General Resources for Question Writing:
Developing Questions for Harkness Discussions
Bloom's Taxonomy for Question Writing

Land-based Gunpowder Empires

Your group will be assigned one of the following empires:
1) Ottoman
2) Russian
3) Mughal (and Safavid) 

Your goal is to research your empire and be able to engage in an intelligent comparative discussion about it with other groups about their empires. You must deal with these components of your empire:

A) What was the basic structure of the empire. What was the leader's source of legitimacy? Who were the intermediaries (the links between the ruler and the ruled.) Did they change?
B) How was its society arranged? How did they treat people of other ethnicities/religions?
C) Explain their territorial expansions or contractions.
D) What were the cultural/religious features of your empire? What were its artistic or architectural accomplishments?

Some Resources:
Textbook chapter (go to ItsLearning)
Key Concept 4.2
Key Concept 4.3
Mughal Snapshot
Ottoman Snapshot
Russian Snapshot

Southernization

Your group will be assigned one topic from the article Southernization.
The goal is to read and comprehend the article and be able to engage in an intelligent discussion about it with others in order to evaluate its thesis. You must come to class with:

A) The printed article heavily annotated and highlighted
B) The question and mapping exercise that accompanied the article
C) Three quality questions about the topic. These cannot be simple fact-based questions.

Some Resources for question writing:
1) Basic Guide to Harkness Discussions
2) Bloom's Taxonomy
3) Question writing guide (note: not all stems are relevant)

How will you be graded?

You will be graded on the quality of your contributions.

Unacceptable-not contributing or showing no evidence of your knowledge of the author's argument
Better-Bringing in evidence from the article or having knowledge of the author's argument
Excellent-Bringing relevant outside information from class, readings, or podcasts into the discussion
Outstanding-Linking the author's argument or historical processes from the article to other time periods we have studied