Writing assignments

There are two writing assignments for this course: 1) a postmortem after every workshop and 2) a research paper.

• For footnote, bibliography and other formatting issues, use Turabian.
• For general tips, see my Writing Tips site.

Special Instructions

ALL writing assignments must be formatted as follows:

• 12 -point font
• Times New Roman or Courier
• 1" (no more, no less) margins all around
• double spaced
• with page numbers (if more than 1 pg long)
• for the postmortems, put your name (nothing else) at the top; for the research paper, use a specifically formatted title page--see below

  I. Postmortem:

  I find that writing improves my thinking and my learning. This assignment is meant to help you capture information / ideas / perspectives discussed during our workshop and thus to capitalize on the progress made in these workshops, to collect your thoughts about the exercise and to articulate what ideas you want to carry away from it. Postmortems must be emailed to me or, if available, the WIP TA as Word or WordPerfect attachments before the next class meeting after the workshop. These assignments will be graded on a S-U scale.

  Special instructions for the postmortems:

  • can take any format you wish
  • length: 400-500 words

  Click here for a good example of a postmortem from another class.

  II. Research assignment:

  A research paper (e.g., 3500-4000 words; 7000-7500 words for Honors-option students or students enrolled at the 6000-level, including all notes and the Works Cited page) on some aspect of ancient Carthage. All topics must first be approved by me. Additional information will be distributed later in the semester. Consult the schedule for deadlines for submitting your prospectus, bibliography, and rough draft to the WIP TA; failure to submit a prospectus, bibliography, or rough draft on time will negatively impact your grade. I encourage you to work with the WIP TA on drafts of your paper; writing is a process and going over drafts of your paper with the WIP TA will significantly improve your final product. Consult the syllabus for the due date. This assignment will be graded on a 0-100 point (A-F) scale.

  See the Writing section of the website for important information about formatting these assignments and for other guidelines for all writing assignments. Failure to follow the guidelines and instructions given in class and posted on the website will have a negative impact on your grade.

  Failure to follow the guidelines and instructions given in class and posted on the website will have a negative impact on your grade.

  Start your research early and be persistent. Good research usually results in a good paper but nothing can compensate for poor or incomplete research.

  Students often ask how many sources they should have for their paper. There is no magic number. I find it hard to imagine, however, that you can write a good paper without consulting at least 5 to 10 works. In general, the more sources you consult, the better your grasp of the information will be and the greater your chances will be of writing a successful paper.

  The www can be a tremendous source for information but let me caution you against relying too heavily on it for sources. This is because there is simply so much garbage posted on the web -- and classical archaeology is a field that attracts more garbage than most. Indeed, my rule is that no more than 15% of your sources may come from the internet.

  The purpose of this assignment is to improve both your research skills in Classics and your professional writing in the discipline. In addition, the assignment allows you to conduct scholarly research, construct a sophisticated argument, and develop critical thinking skills.

  Three additional bits of advice.

  1. Generally, in a paper for a Classics course, it is better to discuss the actual ancient sources and not to depend solely on what modern scholars say that they say. Quote and cite Appian's own words, not what Raven says about Appian.
     
  2. Introductory material, definitions and descriptions should appear early in the paper, followed by evidence, discussion and analysis.
     
  3. Italicize foreign words that are not in common usage in English.

A word about illustrations.

I encourage you to include illustrations with your paper; they will help you present your arguments effectively. But remember, every illustration needs a caption. Every caption should include information indicating the source of the illustration (e.g., book, article, etc.) and a brief description of what the illustration shows. Look at the captions under the photos in the sources you consult for some ideas on what to include in your own captions.

Also, you must include a call out in the text for each illustration included in your paper. For example, "The central scene on the Parthenon frieze seems to show the Panathenaic peplos (see fig. 3)."

Special instructions for the research paper:

must use properly formatted footnotes or endnotes (use Turabian, some specific example appear in my Writing Tips website)

must have properly formatted bibliography--no more than 25% of your sources may be online sources

in-text citations are used only for references to ancient texts and should be formatted as follows:
                  "...in the house" (Il. 6.2).
                  [Note the punctuation.]

for abbreviations for ancient texts, consult the fronts of the large Latin and Greek dictionaries in the Alexander room (Park 222)

for abbreviations for scholarly journals, etc., see the list at the front of any volume of L'année philologique

must have a properly formatted title page

III. Key to My Editing Marks:

• A squiggly line under your word/s means that I think your phrasing is awkward and should be redone, either for clarity or for elegance.
• A small circle above and behind a word or sentence means that I think you need a footnote there.
• A circled word with "sp" above meants it is misspelled.
• A circled word with “wc” above it means that your word choice is poor or confusing.
• A line through a word or phrase means that it should be omitted.
• A / with # means that you need to insert a space.
• A dot inside a small circle means you need to insert a period.
  
  Remember, every paragraph should have a thesis sentence near its beginning.