Classroom instruction will include both lectures and seminar discussions. Lectures will provide instruction on weekly topics with opportunities for student inquiry and discussion. Seminars will encourage active class participation in the analysis of assigned primary and secondary readings. Classroom instruction may also include guidance on student-led projects, student presentations on specific readings and/or topics, group projects and presentations, and other types of student-led activities. Classroom instruction may also include tutorials and workshops on transferrable skills, including research methods, academic citation practice, and presentation skills.
A sample course outline may include the following topics.
Note: Content may vary according to the instructor’s selection of topics, and may be adjusted to provide students an opportunity to explore emergent or especially relevant “global issues” in historical perspective.
- Introduction
- Indigeneity and Colonialism
- Frontiers and Borderlands
- Nationalism and Self-Determination
- Rebellion and Resistance
- Economies, Competition and Consumption
- Urbanization, Environment, and Land Use
- Poverty and Hunger
- Public Health, Disease and Drugs
- Education and Childhood
- Gender and Sexuality
- Terrorism, Intelligence, and Espionage
- Human Rights
- Technology, Innovation and Global Culture
At the conclusion of the course, successful students will be able to demonstrate historical thinking skills, research skills, critical thinking skills and communication skills appropriate to the level of the course by:
1. Locating, examining, assessing, and evaluating a range of primary sources and secondary scholarly literature critically and analytically (reading history).
2. Constructing historical arguments, taking historical perspectives, and interpreting historical problems through different types of writing assignments of varying lengths (writing history).
3. Participating in active and informed historical debate independently and cooperatively through classroom discussion and presentation (discussing history).
4. Independently and cooperatively investigating the ways that history is created, preserved and disseminated through public memory and commemoration, oral history, community engagement, and other forms of popular visual and written expressions about the past (applying history).
Assessment will be in accordance with the Douglas College student evaluation policy. Students may conduct research with human participants as part of their coursework in this class. Instructors for the course are responsible for ensuring that student research projects comply with College policies on ethical conduct for research involving humans.
Students will have opportunities to build and refine their research capacity and historical thinking skills through assessments appropriate to the level of the course. There will be at least three separate assessments, which may include a combination of midterm and final exams; research essays; primary document analysis assignments and essays; quizzes; map tests; in-class and online written assignments; seminar presentations; student assignment portfolios; group projects; creative projects; class participation.
The value of each assessment and evaluation, expressed as a percentage of the final grade, will be listed in the course outline distributed to students at the beginning of the term. Specific evaluation criteria will vary according to the instructor’s assessment of appropriate evaluation methods.
- Participation, Quizzes, In-Class Work: 20%
- Historical Analysis of Popular and/or News Media: 10%
- Primary and/or Scholarly Secondary Sources Analyses: 20%
- Presentation of a Selected Global Issue and Written Report: 20%
- Research Projects or Portfolios: 30%
Textbooks and Course Readers will vary by the particular themes selected by the instructor.
An instructor’s custom Course Reader may be required. Additional online resources may also be assigned, and links to specific resources may be provided in the course outline.
Typical thematic textbooks:
Appleby, Joyce Oldham. The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2010.
Briggs, Asa and Peter Burke. A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity, 2009.
Chaliand, Gérard and Arnaud Blin, eds. The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to al Qaeda. Trans. by Edward Schneider, Kathryn Pulver, and Jesse Browner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
Crawford, Dorothy. Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Kinney, Tracey J., ed. Conflict and Cooperation: Documents on Modern Global History. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2014.
O Grada, Cormac. Eating People is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past, and Its Future. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Ponting, Clive. A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. Toronto: Penguin Books, 2007.
Reinhard, Wolfgang. A Short History of Colonialism. Trans. by Kate Sturge. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011.
Stearns, Peter N. Globalization in World History. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Wiesner, Merry E. Gender in History: Global Perspectives. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
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