HIST 2053 - Medieval Europe: Crusades to the Black Death

North Terrace Campus - Semester 2 - 2017

This course explores the lives and experiences of three key social orders in western Europe during the Middle Ages: the aristocracy, the church, and the peasantry. We also consider the lives of women, both as members of the three orders and generally. We begin the course in the early Middle Ages with Charlemagne and his successors, and the upheaval caused by Vikings and other invaders. We shall then consider the expansion of European power in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (including the Crusades), and the flourishing of European civilisation and culture, trade and urban life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At the end of the course, we discuss the crisis of medieval civilisation that was brought about by conflicts within the Church, the great struggle between France and England, and the Black Death.

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Course Details

Course Code	HIST 2053
Course	Medieval Europe: Crusades to the Black Death
Coordinating Unit	Historical and Classical Studies
Term	Semester 2
Level	Undergraduate
Location/s	North Terrace Campus
Units	3
Contact	Up to 3 hours per week
Available for Study Abroad and Exchange	Y
Prerequisites	At least 12 units of Level I undergraduate study
Incompatible	HIST 2042 or HIST 3042
Assessment	Online quiz 10%, Reflective research diary by the SGDE teams 10%, Research essay 50%, Take-home examination 30%

Course Staff

Course Coordinator: Dr Gareth Pritchard

This course is taught by:

Dr Claire Walker
e-mail: claire.i.walker@adelaide.edu.au
phone: 831 35159
office: Napier 312

Dr Gareth Pritchard
e-mail: gareth.pritchard@adelaide.edu.au
phone: 831 34529
office: Napier 306

Course Timetable

The full timetable of all activities for this course can be accessed from Course Planner.

Formal contact hours consist of:

2 x 50-minute lectures per week
1 x 50-minute tutorial per week

The course is divided into four modules, which we study in turn:

1. Empire in C.9th and C.10th Europe.
2. The Crusades and the expansion of Europe in the C.11th and C.12th.
3. The flourishing of European civilization in the C.12th and C.13th.
4. The crisis of medieval civilization in the C.14th and C.15th.

Course Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1	demonstrate a broad knowledge of the history of Europe in the middle ages and the ways in which historians have interpreted and explained this history.
2	identify and use effectively a wide variety of secondary sources relevant to the study of Europe in the middle ages, and in particular to understand and critically to evaluate the arguments of historians.
3	contextualise and interpret a wide variety of primary sources, including medieval texts, images and physical artefacts.
4	construct evidence-based arguments in which students engage with the key debates about the nature of European society in the middle ages.
5	communicate their own ideas about medieval history - both orally and in writing - in a manner that is clear and persuasive.
6	access and use effectively the wide range of relevant primary and secondary sources on medieval history that are available on-line.
7	develop and communicate their ideas about the middle ages within the scholarly conventions of the discipline of history.

University Graduate Attributes

This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attribute(s) specified below:

University Graduate Attribute	Course Learning Outcome(s)
Deep discipline knowledge informed and infused by cutting edge research, scaffolded throughout their program of studies acquired from personal interaction with research active educators, from year 1 accredited or validated against national or international standards (for relevant programs)	1, 2, 3
Critical thinking and problem solving steeped in research methods and rigor based on empirical evidence and the scientific approach to knowledge development demonstrated through appropriate and relevant assessment	3, 4
Teamwork and communication skills developed from, with, and via the SGDE honed through assessment and practice throughout the program of studies encouraged and valued in all aspects of learning	5, 7
Career and leadership readiness technology savvy professional and, where relevant, fully accredited forward thinking and well informed tested and validated by work based experiences	4, 5, 6
Intercultural and ethical competency adept at operating in other cultures comfortable with different nationalities and social contexts able to determine and contribute to desirable social outcomes demonstrated by study abroad or with an understanding of indigenous knowledges	1, 4

Learning Resources

Required Resources

The text book for this course Wim Blockmans and Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Introduction to Medieval Europe, 300-1500, second edition (London: Routledge, 2014).

Recommended Resources

Maurice Keen, The Pelican History of Medieval Europe, available from UniBooks, is a useful introduction to and survey of the Middle Ages. It is not supposed to be a comprehensive, authoritative textbook. Keen’s book has its advantages; it is cheap, well written and has a strong analytical theme on the nature of the Middle Ages. Its disadvantages are firstly that it covers a limited timeframe, 800-1449 and is geographically limited to Western and Central Europe. However, there are plentiful resources in the Library and on the Internet to cover what Keen does not. It is highly recommended that you purchase the Course Reader, a collection of essays and primary sources, particularly relevant to the tutorial topics, available from Image and Copying.

Other general texts (many do not cover the whole period, c450-c1450):
Malcolm Barber, The Two Cities: Medieval Europe, 1050-1350
Judith M. Bennett & C. Warren Hollister, Medieval Europe, A Short History
R. H. C. Davis, A History of Medieval Europe from Constantine to Saint Louis
A Daniel Frankforter, The Medieval Millennium
Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World
Edward Peters, Europe and the Middle Ages
Joseph R. Strayer, The Middle Ages
Brian Tierney, Western Europe in the Middle Ages

Some other useful background reading:

Carolly Erickson, The Medieval Vision
Richard Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou
Eileen Power, Medieval People
Jonathan Riley-Smith, What were the Crusades?
Richard Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages
Richard Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages
R. W. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, 1215-1515
Philip Ziegler, The Black Death

Online Learning

Canvas will not just be used as a repository of material but as an interactive learning tool. For example, multiple-choice quizzes will consolidate the knowledge gained by students from the course textbook and lectures, and prepare students for the tutorials and written assessments. Students in tutorials will work in groups to address specific themes in the course (e.g. the image and the reality of the Crusading movement or the image and reality of medieval monasticism) which will be posted on Canvas as a learning resource for all students taking the course.

PowerPoint presentations and audio recordings of lectures will be available at the Canvas course site. Librarians at the Barr-Smith library have also compiled a very useful guide to sources on Australian History held by the University. This can be accessed online at:
http://www.library.adelaide.edu.au/guide/hum/history/Medieval.html
Learning & Teaching Activities

Learning & Teaching Modes

The course will be delivered through the medium of interactive lectures and small-group tutorials.

Workload

The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

The course involves 156 hours of study (including formal contact hours, private research and assessments).

Learning Activities Summary

Lectures

There will be two lectures each week, which will provide students with a basic core of factual knowledge about the themes that we cover in the course. These sessions will also identify key analytical problems that will be discussed in tutorials and addressed in the course assessments. They will not only identify in advance issues for discussion in tutorials, but they will discuss any difficult or interesting issues that have arisen in previous tutorials. The lectures will NOT consist of fifty-minute monologues by members of staff. They will instead comprise a range of interactive learning activities (quizzes, group problem-solving activities etc.) in which the students will be divided into small groups.

Tutorials

Each student will attend one tutorial per week. Tutorials will be based on small-group discovery and problem-solving activities. For example, a lecture might outline a debate between historians about the impact of the Black Death. In the tutorial, students will engage with this debate on the basis of a range of primary and secondary sources that have been distributed in advance. In a following lecture, the debate will be addressed again, the main positions summarised, and a vote taken. The material covered in lectures and tutorials will thus be closely integrated to facilitate student learning and engagement.

Student support and research skills

Various small exercises in the lectures and tutorials, and on Canvas, will familiarise students with the basic skills they need to research and write their assessments. Staff will be available for individual consultation during specified office hours. The staff who teach this course will work closely with the history librarian to provide additional support.

Specific Course Requirements

N/A

Small Group Discovery Experience

Students will be put into teams to explore the lives and experiences of a key social group: aristocrats, clerics and peasants. As we go through the course, the teams are tasked with a research project that they will develop together in tutorials. In the second half of the course they will submit narrated PowerPoint presentations on their projects which will be seen by all the students in that tutorial. Students will vote for the best PowerPoint presentations, which will then be shown in the lectures and a prize awarded on the base of a vote. The final examination will be based directly on the work done by the students in their SGDE projects.

The University's policy on Assessment for Coursework Programs is based on the following four principles:

Assessment must encourage and reinforce learning.
Assessment must enable robust and fair judgements about student performance.
Assessment practices must be fair and equitable to students and give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned.
Assessment must maintain academic standards.

Assessment Summary

The precise deadlines for submission will be published in the course handbook, which is available on the Canvas site for this course.

Assessment Task	Task Type	Due	Learning Outcome
Online factual knowledge quiz	Formative and Summative	10%	1, 2, 3
Reflective research diary by the SGDE teams	Summative	10%	5, 7
Research essay	Formative and Summative	50%	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Take-home exam	Summative	30%	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

The precise deadlines for the submission of course work will be given to students at the outset of the course.

Assessment Related Requirements

N/A

Assessment Detail

Online factual quiz: This assessment is worth 10% of the total grade and will take place in the first term. Its purpose is to ensure that students have a broad factual knowledge of key developments and trends in the Middle Ages.

Research essay: The research essay is worth 50% of the course grade. It will be submitted towards the end of the course. Each student will write an essay on some aspect of the history of their chosen group (aristocrats, clergy, peasants, women).

Take-home exam: This exam is worth 30% of the final grade. Students take the exam at the very end of the course and it is designed to build on their SGDE. Thus the SGDE is note graded per se, but the work that students do for the SGDE forms the basis of the questions that they are asked in the exam.

Reflective research diary: Each SGDE team will be responsible for keeping a diary of their research activities and what they learned both in terms of the topic and also in terms of their research skills. This work will mainly be done in tutorials. Each diary will be awarded a group mark. The diary is worth 10% of the course grade.

Submission

Students will submit all their assessments on-line via Canvas. Instructions on how to do this will be given to students at the outset of the course.

Course Grading

Grades for your performance in this course will be awarded in accordance with the following scheme:

M10 (Coursework Mark Scheme)
Grade	Mark	Description
FNS		Fail No Submission
F	1-49	Fail
P	50-64	Pass
C	65-74	Credit
D	75-84	Distinction
HD	85-100	High Distinction
CN		Continuing
NFE		No Formal Examination
RP		Result Pending

Further details of the grades/results can be obtained from Examinations.

Grade Descriptors are available which provide a general guide to the standard of work that is expected at each grade level. More information at Assessment for Coursework Programs.

Final results for this course will be made available through Access Adelaide.

Student Feedback

The University places a high priority on approaches to learning and teaching that enhance the student experience. Feedback is sought from students in a variety of ways including on-going engagement with staff, the use of online discussion boards and the use of Student Experience of Learning and Teaching (SELT) surveys as well as GOS surveys and Program reviews.

SELTs are an important source of information to inform individual teaching practice, decisions about teaching duties, and course and program curriculum design. They enable the University to assess how effectively its learning environments and teaching practices facilitate student engagement and learning outcomes. Under the current SELT Policy (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/101/) course SELTs are mandated and must be conducted at the conclusion of each term/semester/trimester for every course offering. Feedback on issues raised through course SELT surveys is made available to enrolled students through various resources (e.g. MyUni). In addition aggregated course SELT data is available.

Once SELTs have been collected and the results analysed, the course convenor will send a document to all students informing them of how their feedback will be taken into account in future versions of the course.
Student Support
Policies & Guidelines
This section contains links to relevant assessment-related policies and guidelines - all university policies.
Fraud Awareness

Students are reminded that in order to maintain the academic integrity of all programs and courses, the university has a zero-tolerance approach to students offering money or significant value goods or services to any staff member who is involved in their teaching or assessment. Students offering lecturers or tutors or professional staff anything more than a small token of appreciation is totally unacceptable, in any circumstances. Staff members are obliged to report all such incidents to their supervisor/manager, who will refer them for action under the university's student’s disciplinary procedures.

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Authorised by:	Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic)
Maintained by:	Course Outlines Administrator