All assignments and the final exam (an essay synthesizing your understanding of the course materials) are submitted online.

HUM 3306 will be a demanding course, with lots of reading and writing (the "Humanities with Writing" Gordon Rule requirement mandates three substantial writing assignments). The rough rule for college courses is that you spend 3 hours of study outside of class for every hour in class; for the typical 3-credit course, that means about 9 hours of "home" work per week. So, for this online course during the regular school year, you should be prepared to devote at least 12 hours a week to it. For a summer semester, the pace is more than twice as fast.

You should not be registered for it if you have not taken ENC 1101 and ENC 1102 or their equivalent! You will NOT be able to meet the essay-writing demands without having the competence required for ENC 1101 and ENC 1102.

If the FIU Online system crashes or is unavailable, you can find this syllabus and the course calendar at www.fiu.edu/~harveyb/bruceharvey, via the link at the top of that page.

Dr. Bruce A. Harvey, former Director of FIU's Humanities Program at the Biscayne Bay Campus, has designed the content and structure.

I’m Dr. Jeremy Rowan, a professor in the History Department at MMC, and am in charge of student interaction, assessing exams and papers, and administering this course in general. All questions pertaining to course matters should be directed to me through the FIU Blackboard email module.

If you need to discuss course matters in person, visit me during my MMC office hours listed below. Please email me to specify a time.

Welcome to Online HUM 3306:
History of Ideas, from the Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Anxiety!

I have high ambitions for what you will obtain from enrolling in HUM 3306. Many of you will have signed up with the notion that you're just completing an FIU requirement, but I hope that by the time you conclude the class you will have opened your minds and hearts to fascinating realms of human inquiry as expressed in the works you'll be reading. Ideally, how you see the world, and your identity within that world, will be richly and complexly transformed.

The readings will span political philosophy, economic theory, biology and psychology, as well as fiction and poetry.

We'll be tracking a set of key issues and themes: the confident emergence in the 17th & 18th centuries (called the "Age of Reason" or the "Age of Enlightenment") of a non-dogmatic, rational approach to social problems and nature's mysteries; the struggle in the 19th century to maximize individuality and interiority (the "Romantic Era") in the face of widespread economic alienation (the "Industrial Age") and de-humancentric discoveries such as Darwinian evolution; and finally, in the 20th century, the persuasive sense of unease--whether from global conflict, the loss of local community, or philosophical angst.

This course primarily studies European intellectual history, but there remains an entire globe of cultures extending beyond that which has developed in the West. And so you are encouraged, once you have taken this course, to take other Humanities courses at FIU (either online or classroom-oriented) that will round out your interests in and understanding of other, diverse cultural traditions.

I look forward to an intellectually exciting semester with you!

                                                                       --Yours, Dr. Jeremy Rowan

• To increase your knowledge about key thinkers of the post-Renaissance (16th-century) Western world and their historical contexts.
• To help you understand their significance to our contemporary moment.
• To improve your ability to analyze and reflect critically on sophisticated, complex texts.
• To develop your skill and pleasure in communicating ideas via effective, mature prose.
• To develop your ability to use critically, in analytical argumentation, secondary materials as they relate to primary materials.

This course satisfies one of FIU's University Core Curriculum "Humanities with Writing" requirements. As a 3000-level HUM course, it also serves as a Humanities Major or Minor course and may satisfy elective requirements for other majors.  Contact Dr. Harvey if you have a question.

·       Instructor E-mail and phone: For assignment submissions and other routine course questions email me, Jeremy Rowan, via the course's Blackboard email module. I will usually respond within 2 days in respect to individual questions. Essay feedback will take between 10-14 days. For unusual/emergency situations, you may use my FIU email address, jeremy.rowan @fiu.edu, or call or leave a message on my office phone #: 305-348-4791.  

·       Instructor Conferences: I will always be happy to meet with you during office hours (listed above) to talk more about the readings, assignments, or other course matters. It's best if you email me beforehand to specify a time.

Incompletes: University policy is that these can only be given in the case of a health or family emergency, and only one outstanding assignment is allowed to permit the incomplete being granted.

Late Submissions: Late essays will be accepted only under extraordinary, documented emergencies.  Otherwise, for every day late, an essay will be docked a notch (i.e., B to B-). 

All assignments must be turned in order to receive a passing grade in the course.

Discussion Forum: This is crucial to making your online learning experience match the benefits of a “real” classroom. It is designed to provide for relatively uninhibited student interaction and, at the same time, to give you a chance to convey your understanding of the material and your being on "top" of it on a weekly basis.  Here are the rules:

1) Specific discussion topics occasionally will be provided by me, but for the most part you should initiate topics that interest you and/or respond to other students who have initiated topics. 

2) A total of at least 2000 words (equivalent to 8 pages double-spaced) by the end of the semester is expected.  You must, to receive full credit, reflect on each of our major authors (Locke, Equiano, Shelley, Darwin, Marx, and Freud) in a substantial manner.  Biographical information in a Wikipedia style or a “plot” review summary does not count.  Your postings should show insight, analysis, and (implicitly) that you’ve truly read the author or text in question (not just the first chapter).  Engaged students will also want to respond, according to their interest and their group peers’ interests, to the e-text readings, although there cannot be a precise rule on the expected amount of such postings.

3) Your discussion postings are not, however, mini-papers.  The goal is to engage your fellow classmates: so try to post musings, questions, or lines of inquiry that you would want others to respond to, and of course respond to others that have done so. Ideally, you will sustain a dialogue within your forum group about several author or issues.  This means that you might offer several postings on an author, not just a singular posting that you tack on to the Discussion Forum and walk away from.  Avoid getting personal; and please treat others in the forum as you would wish to be treated.

4) The Discussion Forum will have 5-7 primary discussion groups, divided according to your last name (A-D, E-I, J-M, N-Q, R-Z, for example), depending on the number of students enrolled. Please stick to your group and work hard to make conversation/discussion engaging and intellectually productive. Note: use common sense in deciding whether to initiate a new discussion-“tree” or keep your topics/replies under an already-established discussion-“tree.” It is important to have a good balance between topics and replies; otherwise the Discussion Forum will become too unruly.

5)  Your Discussion Forum grade will be worth 25% of the total course grade. Decent grammar, proper sentence construction and punctuation, and so on are required.. Although a grading-curve mode of grading is not mechanically used, you should take note of the responses from your peers. Those who respond routinely, with more than several sentences here or several sentences there, and show true insight into the course materials (and write solid, error-free prose) should provide you with an "A" zone example. Those who do not respond to all our major authors, or respond in a sometimes perfunctory, non-insightful way, will be in the "B" or lower zone. Sporadic responses will put you in the "C" or "D" zone; etc. 

6) Your grade for this component of the course will be assessed at the end of the semester. Should you want to know how you are doing before that, however, feel free to email me. If you request an assessment, you should provide a cut-&-pasted document of your significant responses; you are required to submit such at the end of the semester, regardless. 

7) Please routinely cut-and-paste your dated substantial contributions to the Discussion Forum into a "Word" file. You will be asked to submit this at the end of the semester via Turnitin so that the totality of your contributions can be accurately assessed. 

Papers: I will give guidelines for the two essays as the semester progresses, as links in the far right column of the class calendar below. The first essay will be about five pages long, research-free; the second essay will be about eight pages long, and will require you to consult several provided secondary/research sources.

Students who get very low grades on their first paper may be asked to use the FIU Learning/Writing Center resources, which would require, potentially, several trips to either the BBC or the MMC campus.

Papers will be submitted through the "Turnitin" site, which has a link on this course's initial main online menu.

Final Exam: This will be a comprehensive essay, requiring you to demonstrate your synthesis of all the course materials. It will consist of several topic/question options, and be given about a week before the Turnitin submission date, which will be April 19.

If you have a disability and need assistance, please contact the Disability Resource Center (MMC: GC190; 305-348-3532) (BBC: WUC139, 305-919-5345). Upon contact, the Disability Resource Center will review your request and contact your professors or other personnel to make arrangements for appropriate modification and/or assistance.  

The University's policy on religious holy days as stated in the University Catalog and Student Handbook will be followed in this class. Any student may request to be excused from (on-line) class to observe a religious holy day of his or her faith.

By taking this online course, you promise to adhere to FIU’s Student Code of Academic Integrity. For details on the policy and procedures go to ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT (Section 2.44).

Intensive auditing (via Turnitin) of the course will be conducted to prevent academic misconduct. It is very easy to detect plagiarism: SO DON'T DO IT: YOU WILL BE CAUGHT!!! And, when you are caught, the consequences will be severe, such as getting an "F" in the course or worse.

If you are tempted to plagiarize out of desperation to get an assignment in on time, DON'T DO IT; talk to your professor first, in this class and other classes.