Fall Semester 1998
Alan Fisher
310 Morrill Hall
355-7500
email: fishera@pilot.msu.edu
office hours: MW 1015-1115
This course is designed to serve first-year students. The course will introduce students to 1) the analytical reading, writing, and research skills employed by historians, and often required in upper-level jobs of all sorts in the modern economy; and 2) the great variety of information resources at a university including books, journals, microfilms, government documents, museum collections, and the growing resources on the WWW. The student will also learn to research and write both individually and collaboratively.
In this particular section of History 110,we will begin by identifying the issue/problem in its current manifestations, with emphasis on different but credible points of view. Then we will, as a class, proceed through the historical development of the people and region under discussion, constantly referring "back" to the present. This will permit a continued growth in sophistication of the student in reading, viewing, and thinking about the realities of the current problem. Since virtually all parties to this crisis [those living in its midst as well as outsiders trying to influence the internal behaviors] refer to pasts as they "know" them, we will as a class try to come to some consensus about which, if any, of the views held today by any of the parties actually fit the realities of the histories to which they refer.
Please click on REGISTRATION , fill out, and submit. This is for my own records, and will assist me in directing the course in directions of interest to you.
Two other course syllabi on the WWW, taught by Professor Fisher:
History of the Middle East: Romans to Mongols
History of the Middle East: Ottoman
Empire