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• Instructor: Dr. Rob Shelton
• Office Hours: MW 1:45-3 pm
• Office: Rhodes Tower 1906
• Office Phone: 687-3927
• Email: r.s.shelton@csuohio.edu
• sheltoncsu@gmail.com

Course Description

This course will explore chronologically the major events, people, and issues of African-American history. It’s primary objective is to help students gain a deeper understanding of the meanings of freedom, liberty, equality, citizenship, and identity by analyzing the historical experiences of Africans and African-Americans from the construction of the Atlantic slave system and the evolution of slavery in the British colonies of North America, through the American Revolution and the creation of the United States, to the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course students should have a basic knowledge and understanding of the factors that gave rise to slavery; the African-American experience during the colonial period; the impact of the Revolution; plantation slavery during the 19th century; resistance and opposition to slavery and discrimination against black people; the role African-Americans played in the coming of the Civil War, to the winning of the war, and to emancipation; and the goals, successes, and failures of Reconstruction. Students will also gain a greater appreciation for how the unique historical experience of black Americans affects contemporary American life. Other goals include improving critical thinking abilities, improving writing skills, and making and critiquing historical arguments.

Format

Class time will be devoted to lectures, films, discussions of readings, and role-playing debates.

Required Materials

• Horton, James Oliver and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN-13: 978-0-19-512465-1.
• Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003. ISBN-10: 0-8090-1630-3.
• A pocket folder, binder, etc., for your portfolio.
• Internet readings as assigned.
• Suggested: Dictionary for in-class use.
• Turabian, L. Kate. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers. 7th ed. Revised by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory B. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams and the University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Course Website

This course has a web component. On either the CSU Blackboard site or the academic website (I’ll tell you which in class) you will find a copy of the syllabus, the assigned readings, lecture outlines, and other material. The CSU Blackboard address is:

http://www.csuohio.edu/elearning/blackboard

Go to the sign in page, enter your CSU ID number and your CampusNet password (used to register, access accounts, etc.) You will then see a list of your courses. Click on this one.
The address for the academic website is:

http://academic.csuohio.edu/sheltonr

No account number is necessary.

Grades

• Grades for the course are based on the following:
• First exam: 20 percent of course grade
• Second exam: 20 percent of course grade
• Portfolio: 25 percent of course grade
• Quizzes: 20 percent of course grade
• Class participation: 15 percent of course grade

Grading scheme

• A+ 100%
• A 95%
• A- 90%
• B+ 88%
• B 85%
• B- 80%
• C+ 78%
• C 75%
• C- 70%
• D 65%
• F 0%

Exams—each worth 20 percent of grade

Forty percent of your grade derives from two exams: 20 percent for the first exam and 20 percent for the second exam. The exams are designed to achieve the following objectives: encourage students to gain mastery of the factual information covered in the course; encourage students to critically analyze the key issues and questions covered in the course; encourage students to develop writing skills to coherently present their knowledge of the facts and their critical analysis of the issues in an essay; and to provide a method of evaluating students’ mastery of the material covered in the course. Exams will cover chapters from the texts, films, and lectures. To properly demonstrate your understanding and mastery of the material, you must write clear, well-organized, and relatively error-free answers. If these exams are take-home, you will be held to the writing standard described below.

Portfolio—20 percent

Twenty percent of your grade will come from a portfolio of speeches, persuasive essays, and a reflection focusing on the historical role-playing activities we will engage in during the course. All of the written work in the portfolio must be typed, double-spaced, in a 12-point font with 1 inch margins. Points will be deducted for excessive minor mechanical errors such as misspellings, misused words, syntax, etc. Three major grammatical errors will result in the deduction of a letter grade.

A Note on Writing: Three major grammatical errors will result in the deduction of a letter grade on the portfolio and any other take-home work I assign. Major grammatical errors are: a run-on sentences (sometimes called fused sentences), subject-verb agreement errors, sentence fragments, and comma splices.
Examples:
1. Run-on sentence: Douglass resolved to escape slavery when he fought Covey, Douglass took his first step on the journey to freedom.
Also a run-on sentence: Douglass resolved to escape slavery and when he fought Covey, Douglass took the first step on his journey to freedom.
(Run-on sentences omit the punctuation required between two independent clauses. An independent clause has a subject and a verb and can stand as a complete sentence.)
Correct: Douglass resolved to escape slavery. When he fought Covey, Douglass took the first step on his journey to freedom. OR: Douglass resolved to escape slavery, and when he fought Covey, Douglass took the first step on his journey to freedom. OR: Douglass resolved to escape slavery; when he fought Covey, Douglass took the first step on his journey to freedom.
2. Comma splice: Douglass resolved to escape slavery, when he fought Covey, Douglass took the first step on his journey to freedom. (A comma splice occurs when a comma joins two independent clauses without a conjunction such as the words “and” or “but.”)
Correct: Douglass resolved to escape slavery, and when he fought Covey, Douglass took the first step on his journey to freedom.
For more information on run-ons, fused sentences, comma splices, and comma usage, see:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/01/

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/02/

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/01/

3. Subject-verb agreement error: Douglass resolve to escape slavery. When he fight Covey, Douglass take the first step on his journey to freedom. (Verb tense does not agree with the subject. In this case the plural verbs resolve, fight, take are used with the singular nouns Douglass, he, Douglass.)

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/599/01/

4.Sentence fragment: Douglass resolved to escape slavery. He fought Covey. Which was the first step on his journey to freedom. (WRONG)
(A fragment is a sentence without a subject and A verb.)
Correct: Douglass resolved to escape slavery. When he fought Covey, he took the first step on his journey to freedom.
For more information, see: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/620/01/
An excellent guide for reviewing grammar and improving your writing can be found at the Purdue University On-line Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Quizzes—20 percent

Twenty percent of your grade derives from reading quizzes. You will take the quizzes on the course Blackboard site. I will explain more fully in class, but, in short, when I announce a quiz, you will sign into the Blackboard website to take it during the specified period—they will only be available for a 24-36 hour window. Once you start a quiz, you must finish it, and you must finish it in the time alloted, which will be about 15 minutes. This should be plenty of time if you h ave read the material covered by the quiz.

Class Participation—15 percent

Fifteen percent of your grade derives from class participation. Class participation means that you demonstrate an interest and curiosity about the material covered in this course. Specifically, to earn full credit for this portion of your grade, you must attend class regularly (see Attendance & Late Arrivals below), read the assigned readings before class, participate in class discussions, and, especially, participate during the role-playing segments of the class by making speeches when required and being involved in classroom debates. Things that detract from your class participation grade include sleeping in class, missing class regularly, chronically arriving late, frequently leaving the classroom in the middle of the class period, and discourtesies such as irrelevant talking, playing of music, reading of newspapers, texting, etc.

Laptop computers, mobile phones, and other electronic devices must be turned off when class begins.

Attendance & Late Arrivals

Students must attend class regularly to benefit from class discussions and lectures. Students missing more than 7 classes will have one letter grade deducted from their final grade. I accept no excuses for absences. You can miss seven classes—which is about 2 ½ weeks of the semester—for whatever reason; after that, your grade will be impacted. Students also must arrive on time for class. Coming late distracts other students and the instructor. Students arriving after the roll has been called will be marked absent. To change the absence to a tardy, students must tell me after class that they arrived late. Failure to tell me on that day will result in the student being marked absent. Three tardies will count as an absence.

Cheating

Cheating will result in failure on the assignment and possible disciplinary action by the university. Tests are not open book, and no notes or other outside materials may be used. Refer to the Student Conduct Code (http://www.csuohio.edu/student-life/jaffairs/) for more information. Using someone else’s ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness, is a serious offense known as plagiarism. “Ideas or phrasing” includes written or spoken material, of course — from whole papers and paragraphs to sentences, and, indeed, phrases — but it also includes statistics, lab results, art work, etc. “Someone else” can mean a professional source, such as a published writer or critic in a book, magazine, encyclopedia, or journal; an electronic resource such as material we discover on the World Wide Web; another student at our school or anywhere else; a paper-writing “service” (online or otherwise) which offers to sell written papers for a fee. You should be aware that the university possesses software to detect plagiarism. Plagiarism can result in an “F” on the assignment, an “F” in the course, or disciplinary action by the university.

Make ups

If you miss the mid-term or a quiz, you can make it up on the last regular class meeting time. Students who do not need to take a makeup on the last day of class may use the day as a reading day in preparation for the second exam and do not need to attend class. There is no way to make up the portfolio. Neither individual assignments nor the final portfolio WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED LATE.

Disabilities

If you have a disability and need a special accommodation, consult first with office of Services for Students with Disabilities and then discuss the accommodation with me.

General Education Requirements

This course fulfills the African-American Experience General Education requirement. Courses fulfilling this requirement must meet all of the following criteria:
1.Have a primary focus on the contemporary experience of African-Americans and maintain the perspectives, experiences and/or achievements of African-Americans themselves as central to the course (a historical approach is acceptable if it leads to an understanding of the contemporary situation).
2.Provide students with knowledge of how the respective discipline studies and analyzes the African-American experience.
Courses meeting the African-American Experience requirement must also meet at least one of the following criteria:
1.Provide students with a theoretical and/or empirical framework for understanding inequality and the distinguishing aspects of the African-American experience.
2.Provide students with a theoretical and/or empirical framework for understanding African-Americans’ contributions to American society as a whole.

To qualify in the skill area of writing a course must:
1.Designate that at least 15% of the student’s grade in the course is based on an evaluation of writing.
2.Include writing assignments that directly relate to the course goals.
3.Include instruction in writing-to-learn and/or writing-to-communicate. While writing-to-learn emphasizes the student’s experience, writing-to-communicate highlights the reader’s experience. Both are necessary to produce a thoughtful text that observes academic writing’s conventions.
4.Require that students write a total of 2,000 words (8 pages, double-spaced, in 12-point font, with 1” margins) in multiple assignments.
5.Assign writing throughout the semester.
To qualify in the skill area of critical thinking a course must:
1.Designate that at least 15% of the student’s grade in the course is based on an evaluation of critical thinking.
2.Require students to attain skills beyond lower-level knowledge, thereby requiring:
a.higher-order thinking (analysis, synthesis, evaluation); OR
b.skills that involve the use of content knowledge (e.g. finding information to solve a problem); OR
c.the recognition of the importance and usefulness of knowledge and skills gained in the course (e.g. recognize the ability to and importance of working with others to solve intellectual problems).