1 University of Minnesota History Department HIST3797 ... - Users

Fall 2012. HIST3797: History of Population
Moodle and email
There will be a HIST3797 Moodle site. We will be using Moodle for specified tasks and
assignments. Moodle will also be used to host the course outline (should you misplace it), link to
additional material, and to contact the class via email. The Moodle class-email function uses
your student email (@umn.edu).
Please set up your student email account to redirect messages to your preferred email address if
you do not regularly check your student email account. You should be checking your email
regularly for course related messages.
Email response policy
You should check your email once every weekday. I expect that if I send an email about a class
happening more than two days ahead you will read it and take any action required. (e.g; if I send
a message on Wednesday afternoon about Monday’s discussion, you should have read it before
Monday).
In return, you can expect that if you email me about HIST3797 I will reply within 24 hours (and
hopefully sooner). The aim of this policy is to facilitate quick communication, but without raising
the unreasonable expectation that you (or I) will always be checking email.
I encourage you to submit class-related queries via email. A written record of the discussion
avoid confusion later. Also, if the answer to your question would be interesting to the rest of the
class, email allows me to easily expand the discussion. You can be sure that if I forward
correspondence to the rest of the class I will either ask your permission, or edit your question so
it doesn’t identify you.
COURSE CONTENT
This course is an introduction to population history through analysis of controversial debates in
the field. We look briefly at prehistoric and early modern population issues in the first month of
the course, and spend the last 11 weeks of the class looking at topics related to the modern rise of
population — the extraordinary growth in the world’s population in the past 500 years.
Significant population growth is related to significant changes in human lives — how old we can
expect to live, how many children we have, and where we live. These changes are related to
many of the social and economic changes you will study in other history or social science classes,
and are fundamental to understanding the modern world that you live in. We also spend some
time thinking about how we measure change, and some time in the computer lab letting you
explore demographic concepts in practice.
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