Sorry for the confusion! some people have pointed out that i mistakenly said the Erauso paper was due on Monday, May 5, when actually the syllabus says Wednesday May 7.
If you haven’t finished the paper, please take the extra time!
Again, my apologies,
Dr. G.
Your paper on Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Tranvestite in the New World is due on Monday March 5. If you are not going to do the paper, please drop me a line. If you are going to the paper but you need another day, again, please send me an email asking for the extension, so I know that your paper is on its way. The question is “What does this primary source tell us about colonial Latin America?” As with all our papers, it should be submitted via Mavspace, with the grading grid from your last assignment copied and pasted into the top of the new essay.
The essay should be about 5pages [1,500 words] long, though if you have more to say, take more space! It should have all the elements I’ve been stressing throughout the semester — thesis in the first paragraph, good title that reflects the thesis, evidence that supports the thesis, etc. It should also answer the question “how does this change our conception of colonial Latin America.”
The main assigned question, however, is the same one we have been asking ourselves about primary documents all semester long: “What does this tell us about colonial Latin America?” You may want to write about “patriarchy,” hegemony and the role of women (see the Chasteen book if you’re not sure what I mean here) , you may want to write about violence, about the Church, about honor, or about the role of indigenous people in the story.
I know that some of you would like to know if you should take advantage of my offer to skip the final test/paper! Here’s how to figure it out:
Get out the syllabus and look at the grid marked “major assignments” The final paper on Erauso is worth 13% of the total semester grade. So to calculate what you would have if you removed that from your grade, figure that all your grades will add up to 87% instead of 100%.
Put the grades you received in each of the boxes next to the percentage weight for that assignment. You should have numbers for everything but the Erauso and presentation projects. For class participation, average the two numbers that I’ve already reported (I will assign one more CP grade but it will average in with the other two). Read the rest of this entry »
This is a brief screencast video I put together for my world history class to illustrate some of the very basic PowerPoint techniques that give some people trouble. Please tell me if anything is unclear or if you have additional questions! Remember, if other students are trying to view the screen cast, you might have to try again later.
If you missed class tonight, you missed a chance to sign up for the Colonial Lives project [see earlier posts.] But look at my summary below and send me an email about which chapter you want [you can re-use the chapter you wrote about if no one else has claimed it] and the day you want to go. Let me know if you are doing a PowerPoint presentation or a discussion.
I know you are probably wondering when we’re going to do the presentations on Colonial Lives, that are scheduled to start tonight. Don’t worry — when I wrote the syllabus I had to plan for the possibility that we would have 30 students.
Since there are only about 12 of us, we’re going to have regular lecture/discussion class this week [4/14 and 4/16]. Then next week we’ll have the presentations [4/21 and 4/23] and then we’ll have some wrap-up lecture/discussions during the last week 4/28 and 4/30.] The final paper [on Lieutenant Nun] is due on May 5, when we would normally be having an exam.
So, what is the project presentation supposed to be? You can do one of two things
Do you HAVE to pick a new Colonial Lives document? Not necessarily — read the previous post for more information.
You should have already received your Colonial Lives paper from me as an email message with a link to Mavspace. These were good papers and most people are really showing improvement! The cases are so rich that I had an idea — IF no one else worked on your same Colonial Lives case, why don’t you go ahead and do your project on the same case, if you want to?
However there was a certain amount of overlap. 2 people worked on chapter 7; 3 people worked on chapter 10; 3 people worked on chapter 13. So some of those people need to find new chapters for the project.
Dr. Arlen Chase of the University of Central Florida will speak on
“25 Years of Researchat Caracol, Belize: Changing Paradigms in Maya Archeology”
The lecture will be at 7 pm in the auditorium of the UTA School of Architecture
for further informationcall 817-272-2661
In their anthology Colonial Lives, Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling offer a collection of primary source documents illustrating aspects of everyday colonial Latin America life that are often hidden. These documents give us insights into colonial life that earlier historians did not examine, either because these records tell us about with people who were not powerful [women, people of color, working people] or because they deal with topics that were considered taboo or uninteresting [sex, witchcraft, the environment]. (You can find a list of these topics and themes, from “African/Afro-Latin American Peoples” to “Witchcraft” and “Women” on pages xi-xiii of Colonial Lives.)
I would like you to write about one document of your choosing from the collection and turn your paper in to me by April 7. Read it [and re-read it] carefully, and write a paper [1,200 words; roughly 4 double-spaced pages] describing what that document tells us about colonial Latin America: how does it illuminate the lives of the people who lived there, their culture(s) and their relationships? Your analysis should consider who made the document and why. Is it a court case, a popular song, a government report? What kinds of information are likely to be suppressed or exaggerated due to the nature of this source? Obviously you will analyze what the document tells us but you should also consider the silences in the document. What can we learn from these silences?
As with all writing in this class, you will submit a computer file to me and I will use a grading grid to evaluate your work. The “communication” column will be identical to the one I use on our tests. In oither words, you need a thesis in the first paragraph, a title that suggests your thesis, good organization, etc.
If you wish you may do outside background reading [each document has a list of recommended titles; the full information on these books is located in the bibliography at the end of the volume] but this is not required. I think you may also find Chasteen’s Born in Blood and Fire book helpful for background.
In A Perfect Red Amy Butler Greenfield tells the story of the trade in cochineal, which she describes as one of “Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire.” One way of thinking about this book is that Greenfield has written a global history around this product of Latin American biology and culture.
For our third take home exam, I’d like you to answer the question “What role did colonial Latin America play in world history” using A Perfect Red and class lectures as your sources. Your essay should be about 1,500 words long, and it should address the following issues: How did Latin America affect the global economy? How did Latin America affect European science? How did Latin America affect world cultures? How did Spain shape Latin America’s impact on the rest of the world? What aspects of Latin America (its indigenous culture, natural resources, imperial domination, location) affected the outside world?
Don’t forget to put in the grading grid from exam 2 so I can see your amazing improvements!
