The Digital Past

History 390, Summer 1B 2018

Policies

Communication

Students are welcome to come to my office hours or to arrange an appointment at any time during the semester. All other course communication will take place in our Slack group. If you have registered for the course, and have not received an invitation in your email, please add yourself to the group using your Mason e-mail address. All course announcements will be posted to the #h390summer2018 channel and you are responsible for checking this venue regularly. You may download the Slack app onto your electronic device or use the web based version. See this getting starting started guide for more information.

Required Purchases

You will need to sign up for Student plan with Reclaim Hosting ($30) in lieu of a textbook. We’ll go over this in class, but please sign up for an account no later than June 6th. The wonderful folk at Reclaim have provided a discount code for students enrolled in this course. Use the coupon code #reclaim4edu to get 20% off your purchase of a student plan.

All other readings will be available for free online.

Technology

You will need to bring a laptop or tablet to every class. You will need it to complete required in-class exercises. Because our class is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, please charge your computer beforehand and bring a charger to class with you.

Technology, while often wonderful, can also cause unexpected problems. I encourage all students to back up their work on an external hard drive or in a Dropbox account. Always keep separate copies of your written assignments and other work. Computer failures are not an acceptable excuse for late assignments and will not constitute an emergency.

Late Work

All assignments must be turned in by the date and time they are due. Late assignments will be penalized 13 of a grad (e.g. from a B to a B-) after the deadline. An additional 13 of a grade will be deducted for each 24 hours that pass before the assignment is turned in.

Emergencies, of course, do arise. If you have a documented emergency please see me and we can discuss other arrangements.

Honor Code

Mason is an Honor Code university; please see the Office for Academic Integrity for a full description of the code and the honor committee process. The principle of academic integrity is taken very seriously and violations are treated gravely. What does academic integrity mean in this course? Essentially this: when you are responsible for a task, you will perform that task. When you rely on someone else’s work in an aspect of the performance of that task, you will give full credit in the proper, accepted form. Another aspect of academic integrity is the free play of ideas. Vigorous discussion and debate are encouraged in this course, with the firm expectation that all aspects of the class will be conducted with civility and respect for differing ideas, perspectives, and traditions. When in doubt (of any kind) please ask for guidance and clarification.

Please keep in mind that if you are copying and pasting text that you did not write yourself, you might be plagiarizing. If you are using copied text, whether pasted or retyped manually, you must be sure to accurately cite the information. Text is accurately cited when: 1) pasted text is surrounded by quotation marks or offset as a block quote and 2) the pasted text is attributed to its author and source and 3) the pasted text is cited in a footnote, endnote, or bibliography.

Disability Services

If you have a documented learning disability or other condition that may affect academic performance you should: 1) make sure this documentation is on file with Disability Services (SUB I, Rm. 4205; 993-2474; http://ds.gmu.edu) to determine the accommodations you need; and 2) talk with me to discuss your accommodation needs.

Acknowledgments

Variations of this class are regularly taught by numerous faculty at George Mason. I am indebted to the work of those who have taught this class before me, including: Sharon Leon, Lincoln Mullen, Erin Bush, and Gretchen Burgess.