devry HUMN-303 Humanities course project

Course Project: Advancements in the Humanities

Objectives

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This course will take you through huge chunks of human history from the Paleolithic era through the Vietnam War and into our postmodern world. In Week 7, you will be asked to deliver a five- to seven-page research paper on any subject within the humanities of your choosing, providing you have cleared it with your professor. Your research paper will require a minimum of three sources and a maximum of five sources. You must document your research scrupulously—both in text and in a reference page as specified by the APA style sheet. Scrupulous documentation plus high originality, analysis, insight, and fresh applications of ideas are highly prized. Mere reporting, describing, and finding others’ ideas are discouraged, and copying and pasting is just wrong. Your paper is to be 70–80% original and 20–30% resourced (documented via turnitin.com).

Guidelines

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Your final grade includes points accumulated for your

• outline/proposal;
• discussions;
• an annotated bibliography;
• a Final Paper; and
• a Final Exam.

The following are guidelines to assist you in completing the course successfully.

Guidelines for the Outline/Proposal: An outline is a convenience to help you tack down the topics you hope to cover in a Final Paper, and a proposal is the extended and full description of your project (as best you know it at the time of writing). Understand that you are making a best effort to describe your project early on, but allow yourself to be open to growth and change as you conduct research and focus your intentions.

Guidelines for the Annotated Bibliography: Good annotations make for excellent papers. You are required to have three (but no more than five) scholarly resources. A scholarly resource is written by an academician with a Ph.D. or other terminal degree, is published in a multivolume, peer-reviewed journal, and has ample references of its own. Your annotations should succeed in the following.

1. It should establish the title, author, journal, and page numbers.
2. It should briefly summarize the article, book, or chapter.
3. It should analyze the text—say what the implications are, what assumptions are held, what historical context is represented, and the like.
4. It should locate at least one quotation to be used in your paper.
5. It should evaluate—say whether you agree, disagree, and why.

Guidelines for the Final Paper: The essay must be five to seven double-spaced pages in length (not including the title or reference pages). Include a minimum of three and a maximum of five scholarly sources. The margins should be no more than one in. (right and left). The essay should be composed in 12-point Times New Roman or Arial font. All of the sources must be documented and cited using APA format.

Sample Assignments

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Here are some sample assignments, which you may elect to use or not use.

1. Compare the culture that produced the Venus de Willendorf with the culture that produces the Barbie doll. What common themes do you see in the Paleolithic culture that we share or have rejected in modern culture? Consider whether we worship Barbie, and if so, how? Consider society’s view of women in the Barbie era compared to that which the artifactual record suggests was the view of Paleolithic women.
2. Regard Plato's view of the ideal from his Allegory of the Cave and compare it to Aristotle's essay, Rhetoric. Plato believed that artistic language was downright evil, because it could persuade weak-minded people to enact unethical behaviors. He believed, for example, that the bed the artist made was closer to the ideal in that even though it was a shadow of the ideal, it at least had function. However, the bed that the artist made was furthest from the ideal and was a shadow of a shadow and lacking even functional utility. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that the only way to get to the ideal was through the abstractions of language and that the artist's bed captured the essence of bed far better than the carpenter's bed; that is, to live in a reasoned and logos-centric attitude of thought was to be closest to the ideal.
3. What does the term the Dark Ages mean? In what ways were the Dark Ages dark? In what ways was this society inadvertently preparing to emerge in modernity through the preservation of classical literature and scripture? What particular impact did Ireland have in the world that would emerge from the Dark Ages? Consider the literature produced in early Old English, a Germanic language with a Celtic imagination, expressed in Arthurian legend. What do these breathtaking legends of knights and honor have to do with our modern sense of ethics? What is the chivalric code?
4. The early modern (what used to be called the Renaissance) period followed the Middle Ages (which followed the presumably Dark Ages) and is a time––indeed, a very long time––in which there was a rebirth (the literal meaning of the word Renaissance) of classical culture. In this rebirth, classical literature and scripture flourished. And those who will have studied the Dark Ages may recognize that it was those secluded Irish monks who copiously hand copied and illuminated scripture and classical literature that they then reintroduced via Scotland and England into the rest of Europe (effectively jump-starting the university system). And thus a Renaissance began in the temperate climate of Italy and mushroomed northward and culminated (for the study of Western civilization’s purposes) in Renaissance England. Renaissance England produced one of the greatest authors in the history of the Western world—Shakespeare. Although many of us find his language to be distant, his take on relationships, the appropriateness of sovereignty, and such issues as murder and revenge and law and justice are viewed in modern terms. Examine Hamletas a revenge tragedy. In what ways did Shakespeare set Hamlet up for conflict, that is, to avenge his dead father's honor against the unspeakable crime of fratricide, while commenting on the barbarity of revenge?
5. Find a modern revenge drama and detail the ways in which the drama you chose and Hamlet inform each other. In other words, looking at literature is not a one-way street, as if the past only has impact on the present. Quite the contrary, the past and present are in dialogue with each other. Look at how modern revenge motifs help us to understand some of Hamlet’s moral misgivings and the complexities of his choices. For the truly ambitious, you might connect both Hamlet and a modern revenge drama to archetypal literature, such as the descent into hell and the return seen in literature of antiquity.
6. Consider the psychological and physical traumas faced by women who had no control over their reproductive organs. In what way is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a psychological representation of her fear of childbirth?
7. Read T. S. Eliot's great modernist poem "The Waste Land" and his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. To what extent do you think Eliot is successful in demonstrating poetry that emerges not from emotional states but from rather cunning and completely self-aware states that emphasize not the catharsis of the poet's emotions but are geared to producing catharsis in the audience?
8. Throughout American history, music becomes critically important. Look at the music that led up to civil rights. You may wish to select specific musical pieces, such as Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”––a song written by a New York Jewish man who gave the song to Holiday. You also might consider Irving Berlin's “Suppertime,” which was made famous on Broadway by Ethel Waters. Both songs explore the practice of lynching African American men. These collaborations, particularly between Jewish intellectuals and early African American social activists, are critically important and grow in intensity, leading to the freedom singers of the late 1950s and 1960s. These include Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and many more who joined hands with Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Odetta, and many others. Civil rights could never have occurred without interracial collaborations. Even Harry Truman, a Missouri-raised man of his historical context, was able to rise above his social and political encoding and began the civil rights movement in America through the legislation he introduced.
9. Consider the impact of the Vietnam War on American culture. In the decades prior to the 1980s, two issues beset American culture: civil rights and the Vietnam War. Both were televised directly into living rooms on all three channels. On college campuses throughout the world, but especially on American campuses, antiwar protests were routine. Hippies often were thought to conduct themselves on the premises of antiwar, free sex, and lots of drugs. The music that emerged from this era is still famously current and listened to today. It was an era of convertibles, gas guzzlers, freedom, and endless summers. Then that generation grew into adults––your parents and grandparents. Writing with sensitivity to the nuances of the era, what happened to the dream?

Whether you elect to compose on one of the suggestions outlined here, on some modification of a question, or on some independently arrived at idea (in concert with your professor), you will need to plan for the following milestones.

Milestones

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Please refer to the Guidelines above for specific details.

Annotations (150 points)

A good annotated bibliography provides the publication details, describes the key points of the source, uncovers controversies introduced by the source, and evaluates the merits of the source. Each of your three (minimal) to five (maximal) annotations should be approximately 200–250 words. This is due Week 4.

Outline and Proposal (100 points)

Following the annotations, you will be ready to plan your paper. An outline (one and one half pages) and a proposal (two to three pages) of your intended project are due. Quality proposals and outlines will not merely describe or find information but will have a strong and original point of view. The highest points are conferred for originality, the locating and detailing of controversies, and for nuanced papers that sensitively explore topics with deft subtlety. This is due Week 2.

Final Paper (200 points)

See details under the Guidelines above. This is due Week 7.

Grading Rubrics

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Course Project Final Paper Rubric		Total Points Possible	200	Total Points Earned	0
	Points Possible	Points Earned	Comments
Ideas/Content: Ideas are strong and relevant to a humanities paper. The thesis includes a clear statement of purpose and sensitively explores its subject matter. It is supported with effective, specific, and relevant details selected with a humanities audience in mind. Body of the paper is five to seven pages of text (not including the title page and references).	50
Organization: It has a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. The writing is structured to enhance meaning. Transitions are used to move from point to point. Transitions provide logical sequence appropriate for the purpose. Each paragraph ends with an original statement that connects to the thesis.	50
Word Choice: The language is rich, effective, natural, precise, and vivid. Words used to convey images are appropriate to the audience and purpose. Vocabulary is varied, specific, and accurate. It is appropriate for college-level writing.	10
Sentence Fluency: Sentence structures vary and contain no major flows such as run-on sentences, fragments, and verb errors. Sentences add interest and flow to text. There is strong control over simple and complex sentence structures.	15
Mechanics: The paper reflects correctness of expression and has been edited for spelling, style, grammar, and punctuation.	25
APA Formatting: The paper is double-spaced and is in a 12-point Times Roman font. The APA title page is not required or desired. Let’s be green.	20
References: There is a minimum of three academic sources. The references page includes full citations, and in-text citations are included when material is used from a source. Sources do not exceed 30% of the content and are cited correctly (in text and in a full reference page).	30

Week2

Create an outline and proposal for the research you will conduct. Please see the Course Project section under Course Home for details on this assignment.

Select a project from among those suggested or discuss a special topic with your professor.

Submit your assignment to the Dropbox located on the silver tab at the top of this page. For instructions on how to use the Dropbox, read thesestep-by-step Instructionsor watch this

Week4

A good annotated bibliography provides the publication details, describes the key points of the source, uncovers controversies introduced by the source, and evaluates the merits of the source.

Each of your three (minimum) to five (maximum) annotations should be approximately 200–250 words.

Create an introduction by reshaping your proposal based on your professor's feedback. Be sure to include a strong thesis and then annotate each source you intend to use. This is due in Week 4.