"Holy Warriors: Saladin And Richard The Lionheart," PBS, 2005.  (110 mins)

Listening Assignment:

  Bernat Hernandez, "The Cortes Conquest: The Fall Of Tenochtitlan," National Geographic History Magazine (May/June 2016): 62-73.

c)  One card should include your response to the "Jesuits Conquering The Forbidden City" Arte France video.

Seminar notes are commentaries of at least two double-spaced pages apiece (500+ words) upon Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World and two of the other three book-length readings (1493 -- Uncovering The New World Columbus Created; Born In Blackness -- Africa And The Making Of The Modern World; and Stranger In The Shogun's City -- A Woman's Life In Nineteenth-Century Japan or your in-depth review of the Among Samurai And Shoguns -- Medieval And Tokugawa Japan Discussion Topic).  The purpose of these reflective reading responses is to provide you with the opportunity to organize your thoughts after each of the common major readings and is also designed to facilitate thoughtful group discussion.  The notes should be analytical in nature and should highlight key themes from the reading.  Your own interpretations must be at the centre of each seminar note.  I want to see you engaging directly with the text rather than paraphrasing someone else's descriptions or review.  Although you should write concisely, it is great if one or more of your seminar notes are considerably longer than the recommended length.  Seminar Notes can be typed or hand-written, though for either format you should take some notes and carefully organize your thoughts before attempting to write your paper.  I encourage you to hand in these rough notes with your completed Seminar Note if you indeed have these.  I will then both look at them when I evaluate your Seminar Note and add them to your Homework Portfolio.  It is expected that you will acquire, at a minimum, Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World, 1493, and Born In Blackness, and that you will prepare for and contribute to all four of our seminar discussions.  All four books are available for purchase at the NIC Bookstore.

The excellent seminar note will probe chosen themes in an original, organized, and analytical manner.  The commentary will effectively connect together your larger ideas with the particularities of the reading, using examples and specific text to accentuate your writing.  A good seminar note will show evidence of attentive reading and of engagement with the text.  You will organize your thoughts coherently and demonstrate the ability to explain and to explore key themes that you highlight from the text. The satisfactory seminar note will offer evidence that you have engaged directly with the text and drawn something of larger meaning from it.  Your ideas may not be fully developed or as clearly stated as might be the case, but you do demonstrate that you have taken something away from your encounter with the book.  An unsatisfactory seminar note is one in which you either seem to rely entirely upon secondary sources and thus do not engage with the text, or in which you do not demonstrate any understanding of the text.

Rather than being graded on a letter scale, the seminar notes will be evaluated on a check, check-plus, check-plus+, and check-minus basis:

Check:  A fully satisfactory seminar note (7.3/10, B) --  The seminar note offers evidence that you have engaged directly and substantially with the text and drawn something of larger meaning from it.  Your ideas may not be fully developed or as clearly stated as might be the case, but you do demonstrate that you have taken something away from your encounter with the book.

Check-Plus:  A strong seminar note (8.6/10, A) -- The strong seminar note will offer thoughtful analysis and/or a well-developed commentary upon the text.  It will probe chosen themes in an original, organized, and analytical manner.  The commentary with effectively connect together your larger ideas with the particularities of the reading, using examples and specific text to accentuate your writing.

Check-Plus-Plus:  An outstanding seminar note  (9.5, A+) -- Such a note pushes far beyond the basic expectations for this assignment in terms of both its originality and the extent to which it probes the reading.

Check-Minus:  A weak seminar note (6.1, C)  --  The seminar note includes some material of relevance and evidence of direct engagement with the text.  However, it seems to be based upon limited reading and/or a lack of understanding of the book's core themes.

Check-Minus-Minus-:  An unsatisfactory seminar note.  (0, F)  A note in which it is impossible to tell whether there was any direct engagement with the text.  The assignment seems to have relied entirely upon secondary sources and/or to have been completed using Artificial Intelligence tools.

There typically will not be the opportunity to revise Seminar Notes and submit them a second time.

The Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World seminar note is required of all students.  I would like to get both an individual and collective sense of your reading and writing abilities early in the semester.

It's great if you decide to complete four seminar notes rather than three.  In that case, I will count the top three for grading purposes for this component of the course and then add the fourth to your Homework Portfolio.

The Second Half Homework Portfolio will use the same format and structure as outlined above and will be evaluated at the end of the semester.

The curriculum for this course is organized on a week-by-week basis.  Weekly discussions and mini-presentations are entirely dependent upon full pre-class student preparation for their success.  There is the expectation that you will arrive at the relevant class sessions with the basic required work completed.  You can always push deeper into your studies and submit extra materials to your Portfolio after the associated class session for topics of particular interest.

In the case of seminar notes, I appreciate that there may be occasions where a very few extra days in the midst of competing deadlines can be helpful, and thus I deliberately assume a good-faith effort on the part of students to meet the due dates and provide a small cushion of flexibility without any academic penalty.   That does not mean the due dates are unimportant or that extensions are automatically granted.  You should discuss possible extensions with me directly.  As a general rule, no assignment will be accepted more than two weeks late.

It is fundamentally important that you set up a meeting with me if you are falling behind with your studies.  Please do not come to me at the end of the semester anticipating that you can submit a portfolio of work that will compensate for a semester of academic inactivity.  This will not be possible.  I appreciate that courses at NIC can be very expensive.  However, I have set up the structure of my courses so that those students who approach their studies in good faith and with effort should attain success.  Moreover, registration within a course carries with it not just the expectation that you will engage with it, but also a responsibility towards your fellow students.  The decisions you make in regards to your approach to your studies will have a direct impact upon their educational experience.