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Course Grading
Class Participation:
Class participation (15% of your final grade) will be assessed not simply on the volume of one’s participation in discussions but on the quality and thoughtfulness of a student’s contribution. This is invariably a subjective measure, but it is important for students to consider whether they have a particular question that they want to address and how that relates to the readings. What I particularly want to see is that students demonstrate close reading skills by drawing on the texts themselves and offering analysis of an author’s argument. This might be in the form of showing how the archaeological evidence does not support the substantive claims of an article, or to ask for clarification of technical terms or theoretical concepts.
Included in the class participation grade are the various non-graded short assignments that will be part of the course which may include in-class debates, short presentations, or course wiki postings.
After the first two weeks of shopping period you will have two days of unexcused absences (use them wisely). Each additional unexcused absence will result in 1 point subtracted from your final total out of 100. Absences due to illness, personal/family emergency will be excused given sufficient verification. Excessive tardiness (10 minutes or more after the start of class) will result in ½ point subtracted from your final grade. It will be hard to learn much from this class if you don’t show up!
Writing Assignments – General Overview
This course will consist of two writing assignments. The first will be a short (1500-2000 word) take home essay topic in which you will be asked to think about the relationship between artifacts and text.
The final paper (3000 words) will ask students to examine the data (both archaeological and textual) from a number of sites which will be provided as additional course readings. Your task will be to evaluate how these materials can be used to address any number of key themes that have tackled throughout the course. These might include trade, warfare, conversion, colonialism, imperial expansion, religious or cultural syncretism, identity, tribal versus state-based political structures, etc.
Further details of each essay will be provided closer to the time of the actual assignment.
Writing assignments will be evaluated for both content and style. By style I mean that I expect papers to have been rigorously edited and be professional pieces of writing with proper citation formats, page numbers, title pages etc. In terms of content (and this will be the subject of separate handout) what I am looking for is a well structured argument that demonstrates a critical close engagement with the readings. I would much rather a paper that analyzed just two sentences of an article with close attention to language and their relationship to the author’s thesis than a personal commentary or literature review.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Any incidents of dishonest work will be reported to your academic advisor and the appropriate dean. I take all these matters seriously. If you feel that you are headed in this direction, see me immediately and we can solve this together, before it leads down the road of disciplinary action.
Quizes
This course will have two quizzes roughly at the mid-point of the semester and at the end. The first quiz will consist solely of identifications and short answer questions based on our running glossary of terms and the map assignment. With identifications you will be given a particular word or phrase and will be asked correctly identify what it refers to and explain its significance. The short answer questions are more varied and may ask you to explain the difference between x and y, or outline the argument in such and such article which we read. There will likely also be a map that you will need to fill in. The second quiz will follow much the same format though covering the whole of the course. It will also involve two essay questions that will ask you to reflect on one or more themes from the course. One of the assignments for the course will be for students to submit possible essay questions which may be used at my discretion (there will be extra credit for any such chosen exam questions). Each quiz will be designed to be completed during a single class period.
Since one of the goals of this course is for you to learn key terms and issues important for the archaeological study of the Muslim world we will be building a glossary of important terminology and topics that emerge from readings and discussion during the semester. This syllabus itself is an important reference for what some of these items are. These will be collected as a collaborative document on the wiki. This will serve as the basis from which identifications from the exam will be taken. It may not be absolutely comprehensive but the vast majority of what is on the exams will come from this glossary.
Lab and Lab Assignment
Throughout the course we will be working with actual artifacts collected from Islamic period sites throughout the Near East that are part of the Brown University collection. These were made available as a bequest from Dr. Florence Day who worked for many years as a pottery specialist at site’s throughout the region and was a curator of Islamic antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. These objects are a varied collection that we will begin the work of cataloguing as well as analyzing for their stylistic counterparts, dating, materials, production techniques and any other information that we might be able to obtain from their study. As part of the course requirements you will learn the basics of pottery drawing, material analysis and other forms of archaeological description. This collection will then serve as a spring board for small research projects into the artifacts of the Islamic period. Such projects might range from locating parallels for a particular object in the collection to a detailed description of the possible trade routes in which an object might have circulated. Such projects might take the form of written reports or effort to recreate a particular object such as a conservationist might do. At the end of the course students will have an opportunity to share their research with their colleagues.
Labs will usually be held on the Friday sessions and will be a mix of lecture and hands on work with the objects.