Arizona State University Criteria Checklist for HISTORICAL AWARENESS [H] Rationale and Objectives Recent trends in higher education have called for the creation and development of historical consciousness in undergraduates now and in the future. History studies the growth and development of human society from a number of perspectives such as—political, social, economic and/or cultural. From one perspective, historical awareness is a valuable aid in the analysis of present-day problems because historical forces and traditions have created modern life and lie just beneath its surface. From a second perspective, the historical past is an indispensable source of identity and of values, which facilitate social harmony and cooperative effort. Along with this observation, it should be noted that historical study can produce intercultural understanding by tracing cultural differences to their origins in the past. A third perspective on the need for historical awareness is that knowledge of history helps us to learn from the past to make better, more well- informed decisions in the present and the future. The requirement of a course that is historical in method and content presumes that "history" designates a sequence of past events or a narrative whose intent or effect is to represent both the relationship between events and change over time. The requirement also presumes that these are human events and that history includes all that has been felt, thought, imagined, said, and done by human beings. The opportunities for nurturing historical consciousness are nearly unlimited. History is present in the languages, art, music, literatures, philosophy, religion, and the natural sciences, as well as in the social science traditionally called History. The justifications for how the course fits each of the criteria need to be clear both in the application tables and the course materials. The Historical Awareness designation requires consistent analysis of the broader historical context of past events and persons, of cause and effect, and of change over time. Providing intermittent, anecdotal historical context of people and events usually will not suffice to meet the Historical Awareness criteria. A Historical Awareness course will instead embed systematic historical analysis in the core of the syllabus, including readings and assignments. For courses focusing on the history of a field of study, the applicant needs to show both how the field of study is affected by political, social, economic, and/or cultural conditions AND how political, social, economic, and/or cultural conditions are affected by the field of study. Revised October 2015 Historical Awareness [H] Page 2 Proposer: Please complete the following section and attach appropriate documentation. ASU--[H] CRITERIA THE HISTORICAL AWARENESS [H] COURSE MUST MEET THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA: Identify YES NO Documentation Submitted 1. History is a major focus of the course. 2. The course examines and explains human development as a sequence of events influenced by a variety of factors. 3. There is a disciplined systematic examination of human institutions as they change over time. 4. The course examines the relationship among events, ideas, and artifacts and the broad social, political and economic context. THE FOLLOWING ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE: Courses that are merely organized chronologically. Courses which are exclusively the history of a field of study or of a field of artistic or professional endeavor. Courses whose subject areas merely occurred in the past. Historical Awareness [H] Page 3 Course Prefix Number Title General Studies Designation HST 304 Stalin to Putin H Explain in detail which student activities correspond to the specific designation criteria. Please use the following organizer to explain how the criteria are being met. Criteria (from How course meets spirit Please provide detailed evidence of how checksheet) (contextualize specific examples in course meets criteria (i.e., where in syllabus) next column) 1 History is The course examines critical events All modules offer a historical exploration of key the major in the history of the Soviet Union events and different periods in the history of the focus of the and modern-day Russia through the Soviet Union and modern-day Russian, course eyes of prominent Soviet and examining significant issues that deal with Russian filmmakers. The Soviet Russian daily life, politics, and history. Assigned Union was the first communist primary source readings students are required to country in the world, and in 1991, it employ in their three required essays that ask became the only country in the them to compare films (and thus major events) world to simultaneously and from different eras are all drawn from speeches immediately undergo three and political treatises by leaders of the Soviet transitions: from one party rule to Union. These texts, bolstered by lectures on the democracy, from a command nature and motivation of ideological shifts in economy to a free market economy, Soviet history, provide students with an and from being an empire to understanding of the state's directives. Students becoming a much smaller nation. are required in these essays to use facts they have Each film was well received by learned from lectures and secondary source Soviet and Russian audiences. The readings: as the rubic in the ayllabus indicates, films thus both reflected how Soviet they are grded down if they DO NOT use facts, and Russians recalled these and also graded down if they use histocial facts events, as well as shaping how they incorrectly. perceived them. The films all focus on events which fundamentally changed the society, be it socially, politically or economically (or all three). 2 The course The course provides insight into how Weekly discussion posts are based on provocative examines and why revolutions (1917 and 1991), questions that elicit lively debate and could be and explains occur and how their political, answered either way. They forced students to human economic, social and cultural adopt a position that must be backed with development components are implemented in mutliple examples form the films. Their postings as a individuals' daily lives. It focuses on can not be simply opinion or interpretation: they sequence of how individuals responded and are graded down if they do not use facts they events interpretated state directives, and how learned in readings and lectures, if they use facts influenced by they developed strategies to carve incorrectly, or if they ignore counter examples in a variety of out a semblancy of normal life the films (see rubric). The instructor carefully factors. under a totalitarian regime, or to monitors all posts and frequently reponds to even fight fot it. Simultaneously it posts, as do other students. Students are required offers, and asks the students to to repond to a subsequent post by the instructor consider, the various explanations and by another student: these subsequent posts which individuals and societies are designed to compel students to either rethink Historical Awareness [H] Page 4 have created to explain often or elaborate on their position by using more excessively violent events in their examples from the films or facts learned. Each of nation's history. the 7 films is historically accurate, the way in which particular characters act is indicative of the dender/class/profession/geographic location of individuals of that particular era. Week 2 "The Purges of the 1930s" continues the focuse in week 1 on the various factors which contributed to the 1917 revolution and Stalin's revolution from above, which began in 1928. The film students watch explores how class tensions led to the revolution, along with belief in communism and nationalism. Discusison post 1 requires the reading of a primary souurce, a plea from the most well known victim of the Stalinist purges. This plea, like the film which accompanies it, requires the students to think deeply about whether prominent communists who were untimately victims of the revolution, believed in Marxist ideology, and if they stopped believing in it, what triggered their deconversion, and when? This question is one of the major questions scholars of Stalinism still study, and my lecture which accompanies it, and their secondary reading, introduce themto the various theories historians propose. Week 3: "The Great Patriotic War" examines how Nazi and Soviet policies in the occupied Western Soviet Union fed the grassroots partisan movement, which helped ensure Soviet victory over the Nazis. Individuals were forced to make difficult decisions, choosing between colloboration or resistance. Their ultimate overwhelming participation in the war effort against the Nazis is one of the reasons the war is remembered in the Soviet Union as a war without victims, the prompt students write about in their discussion. Week 5: "The Revolution far from Moscow" examines how three generations of Siberians from a single village endured 1917, the purges, W.W. II and industrialization/modernization. It explains the motivation some villagers had to support the Bolesheviks, engage in class warfare, and to harness the unique envirornment to further Soviet industrial needs, while also examining how others resisted these attempts. In the end some individuals switched sides in this struggle between modernization and tradition. In their dicussion, students are asked to consider the pluses and minues of this modernization drive, and, while understanding that the film is entirely "factually" correct, try and tease out the director's Historical Awareness [H] Page 5 interpretations of the momemtus events in his country's history. Week 6: "Glastnost' and Perestroika" explores the factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film the students watch depicts some of these factors--such as class identity, attitudes toward the West and poverty--are unnderstood entirely differently by two very different Soviet citizens, whose clash is a metaphor for the failure of these reforms. The course offers an inside look at the Week 2 explores how the instiution of the family .