Course Syllabus

Please note: As the course instructor, I reserve the right to make adjustments to this syllabus if the evolving needs of the class participants warrant changes.

Explanatory Note:

Since the other webpages contain much of the information that usually goes onto a printed syllabus, this version homes in on fundamentals not covered elsewhere.

Course Goals:

Learn about the long history of peoples of African descent and evolving ideas of blackness in Germany
Strengthen your skills of historical analysis and of oral and written communication
Participate in a learning community and enjoy gaining new knowledge for your post-pandemic future

Course Materials:

We will be working with readings, film materials, and works of fact as well as fiction. All materials will be electronically available to you.

Our readings include two e-books available through our library and placed on course reserve:

1. Jon F. Sensbach, Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World

(Harvard University Press, 2006)

2. Jennifer Teege & Nikola Sellmair, My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black

Woman Discovers her Family's Nazi Past (The Experiment, 2016)

Contact and Communication:

You must use your UCSD e-mail account for this course and make sure it is always in working order. Important messages about assignments and exams will come via e-mail.

I want to answer people's questions and needs outside of class, but there are many of you and one of me. In order to allow me to most quickly get to your email, please follow these steps.

Your Subject Line MUST be:

HIEU 144 Student Question

Copy and paste the lines below into the body of your email and fill them in:

Student Name:

PID:

My question is about (place an X on the appropriate line):

___ A grading issue

___ An assignment not yet due

___ Requesting an exception (for a deadline, an exam, etc.)

___ Something else

Dr. Strasser,

Thank You!

Because constant email checking decreases productivity, I limit my times on email to twice per day, and rarely log on in the evenings or weekends. I enjoy meeting with students and find it much more effective for quality instruction. Please use email only for scheduling appointments and other brief communications.

As a reminder: my office hours are on Monday @1pm-2pm & by appointment.

Un)Grading Policy

My main goal for you is to learn new things and skills in this class. Grades tend to stress students out and worrying about grades can actually get in the way of learning. We know this much from educational and psychological research. If anything, this has become even more true in pandemic times.

This is why I will be taking a different approach to assessing your work with me during this quarter. I much want all of you to pass the class and ideally I want you to do well in it.

First of all, you will of course receive ample feedback on your work. There will be a quarter-long podcast project and many smaller assignments each week (or plenty of opportunity for me to weigh in).

There will be no midterm or final exam. When I have commented on those in the past, it's usually been to explain to students why they got the grade they received. In this class, I want to give you feedback on how you can improve rather than justify my grade to you.

When it comes to assessing your work and assigning letter grades, you will have considerable control over the outcome.

In essence, your steady engagement with the class and the timely completion of assignments will be the determining factor for your overall course grade. You may merely want to take this class pass/fail (i.e. need a C at a minimum), or you may want to take home at least a "B", and ideally an "A". You can set a target for yourself.

There will be three sets of benchmarks for each passing grade.

For a “C”, you will have to complete the following

All parts of the quarter-long podcast assignment (for details, see prompt)
All lectures or lecture videos
All assigned course materials (readings, videos etc.)
The weekly assignments required for a “C” grade

For a “B”, you will have to complete following:

All requirements needed for a “C” grade (see above) PLUS
The weekly assignments required for a “B” grade

For an “A”, you will have to complete the following:

All requirements needed for the “B” grade (see above) PLUS
The weekly assignments required for an “A” grade

This grading breakdown assumes that you complete the work on time and that you give it your personal best effort.

This means if you do all the work at a satisfactory level, you get an A in the class.

All that said, I reserve the right to change grades as appropriate due to actual effort. This could work to your advantage if you, say, complete the workload for a “B” but the quality of your work/effort on the assignments goes above and beyond; in this instance, you may end up with a B+.

Inversely, if your work on the assignments indicates lack of adequate effort, I may lower. I will hopefully not have to lower grades and I will do so only if I believe you did not make a good faith effort and were trying to exploit the system to get a grade you didn't really earn.

Weekly Declaration of Work:

By Sunday of every week you will complete a “Declaration of Work” quiz in Canvas. It is called a ‘quiz’ by the system, but it won’t really be testing you on anything. It basically asks you to report (true/false) on whether or not you completed the requirements for a given week in light of the various grade options.

Did you meet the benchmark for an A,B, or C? You will be completing this declaration on an honor system basis; yes, in theory I could double-check, but we are starting from a baseline of trust unless I am led to believe this is not being honored on your part.

Your points each week will go directly into the Canvas Gradebook. This way you can keep track of your progress in the course at all times.

Late Work:

Unless otherwise noted you will automatically get a 48-hour grace period on completing assignments.

Podcast Assignment or the Quarter-Long Project:

For this assignment, you will team up with a classmate and develop a script and record of an 8 – 10 minute podcast on a theme or issue pertaining to Black Germans.

What you need to produce for this assignment by the end of term:

Podcast 8-10 minutes in length
Written transcript of your podcast, with proper citations & bibliography
Streaming your podcast for the class during week 10
A note (or short recording) by one listener outside of our class (friend, family member, etc.) reflecting on one interesting thing they learned

How you will go about getting there throughout the term:

You will meet and work with your partner regularly throughout the quarter.

You need to send me a recording of each work meeting afterwards

Topics will be chosen in consultation with me. However, you will have a lot of freedom and flexibility in where you want to take this.

Your podcast can take the form of reporting, an interview, or dialog. If you have other ideas for a format, just make sure to clear them with me.

Since this is a partner assignment, each person should speak for half of the total time and of course do half of the work for the script.

While this assignment incorporates a create component, it still requires the academic rigor of a more formal paper.

You will need to identify sources (print or internet), assess their reliability, and synthesis your findings into a script with proper citations and short bibliography at the end.

You may incorporate class materials as well, but your podcast should clearly go beyond our course readings and content in terms of research and analysis.

Schedule for Teams:

Week 1: find a partner and set up a first meeting for week 2

Week 2: meet & get to know each other, brainstorm about possible topics

Week 3: explore topic ideas individually

Week 4: meet, settle on your topic, and get green light from me

Week 5: collect sources and start reading individually

Week 6: meet, share sources, divide up work & think about podcast

Week 7: keep reading but also start writing up results and developing your script

Week 8: meet, finalize and fine-tune script

Week 9: meet, record & share with one person outside of class each

Week 10: share podcast and your first reviewer’s response with our class

Modules:

We will be working with modules in this class. They will be uploaded by the time of the first lecture of the week.