Syllabus
Academic Honesty
There's a university policy about this. It's in your Catalog and you should read it because you are bound by what it says there, and you can flunk the course or even be withdrawn from school for violating it. You should also read the Student Handbook.
This page goes further and applies specifically to this course.
The basic guidelines regarding academic honesty say that all your work should be your own ideas in your own words. That's a starting point, but it's too simplistic and incomplete. I know that when I was an undergraduate very few of my history papers consisted solely of my own ideas. Mostly they consisted of a reformulation into my own words of ideas that I found in the books I was reading.
Here I want to recommend that you think about this topic not from the perspective of cheating, but from the perspective of honest scholarship.
The scholarly community (I speak only for my own discipline, though the ethic is very similar in most academic disciplines) depends on communication. When I read a history book, I want to know not only what the author has to say, I want to know where the author found the information presented. In short, I want footnotes.
Footnotes are not some fussy and dusty academic tradition; they are fundamental tools of the trade. A footnote is a link in the web of scholarship, for it allows me as a reader to explore the same sources as the author. In the hard sciences, no paper is regarded as honest science without the inclusion of the data. In theory, any scientist should be able to reproduce the experiment, and any work that doesn't provide sufficient information for that reproduction is a work with little value to the scientific community.
To cite a couple of other parallels: an attorney in court cannot simply make statements about the case. The attorney must present evidence and testimony, without which the legal arguments must collapse. Similarly, a journalist must cite sources (more than one) that will corroborate a report. Otherwise the result is the very definition of tabloid journalism.
So it is with history. Without a bibliography and footnotes, a historical work is almost without value. They are the "data" that allow the reader to view for himself the foundations of the argument.
Bibliographies
The bibliography is the general guide. It is a convenient reference (alphabetical by author) with all the publication information needed to allow the reader to find the book for himself. The bibliography is not necessarily everything the author has ever read, but the author must have read everything listed in the bibliography.
The exact format is less important to me. Always keep in mind that the goal is clarity in communication, so whatever format you choose, make it one that is generally recognized by the academic community and be consistent in your use of it.
On footnotes
The footnotes are the tricky part, and learning how and when to use them is more art than science. I cannot give you rules, only guidelines and suggestions. If you intend to pursue an academic career, though, you should try to cultivate this art.
Before going on, I should say here that I don't care if it's a footnote or an endnote. The formatting is the same and the function is the same. Feel free to use whichever is more convenient. In published works I much prefer footnotes over endnotes, but for student papers I find either format to be about the same. Don't worry about it.
Two types of footnotes
There is one type of comment that you should probably avoid: the explanatory footnote. This is a somewhat old-fashioned type in which the author engages in a supplemental or tangential discussion. Even with a very good author, this type of footnote is easily over-used. Save it for when you're more experienced.
The other, more common and more useful type is
A brief statement on quotes
I have a separate statement on quotations; here I'll state it in its shorter form: don't quote. Ever. Other teachers will have a different opinion, but take this as absolute for all of my courses: do not put anyone else's words into your essays or papers. If you find yourself putting in a quotation, take it back out.
Citing sources in class discussion
Citing your sources in discussion is also worthwhile. This is one of the several benefits of the asynchronous, online format, for in a live discussion there's no time to cite sources. It would very quickly disrupt the flow of the conversation. In this course, on the other hand, citing your sources actually facilities and enhances the discussion. On a practical level it shows your instructor that you are indeed doing the reading (or doing outside reading).
Last reviewed June 2004