. Markers are looking for answers that are as clear, as carefully argued, and as convincing as possible given the time and evidence available to you. In presenting your argument, use the skills of a debater.

The Questions Markers Will Ask

Has the Problem been posed clearly?

Grasp of the problem: Has the question been understood? Too many people skip this stage. Yet you cannot answer a question effectively unless you understand it. So, we will ask: Have the terms been defined? Have the hidden assumptions of the question been winkled out? Has the significance of the question been understood? And its implications?

Has the question been answered persuasively?

Scholarship and Research: Is the argument convincing and based on serious research? Is the argument based on a wide range of supporting evidence? Is there any original research? Does the evidence support the conclusions? Have alternative answers been considered? Has the evidence been assessed critically or merely accepted at face value? Has the evidence been cited properly? (i.e. do the footnotes let the reader check sources? Note that essays with no footnotes at all are likely to be failed.)

Has the answer been presented clearly and logically?

Logic & Organization: Is the argument logically organized? Is there a logical argument which answers the question? Is the logic good? Is there an introduction, development, conclusion? Has irrelevant material been used?

How well does the writer communicate ideas?

Communication: Is the argument written up carefully, precisely and persuasively? Has language been used with precision? Is the writing marred by cliché, vagueness, verbosity? Are there too many passive verbs? Has care been taken with punctuation and spelling? Is the writing clear and concise?

Good writing is immensely important. One of the best and shortest introductions to good writing is: Strunk & White, The Elements of Style. Also, The Pocket Macquarie Writerʼs Guide is a reference work on usage and style. G.V. Careyʼs Mind the Spot is a superb short guide to punctuation. The English department runs very good courses on writing skills, and on ʻEnglish for Academic Purposesʼ.

Whoʼs Reading Your Work?

One of the best ways of improving your writing skills is to spend some time thinking about your reader. The ideal reader is:

Intelligent and critical …

It helps a lot to assume that your reader is intelligent, because this forces you to write logically and sensibly. An intelligent reader will pick up any loose or slipshod arguments. You will also find it helpful to imagine a reader who is critical, as this also keeps you on your toes. A critical reader will expect an essay that is well presented, and has been carefully checked for errors in spelling and punctuation. A critical reader will also see through any muddled or unfounded arguments, and will expect hard evidence for any statement you make.

… but not very well informed.

On the other hand, donʼt assume that your reader knows much about the subject. If you assume that your reader does not know much about the subject, this will encourage you to be extremely clear, and to explain difficult ideas or arguments with great care. (Sometimes, imagining that your reader is a very intelligent child is a good way of forcing you to write with clarity and simplicity, even when you are handling complex arguments.)

Historical Argumentation

A good history essay, like a good legal argument, must try to persuade the reader. That means giving plenty of evidence and discussing the quality of the evidence. So wide reading and careful use of footnotes or endnotes are important. Who would take seriously a legal argument that offered no evidence? The job of testing your argument against the evidence also forces you to check how good it is, and to refine, clarify and sharpen it. Finally, by offering evidence you give the reader a chance to assess your argument. For all these reasons, testing arguments against the evidence is one of the basic skills of good history writing. And citing that evidence systematically in footnotes is equally important.

Historical research, like all good research, is most productive if the researcher is constantly testing hypotheses. So, even before you start research, try to clarify your existing ideas about the topic. Jot down any ideas or questions you may already have about the topic. At this stage, it does not matter if your ideas are good or bad; you will refine them as you do your research. But you will read and research more efficiently and alertly if you already have some ideas in your mind, for you will be constantly asking if your reading confirms or undermines these ideas. Slowly, you will improve your ideas until they are ready for presentation. As you research, it's a good idea to dip into a lot of different books, and then decide which books you are going to use in more detail. This will give your research greater breadth. A marker will always impressed if you can come up with good sources not listed in the course bibliographies.

Good Referencing is very important

History is written by a process of argument. A good argument puts forward a point of view that is well grounded: it has evidence to support it. History, unlike mathematics or science subjects, does not have universally agreed upon answers to the questions asked. Rather you must take the available evidence into account and argue your own case. The emphasis in history is on analysis. Precisely because of this emphasis on analysis, history has a set of rules for writing. These exist to make it clear to the reader which views are yours and which are the views of other writers; to allow you to acknowledge your intellectual debts to others if you decide to accept their views or information; to direct the reader by the most efficient signposts to the place where the information you have relied on can be checked and verified.

At first these rules of documentation may seem difficult or over-precise but once you have used them they become familiar and in time will become second nature in regard to your professional writing.

When to Footnote

Whenever you know that you are relying on another writer for the words, information or ideas you are using, you MUST use a footnote. Please do not use endnotes or in-text citation methods. To use another person's writings (or audio-visual materials, or computer-stored information) as if this material is you own is to plagiarise. Plagiarism defeats the purpose of historical writing: it is dishonest, stunts the development of your powers of reasoning, and frustrates the reader's right to check the basis of your argument. Any piece of work which contains plagiarism will be unacceptable. i.e. it will be given a fail mark without option of resubmission. How to Avoid Plagiarism: Any direct quotation: Place in quotation marks and footnote. Any paraphrase: Footnote. Any reference to someone else's arguments or key facts: Footnote.

Where to locate a Footnote

When quoting directly from an author, place the excerpt in quotation marks and write the footnote number half a space up at the end of the quotation (it need not be at the end of the sentence). Word processing packages like ʻWordʼ include a footnote function. Go to the ʻinsertʼ menu and follow the prompts. Word will not only insert and keep track of numbers, it will also place notes at the foot of each page or at the end of your essay. e.g: “Mennochio hadn't taken his cosmogony from books.”¹

When you paraphrase an author, place the number at the end of the sentence. e.g: An ideal woman, in nineteenth-century terms, was employed in the home.²

If you have more than four lines of direct quotation, you should indent the quotation without quotation marks and use single spacing. e.g:

Some sources suggest that Britain was interested in colonizing NSW for commercial purposes; none of the plans for the settlement of NSW, official or unofficial, omitted to mention trade or resource considerations.³

Your footnotes should be written at the bottom of the page on which the reference occurs. Number the footnotes consecutively from start to finish of your essay. (Do not return to 1 at start of each new page.)

How to Footnote different Types of Material

Book 

Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God's Police (Melbourne, 1975), p. 18.

Articles in journals

E.W. Ives, “The Genesis of the Statute of Uses,” English Historical Review, vol. 63 (1967), pp. 673-679.

Articles in books

Gerhard Ritter, “Why the Reformation occurred in Germany,” in L.W. Spitz (ed.), The Reformation: Material or Spiritual? (Boston, 1962), pp. 69 ff. at p. 75.

Original Sources

Vergil, Aeneid 8. 345-347, cf. Homer, Iliad 22. 103-105.

or

Darling to Hay, 3 Nov. 1827, Historical Records of Australia, ser. I, vol. 23, p. 627.

Audio-visual sources

Gladiator [dvd], director: R. Scott, Universal Pictures, 2000.

or

Memento [videorecording], director: C. Nolan, Miramax, 2000.

Electronically-accessed sources

National Archives of Ireland: Transportation Records,

http://147.252.133.152/nat-arch/search01.html, accessed 27 June 2001.

This is an area where the rules are still being worked out but the over-riding aim here, as in all other types of citation, should be to give the reader the most efficient signposts to the precise place where you found the information. These signposts must include the author and/or title of the material plus the electronic address (URL) of your source and enough further information to allow the reader to replicate your search. It is also important that you think very carefully about the reliability of any electronic information used as peer review does not apply to websites. Please include the date you accessed the site, as well as the site title and author(s) if known. Note: If your reference is to an electronically-accessed journal article, you should give the citation (so far as is possible) in the form set out above for citing articles in journals.

Second and Later References

You will probably refer to a book more than once. Where the book is exactly the same as the one above it, write ibid. [meaning “in the same place”] followed by a comma and the page number.

e.g.: Ibid., p. 150.

When it is not immediately above, you may use op. cit. [meaning “in the work previously cited”] after the surname.

e.g.: Summers, op. cit., p. 62

Alternatively, you may prefer to give the reference in abbreviated author/title form.

e.g: Summers, Damned Whores, p. 62

Bibliography

At the end of your essay, list alphabetically all the books and articles you have used in the writing of the essay. You will notice that citations used as examples here have been ʻstreamlinedʼ by omission of vol. [= volume] and p. or pp. [= page or pages] cues. This streamlining is also acceptable to most historians in footnote citations as well, as long as standard order of information is preserved.

Use the form:

Bellemore, J., “Gaius the Pantominme,” Antichthon, 28(1994), 65-79.

Matthews, J., “Ammianus' Historical Evolution,” in B. Croke and A.M. Emmett (eds.) History and Historians in Late Antiquity (Sydney, 1983), 30-41.

McLynn, N., Ambrose of Milan (Berkeley, 1994)

Final Note

While the rules listed above are in general use among history writers, they do not cover all types of material or all preferred forms of citation. If you are uncertain of your footnoting, consult your tutor or lecturer before you hand in your essay or tutorial paper. 

Some Works of Reference for Complicated Cases

Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers (Canberra, 1994)

Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations (Chicago, 1987)

Bill Stinson, Citing Non-Book Materials: A Guide for Researchers and Students (Macquarie University Library, 1990)

Xia Li and Nancy B. Crane, Electronic Style: A Guide to Citing Electronic Information (Westport, 1993)

KATE'S EXTRA NOTES ON WRITING ESSAYS IN HISTORY

• Make sure you read the questions carefully. If a question asks for two examples, you must give two examples. If it asks for examples within a particular time span or region, then please heed the instructions. Even the best essays cannot achieve an HD if they do not address the parameters set by the question.

• The introduction is usually the most important part of the essay; if you get it right then your essay will usually be more organized and easier to write. Think about what an introduction is meant to do – it introduces the reader to a problem and how you personally are going to solve it. You need to include in it therefore the chief terms, a sense of the essay’s structure, and at least a whiff of what your particular thesis or take on the problem will be.

• On tense: the present tense can be a powerful mode but be careful of using it too much or of mixing it too haphazardly with the past tense. Generally in history it is better to use the present only for analysis of a text (if desired) and keep to the past for general narratives of events.

• All essays need a title, wide margins, double-spaced text, page numbers. These are not empty rules – they allow an assessor room to give you accurate feedback. They are easy to do! Don’t forget them!

• To differentiate paragraphs, choose either to indent the first word of each paragraph OR to leave a line break between each paragraph. You do not need to leave a line break AND indent.

• There is no need to italicise quotations unless they already include italicised words or you want to emphasise something in particular (in which case you need to let the reader know in the footnote that you added italics).

• When two words together form an adjective, you need to include a hyphen between them. For example: it is ‘nineteenth-century history’. When only the first word is an adjective and the second used as a noun, then of course you do not need the hyphen. For example: it is ‘history of the nineteenth century’.

• When you want to include a dash mark in a sentence to indicate a significant pause, the mark should be an M rule rather than a hyphen. A hyphen is just the short line next to the 0 (-). An M rule is the width of a capital M, made by hitting shift, option and hyphen at the same time (—).

• A gap in between words (or a sign for suspense) is an ellipsis and is written by giving one space, three stops, one space. If you do this, then WORD will automatically space it correctly for you. Don’t give lots of stops with no spaces……….

• Decades do not need an apostrophe. It is the 1970s not the 1970’s. Be careful of apostrophe use in general.

• The guide above is fairly clear about its preferred Chicago style for referencing. Don’t mix footnotes with in-text.

• When indenting a large quotation (making it into a block quote), you do not include quotation marks (though you do still include the footnote mark).

• A footnote mark in the text comes after all other punctuation. For example:… century.”¹ or … century”.¹

• It is also OK to put a footnote mark in the middle of a sentence if necessary, but it should also come after any punctuation (e.g. a comma). For example:… although Burke was an MP,¹ he still believed that …

• Bibliographies need to begin on a separate page. They must be alphabetised. Do not list them by numbers or by dots or by anything other than the author’s surname.