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Go to Dr. Norman's writing manual for classical archaeology papers.

There are three major writing assignments for this course: 1) a research essay on a building or other monument from Athens, 2) a postmortem after every workshop, and 3) a research paper.

• For footnote, bibliography and other formatting issues, consult the writing manual. Do not turn in any writing assignment before you have consulted this manual and understand its directions.
• For general tips, consult the writing manual for this course. This is where you will find some useful tips for writing papers in classical archaeology.
• Failure to follow my specific guidelines will lower your grade.

Special Instructions

All writing assignments must be formatted as follows:

• 12 -point font
• Times New Roman or Courier fonts
• 1" (no more, no less) margins all around

1. Short Research essay:

A short (e.g., 1000 words) description of a building or other major monument from your Athens walking tour; this should be in the form of a formal research essay and must include a Works Cited page. Consult the syllabus for due date. Email your final draft as a WordPerfect or Word attachment to your WIP TA who will be solely responsible for grading this assignment. I urge you to work with the WIP TA on this project to improve the final version. This assignment will be graded on a 0-100 point (A-F) scale.

The point of this assignment is to get you familiar with the challenges of doing the research for your walking tour research project.

Special instructions for the research essay:

• must be in the form of a formal research paper with footnotes and Works Cited
• length: 1000-1200 words (excluding Works Cited)

2. Workshop Postmortems:

Short (e.g., 400-500 words) discussions of workshops. Undergraduates must email their postmortems to the WIP TA as Word or WordPerfect attachments; graduate students must email their postmortems to Prof. Norman. Postmortems must be received before the next class meeting after each workshop. The WIP TA will meet with each undergraduate student soon after the first PM is submitted to discuss them. The WIP TA will evaluate the PMs submitted by undergraduates and will select several PMs to post on the website after each workshop. Prof. Norman will evaluate the PMs submitted by graduate students. These assignments will be graded on a S-U scale.

Because I find that writing improves my thinking and my learning, the point of these postmortems is to help you capture information / ideas / perspectives discussed during our workshops and thus to capitalize on the progress made in these sessions, to collect your thoughts about the exercise, and to articulate what ideas you want to carry away from it.

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.

3. Walking Tour PowerPoint presentation and text:

A 30-40 minute long PowerPoint presentation and written text to accompany the PowerPoint of a walking tour of ancient Athens to be taken by a historical figure in a particular year. This is a collaborative project, and you will work in teams. Each team will create a single PowerPoint presentation and accompanying text (a model is posted on the website for you to consult--see below). I will select the time periods for the walking tour; each team will draw a time period from a hat and then each team will select an appropriate historical figure who will lead us on the walking tour. Note that this is a research project and not an exercise in creative writing. Your description of the Athens of your walking tour and of your historical narrator must be historically and archaeologically accurate; your accompanying text will therefore need to include footnotes and a Works Cited page. On the day your PowerPoint presentation is to be given, one member of the team must bring me the Word or WordPerfect text of the tour and the PowerPoint presentation on a memory stick, CD etc. so that I can load it on the website. Additional information will be distributed later in the semester. This project will be graded on a 0-100 point (A-F) scale, and each member of the team will receive the same grade.

Special instructions for the walking tour PPt and text:

• PPt must not exceed time allotted for it (for example, it generally takes me 40 minutes to read a 20 page text)
• text must be written and submitted as either a Word or WordPerfect file
• text must include footnotes and Works Cited
• length: 15-20 pages (excluding Works Cited)

Walking Tour Links

• Click here for a sample of a PowerPoint presentation for a walking tour of Athens in 403 BCE.
• Click here for the text that accompanies the PowerPoint.

4. Research paper:

A research paper (e.g., 4000 words; 6000 words for Honors-option students or students enrolled at the 6000-level) that relates both to your walking tour and to the archaeology of Athens. You may write on a building, a festival, or some other monument or topic that figures in your walking tour; indeed, you may want to write on the same topic you selected for writing assignment #1. You must, however, clear your topic with me. Although the walking tour is a collaborative project, the research paper is an independent project and must reflect your work alone. Submit a hard copy of the paper to me (email submissions will not be accepted) on the day the paper is due (consult the syllabus for the exact date). Additional information will be distributed later in the semester. Consult the syllabus for all deadlines for e-submission of your bibliography and rough draft to the WIP TA; failure to submit a 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. This assignment will be graded on a 0-100 point (A-F) scale.

The point of this assignment is to improve both your research skills in Classics and your writing within the discipline. This assignment also allows you to conduct scholarly research, construct a sophisticated argument and develop critical thinking skills.

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

Sources: 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.

Internet Sources: 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.

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 Thucydides' own words, not what Kagan says about Thucydides.
   
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)."

• must use properly formatted notes (consult the writing manual for this course for directions)
• must have properly formatted bibliography (consult the writing manual for this course for directions)
• use in-text citations for references to ancient texts, 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 title page with your title, name, date and course name and number
  • no covers of any kind
• pages must be numbered

Key to My Editing Marks:

• A checkmark in the margins means that I think you’ve made a good point.
• 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; often an "awk" also appears in the margin.
• 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 or underlined 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 ¶ means you should start a new paragraph.
• A / with # means that you need to insert a space between words.
• A dot inside a small circle means you need to insert a period.
  
  Remember, every paper needs a thesis paragraph at the beginning of the paper and every paragraph needs a thesis sentence near the beginning of the paragraph.