This syllabus is a guide, not a contract. As a living document that changes depending on how things are going, you’ll want to bookmark and consult the online version of this syllabus frequently. Important links to online assignment guides and other instructions will appear throughout the course, and I will always announce important changes in class. No significant changes will be made to the overall workload. If you print out the syllabus, be sure you keep your paper version up to date with the online version.
A short reading assignment, partially to let you get used to posting on GitHub. Everyone should post a comment on the following, drawing from the previous two readings and your own personal experience:
We’re going to tie up some loose ends from last time, so we can be most efficient if you review the excellent questions and comments you produced for last Wednesday’s class.
As you look over the intro guide, stay out of the weeds! Really specific criticism about a particular essay is not particularly helpful at this stage. Keep your analysis focused on the big picture and the overall project.
Maintaining our four groups:
Note: There is an overwhelming amount to be improved, so the assignment here is to some extent an exercise in stating the obvious—but it’s an important first step. You will be graded on your effort to say something productive and improve the project.
Consult the Intro-guide revision guidelines.
You can access the intro guide (I’m now calling it Metahistory just for fun) here.
Your first edits should be complete and visible on GitHub. Note that changes will be made in the intro guide repository, which is separate from the repository for our reading responses. We’ll devote some class discussion time for evaluating these. There is nothing else to post for today, BUT:
Be prepared to discuss what’s significant with Hegel, what’s new with his view of history, and why should we care. There is a very high probability of me using the cards to keep everyone honest.
Remember that the first chunk (up to p. 213 or so) is an overview of his philosophy that you should read quickly. Slow down when it’s more about his theory of history.
We looked at the code page in class, but I split off the images stuff into their own file with more explicit directions for Wednesday. See Embedding images in your essays.
The original code samples are still available.
All you need to do is copy and paste the code from the gray box, and change the parameters (position, width, filename, etc).
BE CAREFUL ABOUT QUOTATIONS! If you accidentally omit a quotation mark, the code won’t work and the whole site will break.
If you ever get an email or notification of a ‘Page Build Failure’, send me a quick email to let me know and I will look at what’s wrong. There’s a chance it’s not with your file, so if you don’t see anything wrong, just keep working and it will get resolved.
If you get really confused or frustrated, relax. We’ll work through issues on Wednesday and you can finish uploading code and images before Monday.
Summarize this intro to Part II in ONLY 3 bullet points from the reading.
Regular groups for this section.
No posts for today, but complete the steps below (as explained on Monday) and start thinking about the assignment for Wednesday.
Fork button in the upper right corner (don’t click the number).unm=-historiography in it, and yours will have your GitHub username. But the files look exactly the same!GitHub Pages section (second from the bottom), and under source, change it from none to master branch. Scroll back down to the GitHub Pages section, and notice that it gives you a URL for your version of the intro-guide. It will look like https://USERNAME.github.io/intro-guide.essays folder and appropriate subfolder, and create a new page for your essay.Write a slightly-longer-than-normal-comment (600-800 words) about your take on postmodern history. Write/focus on whatever you like, but provide at least rough answers to the following kinds of questions (but don’t just answer them one by one):
For more instructions on what to do, watch this.
As such, ask questions, makes notes to yourself and your colleagues (who will review your work later).
If you just write stuff down and don’t bother citing where you found it, you will have to eventually hunt down all the page numbers and THAT’S A HUGE WASTE OF TIME. As someone who has wasted considerable time on just that, please take my advice: take time to make accurate references AS YOU WRITE.
Everyone is a summarizer for today:
For today, post a COMPLETE draft for your essay, which should be around at least 2000 words (with the final being 2500). With no reading assignment, this is obviously your focus, so DO IT WELL and save everyone (including your future self) headaches later.
‘Draft’ does not mean some half-baked sketch hastily thrown together so you have something to post. It means a COMPLETE FIRST VERSION that we can all respond to in a meaningful way. If your post is too hastily thrown together, you will need to revise and resubmit it immediately to get credit.
We’ll be doing a peer review session with your essays, so please bring TWO HARD COPIES of your essay to class.
As we discussed, merge your essay from your fork into the main unm-historiography/intro-guide repository. I showed you how to do this in class, and made a rough screencast of it.
Once your essay is merged, print it from the Intro Guide website (not your fork)!
Respond to your critics (and friends)! Incorporate changes while they are fresh in your mind. You will revise more later, so these aren’t final revisions, but we want to take best advantage of the peer review exercise.
Your essays will undergo another (but different) kind of peer review over the weekend, so you should have a TOTALLY COMPLETE and REASONABLY POLISHED draft following the writing guide.
Bring your TWO ~400 word critiques on TWO different essays. Review assignments are posted in our repository. For efficiency, these should be bullets and sub-bullets only. NO NARRATIVES ALLOWED! Focus on the big picture: framing, historiographical significance, and accessibility for the intended audience. Be sure you are thinking about the points raised in the writing guide.
Everyone is an informal(!) commenter for today (usual length). We haven’t done comments for a while, but it was clear that many of you were finding your commenter voice/style. Keep it up! Here are some questions to consider, but write a general comment on these topics rather than give specific answers (which you can’t do well in only 400 words).
You need to post to your repository the latest version of your essay. I will be commenting on these drafts (similar to the critiques you just did), and the quality of these drafts will contribute to your participation grade for the course. Don’t miss the opportunity to submit quality drafts for the most useful feedback going into the final weeks of the semester!
A final quiz?
FIRST COPY AND PASTE the code from most recent nav bar to the same file in your fork. Just copy all the text from the edit window (or the raw view) and replace all text in your nav.yml file.
NEXT, merge your fork with the intro-guide. We’re not doing reviews or anything more there–it’s just to check that everything is working as expected. screencast.
Also BEFORE CLASS ON WEDNESDAY, update our Table of Contents Data
One last (and new) reading to discuss: