Course Syllabus
HIS 583W.01 United States Diplomatic History
Focus on the Cold War in Asia

3 Credit Hours, Spring 2010
ONLINE COURSE
Last Revised on January 13, 2010

Remember: E-College is being used for the first time this semester.  My colleagues and I are still learning how to use this program.  Ricki Lee Hodges is assigned to the History Department (as well as the College of Humanities and Social Sciences).  Although I have received some training on this system, I really do not know what I am doing.  Please be patient this semester as we all work out the bugs in this wonderful system that I am told we are all going to come to love!

Contact Information

Dr. Tracy Steele
Office: AB4 461
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30 to 11:00 and 1:00 to 2:00; Wednesday 12:30 to 4:00

Also by appointment

Office Phone: (936)294-1480 - Please leave a message on voice mail if I am not available.
Home Phone: (281)292-1665
Department Secretary's Office: (936)294-1475
E-MAIL ADDRESS: his_tls@shsu.edu
Web Address: http://www.shsu.edu/~his_tls/
Computer Support

The telephone number for the Help Desk is (936)294-1950. Sam Houston State University's Help Desk is open from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central Time, Monday through Friday.

Getting Started -- First Steps for this Class

1. Please ALWAYS use the same e-mail address throughout the duration of this course in order to avoid confusion. Students must use their student accounts to participate in the course via blackboard.
2. Please review the calendar in this syllabus and E-College to get an overview of all class deadlines.
3. This is an intensive course schedule and it will require a great deal of commitment and self-discipline, but will be rewarding.
4. Please start reading chapter 3, the first assignment from We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, by John Lewis Gaddis. The first book worksheet is a short essay.
5. Please e-mail Dr. Steele the street address to which you would like hard copies of assignments to be mailed. 

Important Dates from the Academic Calendar:

(NOTE:  Students may resign with a "W" grade from the 13th class day through the last class day, put prior to any final exams being taken or course completion.)

Course Description:
The emphasis is on the forces which have influenced diplomacy and on the changing interpretations of United States foreign policy toward Asia during the Cold War.

Recommended Text:

Students may want to purchase this for use as a general source book.  There have been later editions printed, but any edition is fine for background information.

LaFeber, Walter, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006, 9th Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2002). Available in paperback.

Course Texts:

(2) Chang, Gordon H., Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972, (Stanford University Press, 1991)

(3) Chen, Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 2001)

(6) Cumings, Bruce, Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American East-Asian Relations (Duke University Press, 2002)

(1) *Gaddis, John Lewis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford University Press,1998 [reprint])

We will read only one chapter for this class: Chapter 3 “Cold War Empires: Asia”

Newton Gresham Library has this chapter available NOW under Ereserves.  The password is diplomacy.

(8) Kurlantzick, Joshua, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World (Yale University Press, 2008)

(7) Lampton, David M., Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S. China Relations, 1989-2000 (University of California Press, 2002)

(5) Luthi, Lorenz M., The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton University Press, 2008)

(4) *Zubok, Vladislav M., A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (The University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

We will read only two chapters for this class: Chapter 4 “Kremlin Politics and ‘Peaceful Coexistence,’ 1953-1957” and Chapter 5 “The Nuclear Education of Khrushchev, 1953-1963”.  Due to copyright laws, the two chapters from the Zubok text cannot be on Ereserves with the Newton Gresham Library at the same time.  Zubok chapter 4 will run on Ereserves from January 14th to February 22 and chapter 5 will run from February 23 to March 5.  You will want to go into Ereserves and print off each chapter as they come available and then keep them in a folder for the actual discussion.  The password is diplomacy.

* Students may want to borrow these books from the library or inter library loan rather than purchase all the required books.

Calendar for Assignments and Due Dates

Book Worksheets (60% - each is worth 10% of the final grade)

You will have a series of discussion questions to answer for the all assigned texts (not those with only chapters) that will comprise the book worksheet. Some of these questions may be in depth essays and other will be short answers. The Book Worksheets will be posted on E-College. I will also send out an e-mail notice of the assignment. I would prefer that students read the book before working on the book worksheet so you do not resort to flipping through the book looking for answers. Please use the following guidelines:

1. You MUST include your full name and e-mail address at the BEGINNING of your book worksheet. All assignments should be submitted in Word 2007.
2. Do not send partial answers to book worksheet questions.

3. I strongly urge students to include direct quotes in their comments, but the use of a parenthetical reference is sufficient such as, (Chang, p. 75).

4. Grading will be based on the quality of the student's comments, how well the assigned question is addressed as well as accuracy. I will count off for egregious spelling and grammar mistakes on the book worksheets, but not on general online discussion comments.

Book Reviews (30%)

You are required to write book reviews on three books of you choice but by the due date for that book.  This assignment if for book reviews, NOT a book report or journalization. Book reviews should be turned in by the assigned date listed above.

Book reviews should be submitted via directly to Dr. Steele via e-mail. Reviews should be between 800 and 1200 words. Each book review is worth 10% of your final grade.

Heading: Title, Author. Place of Publication: Publisher. Year. Number of pages. Price. ISBN.  Directly under the bibliographic information, skip a line and place your own name and institutional affiliation.

The heading for your book review should follow the format below. (Note: Your heading should NOT be indented. This is indented for emphasis and to separate it from the rest of the syllabus.)

A Tale of Two Melons: Emperor and Subject in Ming China. Sarah Schneewind. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2006. 176 pp. $8.95. ISBN 978-0-87220-824-7.

Tracy Steele, Sam Houston State University

Here are some common styles conventions that will aid in reviewing: (a) use a serial comma (e.g., x,y, and z); (b) all occurrences of chapter, book, part, tome, volume, etc. should be lower case unless it is the first word of a sentence—any number that follows should be arabic; (c) spell out all numbers under 101 except if they follow those words identified in 11b or precede a % sign; (d) use double instead of single quotation marks; (e) please use the em-dash over --; (f) italicize foreign words not placed within quotation marks unless they are italicized in the original instance; (g) dates should appear as day month year (e.g., 18 February 2004); (h) spell out centuries, and when using a specific century as a modifier, please use a hyphen (e.g., sixteenth-century printers); (i) citations from other books not under review should be minimal; (j) and only provide citations for direct quotes with parentheses bracketing a page number, eg. (15), when quoting from the book under review. 

Use Chicago style rules for all written work for this course.

Your book review should identify the author’s thesis. You should address how the author sets out to prove his or her thesis and how persuasive he or she is at winning you over to the author’s point of view. You should discuss the sources for the book, for example, whether or not they are primary or secondary sources or if the author is one of the first historians to have access to these materials. Furthermore, you may want to mention if you feel that some sources have been left out – of course, you may not feel expert enough to judge. You might also discuss whether or not the book is well written and edited – for instance, sometimes books published by foreign presses have numerous typos. That may cause the reader to distrust the credibility of the author. Finally, you should address the audience for this book – for whom would you recommend (or not) the book – general audience, students, Cold War historians? In reality, I would hope that you would not have too many complaints regarding the book being well-written or edited (it should not have been chosen for a course if it was not), but when you review for journals, you get a wide variety of books of differing quality and it can be an issue.

See Jules Benjamin's, A Student's Guide to History "Writing Book Reviews" for additional information.

Online Discussions (10%) 

You will have a series of discussion questions students are required to answer for each assigned text. The questions will be posted at 11:00 AM on the first day of the discussion period and you will be allowed to post comments until 5:00 PM on the last day of the discussion period. Please use the following guidelines when submitting your answers via E-College to the entire class. Each posting per book is worth a different percentage of the student's final grade.   The purpose of this assignment is to foster discussion and debate as well as to help students to prepare writing the book worksheets and book reviews.  They are important even though they are not highly weighted in terms of grading.  The percentage of the grade is given in the chart above where the dates for discussion appear.

1. You MUST include your full name and e-mail address at the BEGINNING of your comments.

2. Do not send partial answers to discussion questions. Answers should be as long as the student feels is necessary to answer the question completely unless I have indicated how long I expect the answer to be. 

 
3. Post your comments to the entire group on E-College. You should feel free to comment on each other's responses to questions. Remember, all discussions are to be respectful, professional and courteous.

4. I strongly urge students to include direct quotes in their comments.  However, but the use of a parenthetical reference is sufficient, ie (Chang, 15).

5. Grading will be based on the quality of the student's comments, how well the assigned question is addressed, as well as accuracy.  I will not count off for spelling and grammar unless an egregious number of mistakes continue to appear over the course of the semester.

6. Students should post their comments on time.

Grading:

Book Worksheets: 60%
Book Reviews: 30%
Online Discussions: 10%
Final Grade: 100%

The semester will come to a close sooner than we think. Therefore, students must keep up with assignments and due dates. All assignments must be turned in by the posted due date and time.

Please allow at least one week before you contact me regarding grades for each assignment. I will try to grade and return lessons as soon as possible. Students who wish to have a hard copy of assignments with written comments returned to them should inform me of this and provide me with the address that they wish to use.

All assignments will be awarded a letter grade based on the quality of the student's work. Factors that are included in the grade are: punctuality, grammar, spelling, accuracy and interpretation. This letter grade translates into a number grade which will appear online in E-College.

Grade Scale

Letter Grade and Percentages

Requirements for all written assignments:

Written assignments should be typed, double-spaced, Arial font, one inch margins, and in 12 pitch with page numbers. Each paragraph should begin with an indentation (tab) of five spaces. Written assignments must be submitted in Microsoft Word. Proper attribution for sources is required. Assignments will be marked down by up to twenty percent for egregious typos and grammatical errors. If the same typos and grammatical errors continue to appear in various lessons, the lessons will be returned by Dr. Steele for corrections before a grade will be issued.

Assignments should be submitted using the student's university e-mail account. If you do not wish to use SamMail, you can have it forwarded to an email address you do use. To do this, follow the steps in the E-Mail Forwarding menu on SamInfo.

Hints on Grammar:

A sentence is supposed to convey a complete thought in a rational and organized way. A number of sentences grouped together should contribute to a basic idea or theme that is the foundation of a paragraph.
 http://www.bartleby.com/141/
 http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/

Course Policies

Academic Dishonesty

All students are expected to engage in all academic pursuits in a manner that is above reproach. Students are expected to maintain complete honesty and integrity in the academic experiences both in and out of the classroom. Any student found guilty of dishonesty in any phase of academic work will be subject to disciplinary action. The University and its official representatives may initiate disciplinary proceedings against a student accused of any form of academic dishonesty including, but not limited to, cheating on an examination or other academic work which is to be submitted, plagiarism, collusion and the abuse of resource materials. Please see the following web address at the Student Guidelines at http://www.shsu.edu/students/guide/dean/codeofconduct.html

For additional information on what constitutes plagiarism, please see Jules Benjamin's (A Student's Guide to History) discussion of plagiarism.

ADA Accommodations
Student requests for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act must be initiated by the student. A student seeking accommodations should contact the Counseling Center and Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) in a timely manner. Any student who may require an accommodation under the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact the instructor on this matter as soon as possible.

Copyright Statement
The materials presented in this course are copyrighted. Reproduction of class notes for commercial purposes without the express permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.

Web Addresses

Cold War International History Project

Foreign Relations of the United States: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/

The People's Daily Online http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/
China Daily http://chinadaily.com.cn.net/ 

The Association of Asian Studies: http://www.aasianst.org/

Last Updated: January 13, 2010
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