Reading

write a brief explanation fits a note card following the guide in the files I upload it (participation grade) the reading assignments is attached as well

EH 235 Participation Grade

Participation Notecards:
Your participation grade will be primarily based on your daily participation notecards. Every day
the class meets you will bring in a participation notecard (unless otherwise specified by the
instructor). A participation notecard is one notecard that you write on before class with unique
and insightful thoughts and/or questions prompted by and related to your reading for that day.
At the beginning of class, I will collect the notecards. You should copy down what you’ve written
on the card on a separate sheet of paper or take a picture of the card so that what you wrote
will help your engagement during class (do this before class begins so you’re not scrambling as I
collect the cards). The notecards will go towards your participation grade for the semester.

~Note: The day your text analysis is due, you do not have to bring in a participation notecard.
Your text analysis will suffice for that.

Usefulness & Purpose:
The notecards are not busy work: they are meant to facilitate you during class and help you in
case you find difficulty generating commentary to contribute during class—you will have your
card to help you with that as you will have done some insightful thinking beforehand. Plus, it
lessens the possibility that you will forget the material after you’ve read it.

They serve many purposes and will be used in many ways throughout the semester. You might
be asked to share what’s on your card during class discussion. You might be asked to get into
small groups and share what you wrote on the notecard. You might have to do an in-class
activity or in-class writing based on what you wrote on your notecard. Thus, you should make
sure what you write on your card each day is insightful, engaging, and you’re ready to share
with the instructor and your classmates. I feel using these notecards will be more helpful for you
in remembering, reflecting, and thinking on the reading material, instead of taking a daily quiz
(as is common for literature survey courses).

Logistics and Grading:
The participation notecard is the basis for your participation grade, which is worth 15% of your
final grade for this course. As noted above, the cards might be used in other aspects besides just
class discussion; they could be used in group work, in-class writing, or any other way. Thus,
your completion of any other activities associated with the notecard for that day could also be
taken up with your card, as part of that daily participation grade.

Your participation grade will be updated three times during the semester; these times will be
during the Reflection weeks of our course. As long as you’re coming to class, bringing in your
notecard, and participating, this grade should remain high.

There are 30 class days where notecards will be taken up during the semester (30 days of
reading). This averages to each notecard being worth approximately 3 points. Short writing or
an apparent lack of insightful thinking will result in -1 or -2 points for each “lacking” notecard.

Please note the make-up work policy for the notecards as it is listed on our course syllabus.

Examples

Unsuccessful:

Successful:

A Foundation of Religion

From Dan Brown’s Origin

Early humans had a relationship of wonder with their universe, especially with those phenomena they
could not rationally understand. To solve these mysteries, they created a vast pantheon of gods and
goddesses to explain anything that was beyond their understanding—thunder, tides, earthquakes,
volcanoes, infertility, plagues, and even love. For the early Greeks, the ebb and flow of the ocean was
attributed to the shifting moods of Poseidon. The seasonal change to winter was caused by the planet’s
sadness at Persephone’s annual abduction into the underworld. For the Romans, volcanoes were
believed to be the home of Vulcan—blacksmith to the gods—who worked in a giant forge beneath the
mountain, causing flames to spew out of his chimney. The ancients invented countless gods to explain
not only the mysteries of their planet, but also the mysteries of their own bodies.

Infertility was caused by falling out of favor with the goddess Juno. Love was the result of being
targeted by Eros. Epidemics were explained as a punishment sent by Apollo. When the ancients
experienced gaps in their understanding of the world around them, they filled those gaps with God(s).
Countless gods filled countless gaps. And yet, over the centuries, scientific knowledge increased. As the
gaps in our understanding of the natural world gradually disappeared, our pantheon of gods began to
shrink. For example, when we learned that the tides were caused by lunar cycles, Poseidon was no
longer necessary, and we banished him as a foolish myth of an unenlightened time. The same fate befell
all the gods—dying off, one by one, as they outlived their relevance to our evolving intellects. But make
no mistake about it. The gods did not ‘go gentle into that good night’; it is a messy process for a culture
to abandon its deities. Spiritual beliefs are etched deeply by our psyches at a young age by those we love
and trust most—our parents, our teachers, our religious leaders. Therefore, any religious shifts occur
over generations, and not without great angst, and often bloodshed.

Zeus, the god of all gods, and the most feared and revered of all the pagan deities. Zeus, more than any
other god, resisted his own extinction, mounting a violent battle against the dying of his own light,
precisely as had the earlier gods Zeus had replaced. Zeus’s followers were so resistant to giving up on
their god that the conquering faith of Christianity had no choice but to adopt the face of Zeus as the face
of their new god. Today, we no longer believe in stories like those about Zeus—a boy raised by a goat
and given power by one-eyed creatures called Cyclopes. For us, with the benefit of modern thinking,
these tales have all been classified as mythology—quaint fictional stories that give us an entertaining
glimpse into our superstitious past.

Things are different now. We are the Moderns. We are an intellectually evolved and technologically
skilled people. We do not believe in giant blacksmiths working under volcanoes or in gods that control
the tides or seasons. We are nothing like our ancient ancestors. Or are we? We must consider ourselves
modern rational individuals and yet our species’ most widespread religions include a whole host of
magical claims—humans inexplicably rising from the dead, miraculous virgin births, vengeful gods that
send plagues and floods, mystical promises of an afterlife in cloud-swept heavens or fiery hells. So just
for a moment let us imagine the reaction of humankind’s future historians and anthropologists. With the
benefit of perspective, will they look back on our religious beliefs and categorize them as the
mythologies of an unenlightened time? Will they look at our gods as we look at Zeus? Will they collect
our sacred scriptures and banish them to that dusty bookshelf of history?

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