history final exam Academic Help

I don’t understand this History question and need help to study.

Part 1.

You will be given 2 short passages taken from the primary sources we have read together and discussed in lecture.（But I don’t know which two sentences will be given in the exam，just find the key topic） You will be asked to identify 1 of the passages and comment on how it illustrates a key topic discussed in class. Your answers should be 7-8 sentences long or more.

Your answer will be evaluated on three criteria:

1. Correctly identifying the text (worth 10 points)
   1. The author’s name (if known)
   2. The title of the work
   3. The period of the source (e.g. Persian Empire, Zhou dynasty, Roman Empire,etc.)
2. Correctly defining the key topic (worth 10 points)
3. Successfully using specific passages of the text as evidence (worth 10 points)

The primary sources we read together in class are posted on eee along with the PowerPoints from lecture. They include:

• Columella, On Agriculture
• Mou Tzu, Disposition of Error
• Quran, Sura 87, “The Most High”
• Machiavelli, Letter to Vettori
• Marco Polo, Travels of Marco Polo
• Boturini Codex
• European sources on the Black Death

Part 2

This part will be exactly the same as Part 1, but here I will give you two passages from the sources you read on your own for discussion in section. These sources include:

1. I will give you two passages from the sources you read on your own for discussion in section. These sources include:
   • Seneca, “Individual Gladiators Resist Their Fate”
   • Plutarch, “The Spartacus Slave War”
   • The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas
   • Ch’eng Tuan-li, “A schedule for learning”
   • Boccaccio, Decameron

   Part V. Major themes (60 points)

   1. Answer one of the questions in 2-3 pages (double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font with 1” margins). You should answer the question by drawing on lecture notes and class readings. You should aim to answer each question as directly as possible and give evidence that you were in class and did the reading. In order to get an A on this part of the exam, you should refer

   2

   specifically to at least two different primary sources in your essay and include a clear introductory paragraph with a clear thesis statement that indicates the argument of your essay. This essay will be graded on a letter grade scale and assigned points accordingly. An A+ will thus earn 60 points, an A 57 points, a B 51 points and so forth. This is NOT a paper. You should devote ONE HOUR MAXIMUM to answering this question. Please follow the instructions provided.

   1. In the modern, Western world, we often tend to think of religion as being a spiritual tradition that stands (or should stand) apart from politics and cultures. In our course, however, we emphasized the important role societies, their cultures, and politics played in shaping religious traditions. In the first sentence of your essay agree or disagree with all or part of the following statement: Religions cannot be understood apart from the political, social, and cultural world in which they develop and are practiced. Then spend the rest of your essay drawing on lecture materials and class readings to support your argument. For full credit, you should draw on at least 3 different regions or religious traditions in your essay. Note: you can take “religious tradition” broadly here; feel free to address philosophical traditions in this essay as well, provided you justify your decision to discuss philosophical and religious traditions together.
   2. Historians depend on available evidence (textual, artistic, archaeological, etc.) to develop narratives and arguments about the past. This question will consider how the existence (or not) of evidence and the type of evidence that survives shapes the narratives we write about historical cultures.Pick two different pairs of cultures and surviving primary source evidence we read and discussed during the course of the quarter from the list below:
      • Ancient Mesopotamia (“Death of Ur-Namma”)
      • Ancient Egypt (“The Autobiography of Harkhuf”)
      • Shang dynasty China (oracle-bones)
      • Neo-Assyrian Empire (“Banquet Stele of Assurnarispal III”)
      • Persian Empire (Cyrus cylinder)
      • Vedic/ South Asian Brahmanical culture (The Buddha, “Sermons and teachings”)
      • Han Dynasty (“Debate on Salt and Iron”)
      • Roman Empire (“Rape of Lucretia,” Columella, Plutarch, or Seneca)
      • Early Islamic Empire (Quran, Sura 87)
      • Black Death and/ or Renaissance Europe (Boccaccio, Decameron)
      • Mayans and Mexica culture (examples of codices discussed in lecture)For each primary source, devote at least one paragraph to describing the nature of each primary source (its genre, its purpose, its content, etc.). Then, write at least one paragraph discussing what we know about the culture that produced the primary source (draw on class lecture here). Do this for each primary source. Devote at least one closing paragraph to answer the question: Based on the two examples you chose, how does the type of surviving source evidence shape historians’ writing of history?