Sommerville, Spring 2005
Office: 218 Keene-Flint, hours M 10:30-12, WF 10:30-11:30 or by appointment
e-mail: jsommerv@history.ufl.edu 

Attendance Policy:
Please drop this course now if you will be unable to attend regularly. Others want to add it. Past experience shows that if you miss 4 times you cannot get an A, miss 8 times you cannot get a B, etc. Don't test these odds. This course exists in the lectures and class discussion, not in any textbook, because of the way textbooks are written (I will explain). That is why you need to be here every day. Someone else's notes will remind them of what I said; they won't remind you of anything.

Food and open newspapers are not welcome in the classroom (drinks are OK).  Please turn off cellphones.

Topics for lecture and discussion:

• Medieval and modern                             Humanism and the bourgeois ideal
• Reformation and national sovereignty       Birth of the nation-state
• Inflation and social strain                        Experiments in government and religion
• Elizabethan stability                              Rise of Puritanism
• Parliament achieves independence         A Golden Age?
• James I and Absolutism                        The resistance to James
• Charles I and Absolutism                       Social causes of the Civil War
• The Civil Wars                                       Revolution or Not?
• The Restoration                                     The commercial revolution
• The fall of the Stuart dynasty                   The Revolution of 1688
• The French Wars                                   The rise of parties
• Society in 1700                                     Culture in the 18th century
• Walpole and the Georges                       Pitt and Empire
• George III and Reform

Also, at TIS Bookstore, buy the coursepack version of 
Maurice Lee, Great Britain's Solomon

A paper will be due on Wednesday, April 13, based on the two biographies that you will buy, comparing and/or contrasting some aspect of the rule or the personalities of the two figures. See the directions on the back of this sheet. The paper must draw on both books and should be about 2,000 words. You should discuss your topic with the instructor before you get too deeply into it.

Grading:
30% on a mid-term exam, on Wednesday, Feb. 23.
30% on the paper described above.  Papers must be submitted in hard copy and not as e-mail attachments.
40% on a final exam, on Monday, April 25, at 10-12 am, in our classroom
The exams will be essay type, with some allowance for choice of questions. We will discuss how to prepare for the essay exams a week ahead of each exam.

Any make-up MUST be taken BEFORE the rest of the class is scheduled to take the exam.
Doctors' excuses do not change this.

The class adheres to the University honesty policy regarding cheating and the use of copyrighted materials.

Students needing accommodation for disabilities must register withe the Dean of Students Office, to receive the documentation to bring to the instructor when requesting accommodation.

Course objectives:

• To help students place themselves in their own historical context and tradition--socially, politically, and intellectually.
• To teach them to read discriminatingly.
• To give them practice in answering historical questions of their own formulation.
• To familiarize them with the concepts historians use in interpreting this period of England's history.
• To familiarize them with the general outline of England's development in this period.

• The paper should be about 2,000 words.
• It should have a title which indicates the theme.
• The opening paragraph should indicate where you intend to go with your theme.
• Each paragraph should have some internal coherence.
• You should spell and punctuate carefully.
• Develop your comparisons and/or contrasts throughout the paper; do not leave them all to the end.
• Do not pick too many topics or a topic that is too broad, for fear you will not get beyond very general statements. "Personality," "religion," "diplomacy" are too broad for such a short paper; you should narrow the focus to one aspect of such topics.
• Do not treat only childhood, or only the first year of a reign (so that you can skip the rest of the book) unless you relate childhood or the opening of the reign to later events.
• The paper is not to be a comparison of the books but of the people described in the books.
• Footnotes are only needed if you quote directly or if you think I may be suspicious of your statement and you want to prove it to me. If so, simply use a parenthesis in the text giving author and page, for example (Neale, 297).
• You do not need a bibliography, unless you use other books than those assigned. Using other books is neither encouraged nor discouraged.
• Do not submit the paper electronically.  Hard copy only.
• Do not use Internet sources, since there is no guarantee or controls on their accuracy.