All assignments--Reading Responses/Discussion, a 1250 word Essay, a 2000 word Research Essay, and three objective exams (true/false & multiple choice)--are submitted online.

HUM 3306 will be demanding, with lots of reading and writing (the "Humanities with Writing" Gordon Rule requirement mandates three substantial writing assignments). The rough rule for college courses is that you spend 3 hours of study outside of class for every hour in class; for the typical 3-credit course, that means about 9 hours of "home" work per week. So, for this online course during the regular school year, you should be prepared to devote at least 12 hours a week to it. For a summer semester, the pace is more than twice as fast.

You should not be registered for it if you have not taken ENC 1101 and ENC 1102 or their equivalent. You will NOT be able to meet the essay-writing demands without having the competence required for ENC 1101 and ENC 1102.

I’m Dr. Jeremy Rowan; my areas of expertise include European Intellectual History, American History, and British History.  I will be administering the bulk of the course, and you should direct all course questions to me via the Blackboard email module.  Dr. Bruce A. Harvey, Associate Director of SEAS (School of Environment, Arts, and Society) at BBC, designed the course and will be setting up the online exams; his areas of expertise include European Intellectual History, American Literary and Culture Studies, and Literature of the South Pacific.  If you have a question about the course in terms of how it fulfills University requirements or electives, or if you have questions about Humanities courses in general, feel free to contact him.

Welcome to Online HUM 3306:
History of Ideas, from the Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Anxiety!

I have high ambitions for what you will obtain from enrolling in HUM 3306. Many of you will have signed up with the notion that you're just completing an FIU requirement, but I hope that by the time you conclude the class you will have opened your minds and hearts to fascinating realms of human inquiry as expressed in the works you'll be reading. Ideally, how you see the world, and your identity within that world, will be richly and complexly transformed.

The readings will span political philosophy, economic theory, biology and psychology, as well as fiction and poetry.

We'll be tracking a set of key issues and themes: the confident emergence in the 17th & 18th centuries (called the "Age of Reason" or the "Age of Enlightenment") of a non-dogmatic, rational approach to social problems and nature's mysteries; the struggle in the 19th century to maximize individuality and interiority (the "Romantic Era") in the face of widespread economic alienation (the "Industrial Age") and de-humancentric discoveries such as Darwinian evolution; and finally, in the 20th century, the persuasive sense of unease--whether from global conflict, the loss of local community, or philosophical angst.

This course primarily studies European intellectual history, but there remains an entire globe of cultures extending beyond that which has developed in the West. And so you are encouraged, once you have taken this course, to take other Humanities courses at FIU (either online or classroom-oriented) that will round out your interests in and understanding of other, diverse cultural traditions.

I look forward to an intellectually exciting semester with you!

                                                                       --Yours, Dr. Rowan

• To increase your knowledge about key thinkers of the post-Renaissance (16th-century) Western world and their historical contexts.
• To help you understand their significance to our contemporary moment.
• To improve your ability to analyze and reflect critically on sophisticated, complex texts.
• To develop your skill and pleasure in communicating ideas via effective, mature prose.
• To develop your ability to use critically, in analytical argumentation, secondary materials as they relate to primary materials.

This course satisfies one of FIU's University Core Curriculum "Humanities with Writing" requirements. As a 3000-level HUM course, it also serves as a Humanities Minor course and may satisfy elective requirements for various majors.  Contact Dr. Harvey if you have a question.

·       Instructor E-mail and phone: For routine course questions use the course's Blackboard email module. I usually will respond within two days in respect to individual questions. Essay feedback will take between 10-14 days. For truly unusual/emergency situations, you may use my FIU email address or leave a message on my office phone# (see contact info. above).  

·       Instructor Conferences: For conferences about course matters, please email to make an appointment (see contact info. above).

Incompletes: University policy is that these can only be given in the case of a health or family emergency, and only one outstanding assignment is allowed to permit the incomplete being granted.

Late Submissions: Late essays will be accepted only under extraordinary, documented emergencies.  Otherwise, for every day late, an essay will be docked a notch (i.e., B to B-). 

Online Exams: The three Exams will be given within a three-day window (Thursday evening to Sunday evening) and you will have a delimited amount of time to complete each (an hour).  A make-up exam period will be granted for, again, only extraordinary, documented emergencies.

All assignments must be turned in order to receive a passing grade in the course.

Reading Response/Discussion Forum:  Great intellectual and cultural works come vitally alive when they are actively pondered in dialogue. This is crucial to making your online learning experience match the benefits of a “real” classroom. This course component is designed to provide for relatively uninhibited student interaction and, at the same time, to give you a chance to convey your understanding of the material incrementally as the semester proceeds. Here are the rules:

1) You should initiate topics that interest you and/or respond to other students who have initiated topics. I read the forums on a daily basis, but generally do not get involved, as it is best, once the forums get going, to let them evolve according to student interest and insight. 

2) A total of at least 2000 words (equivalent to 8 pages double-spaced) by the end of the semester is expected.  You must, to receive full credit, reflect on each of our major authors (Locke, Equiano, Shelley, Darwin, Marx, and Freud) in a substantial manner.  Biographical information in a Wikipedia style or a “plot” review summary does not count.  Your postings should show insight, analysis, and (implicitly) that you’ve truly read the author or text in question, not just the first chapter.  Engaged students will also want to respond, according to their interest and their group peers’ interests, to the e-text readings or points made in the lectures, although there cannot be a precise rule on the expected amount of such postings.  You must make an effort to keep your postings/replies current with the syllabus readings.  Although some lag-time is ok, and it is natural to return to earlier topics/authors, only posting several weeks later on an author will not give you full credit.

3) The goal is to engage your fellow classmates: so try to post musings, questions, or lines of inquiry that you would want others to respond to, and of course respond to others that have done so. Ideally, you will sustain a dialogue within your forum group about several author or issues.  This means that you typically might offer several postings on an author, not just a singular posting that you tack on to the Reading Response Forum and walk away from.  Avoid getting personal; and please treat others in the forum as you would wish to be treated.

4) As part of the Gordon Rule, writing-intensive, goal: I also expect a degree of increasing sophistication in your postings.  The course syllabus has been carefully designed such that various intellectual themes emerge as we progress through the semester, and, implicitly or explicitly, your responses should reflect that.  Just as in a classroom course, what you say towards the end of the term should to some extent be “elevated” by the foundations you’ve built previously.

5) The Reading Response Forum will have 5-10 primary discussion groups, divided according to your last name (A-D, E-I, J-M, N-Q, R-Z, for example), depending on the number of students enrolled. Please stick to your group and work hard to make conversation/discussion engaging and intellectually productive. Note: use common sense in deciding whether to initiate a new discussion-“tree” or keep your topics/replies under an already-established discussion-“tree.” It is important to have a good balance between topics and replies; otherwise your forum will become too unruly.

6)  Your Forum grade will be worth 25% of the total course grade. Decent grammar, proper sentence construction and punctuation, and so on are required. Although a grading-curve mode of grading is not mechanically used, you should take note of the responses from your peers. Those who respond routinely, with more than several sentences here or several sentences there, and show true insight into the course materials (and write solid, error-free prose) should provide you with an "A" zone example. Those who do not respond to all our major authors, or respond in a sometimes perfunctory, non-insightful way, will be in the "B" or lower zone. Sporadic responses will put you in the "C" or "D" zone; etc. 

7) Your grade for this component of the course will be assessed at the end of the semester. Should you want to know how you are doing before that, however, feel free to email me. If you request an assessment, you should provide a cut-&-pasted document of your significant responses; you are required to submit such at the end of the semester, regardless. 

8) Please routinely cut-and-paste your dated substantial contributions to the Discussion Forum into a "Word" file. You will be asked to submit this at the end of the semester via Turnitin so that the totality of your contributions can be accurately assessed.  Prudent students will, before submitting the compilation, want to do some editing (again, this is part of the Gordon Rule aspect of the course): winnow out trivial “chit-chat” stuff and check your grammar and style.  Such will help foreground what you’ve really learned in the course.

Papers: I will give guidelines and topics for the two essays as the semester progresses, as green links in the far right column of the class calendar below. The first essay will be about five pages long, research-free; the second essay will be about eight pages long, and will require you to consult several provided secondary/research sources.

Students who get very low grades on their first paper may be asked to use the FIU Learning/Writing Center resources, which would require, potentially, several trips to either the BBC or the MMC campus.

Papers will be submitted through the Turnitin site, which has a link on this course's initial main Blackboard online menu.  PLEASE NOTE: YOU MUST, AFTER YOU’VE TURNED IN YOUR MATERIAL, DOUBLE-CHECK TO MAKE SURE YOU TURNED IN WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU TURNED IN.  JUST GETTING THE TURNITIN RECEIPT DOES NOT SUFFICE.  I WILL NOT ACCEPT, DAYS LATER, EXCUSES SUCH AS “I TURNED IN A DRAFT BY MISTAKE.”

Three Exams: These will be objective-style exams.  Each will be available over a three-day period (Thursday-Sunday, to accommodate varied student schedules), but you will have, once you open the exam, strictly one hour to complete it.  Each exam will cover the material up to its taking, roughly in one-third semester increments.  The three raw scores (available through Blackboard) will be translated into standardized scores (90+ = A-) and entered into the Turnitin system as 25% of your course grade (each worth 33%, for the 25% total exam component). Trivial questions will not be asked; but all the course materials--e-texts, lectures, the main book readings--will be considered as testable.  A very brief practice exam will be given a few days before the first real one.

If you have a disability and need assistance, please contact the Disability Resource Center (MMC: GC190; 305-348-3532) (BBC: WUC139, 305-919-5345). Upon contact, the Disability Resource Center will review your request and contact your professors or other personnel to make arrangements for appropriate modification and/or assistance.  

The University's policy on religious holy days as stated in the University Catalog and Student Handbook will be followed in this class. Any student may request to be excused from (on-line) class to observe a religious holy day of his or her faith.

By taking this online course, you promise to adhere to FIU’s Student Code of Academic Integrity. For details on the policy and procedures go to ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT (Section 2.44).

Intensive auditing (via Turnitin) of the course will be conducted to prevent academic misconduct. It is very easy to detect plagiarism: SO DON'T DO IT: YOU WILL BE CAUGHT!!! And, when you are caught, the consequences will be severe, such as getting an "F" in the course or worse.

If you are tempted to plagiarize out of desperation to get an assignment in on time, DON'T DO IT; talk to your professor first, in this class and other classes.