Other staff who participate in this course:

Dr Jacqueline Clarke
Dr Silke Sitzler
Prof. Han Baltussen

Contact details will be available on MyUni at the start of teaching.

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1	Demonstrate familiarity with core features of Classical Athenian cultural history through the study of a) sporting and dramatical festivals, b) private cultural practices such as symposia;
2	Demonstrate an historical understanding of the cultural and social tensions between increasingly-defined "public" and "private' spheres in democratic Athens (5th-4th centuries BC);
3	Demonstrate an historical understanding of the evolution of "arena" mass entertainment in the Roman world, and contrast this with private "spectacles" such as banquets and aristocratic funerals, with special emphasis upon their political and social functions and an examination of their effects upon Roman popular and élite cultures;
4	Demonstrate an ability to evaluate the usefulness and relevance of different types of historical or textual evidence;
5	Demonstrate an ability to construct a well-developed argument based on fragmentary historical and archaeological evidence;
6	Demonstrate knowledge of the scholarly techniques of presenting your written work.

Dodge, H.  (2011),  Spectacle in the Roman World

Mahoney, A. (2001), Roman Sports and Spectacles. A Sourcebook. Newburyport: Focus.  

If you have never studied ancient Greece or Rome before, we recommend you buy:

Lane Fox, R. The Classical World. (Penguin, 2005 or later edition)

You may purchase the Course Booklet from Image and Copy (level 1, Hughes) at the start of semester, or you can download it as a pdf from MyUni.
Lecture slides (as pdfs) and audio recordings (where available) will be on MyUni. Details of assessment, graduate attributes will be on MyUni, as well as weekly readings for tutorials - where copyright limitations permit - and those weblinks which we  deem useful to you as scholarly sites.
Hints and guides to your written work, links to application forms for late submissions, the exams website, are all on MyUni.
NOTE: the only thing that you won't see is the full MyGrades, with all your marks. You will see your feedback to the bibliographic critique in this folder, but not your other grades. The tutorial marks will be on your Assessment Feedback sheet, which is attached to the back of your hard copy of your submitted tutorial paper. This may be further developed in the near future.

Lectures supported by problem-solcing tutorials developing material covered in lecture.

2 x 1-hour lectures (or equivalent) per week	24 hours per semester
1 x 1-hour tutorial (or equivalent) per week	12 hours per semester
5 hours reading per week	60 hours per semester
3.5 hours assignment preparation per week	42 hours per semester
1.5 hours revision per week	18 hours per semester
TOTAL WORKLOAD	156 hours per semester

The full tutorial programme and lecture list will be available on MyUni at least a week before the start of teaching, and will also be in hard copy in the Course Booklet which can be purchased at Image and Copy Centre, level 1 Hughes Building.

Compulsory lecture attendance: attending the lectures is for your own benefit (we have tracked the correlation between attendance and final results for several years and the statistics are clear: those who attend have better results). Audio recordings of lectures do not replace lectures, but are meant to assist in revision.  Finding a study-buddy is helpful in case you miss a lecture (we know this can happen) will allow you to catch up on notes.

Bibliographic Critique
The point of this exercise is to show that you have read and understood three secondary readings on a particular tutorial topic, and that you can use the Harvard Citation and Bibliography system as provided to you on MyUni for this course.

It is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from a tutorial paper. Firstly, whereas a tutorial paper addresses the tutorial topic, or question, this simply requires you to provide a short summary and assessment of the arguments and/or evidence provided by two different articles/chapters as provided by us for you all to read. The third article or chapter must be one you have found yourself, by using the footnotes, citations and bibliography of the other two readings.

Pick out the key points with a very brief evaluation of what is being discussed. Make sure that you include citations and a properly-formatted bibliography of the three authors used. At most, the whole thing with bibliography should be an A4 page to a page-and-a-half  in length. Print it out, as for the tutorial papers (see below). We will briefly discuss this in Week 2 (the introductory tutorial).

Tutorial papers
In addition to attending lectures and tutorials, you must submit two tutorial papers, each 1500-1600 words in length, and each on one of these tutorial topics.  You cannot submit a paper on Topic 1 in Week 2 (although we will discuss it in class), and there are no formal tutorials in Week 7. This leaves 10 weeks, and 10 topics from which to choose. 

These fall into two sections: Greek and Roman. You must:
a.  Write your 1st tutorial paper on a Greek topic chosen from Weeks 3-6 (topics 1-4) 
b.  Write your 2nd tutorial paper on a Roman topic chosen from Weeks 8-12 (topics 5-9)
Submit each paper to your tutor, at your tutorial, on the day that particular topic is discussed. For example, if you were writing on Tutorial Topic 1, you would have to hand it up in Week  3, when we will explore it in class.  

But wait - there’s more. Within each section, there will be a limit of 6 students per tutorial writing on any one topic. Because of this, in your first tutorial meeting, your tutor will ask you to nominate which topics you wish to write about.  So have a think about this before your first tutorial, and have a second choice in mind in case you miss out on a popular topic.

2-hour formal exam  
This exam is held in the University's formal exam period. All the answers are in essay form (no multiple-choice questions). All the details as to how it is structured, as well as dummy papers to revise with, will be dealt with in the last lecture of the semester, so make sure you come along. Be sure to read the EXAMS folder in MyUni to understand the process. Some salient points:

a.  You, and you alone, have to find out from the University’s Exams website, when the CLAS_1003 exam is on, and where it is. Don’t rely on a friend. If they get it wrong, so you do and there are no alternative arrangements for missing an exam because you mistook the date, time or venue. Don’t book a holiday that falls within the exam timetable. That will be 40% of your final mark down the drain, because we will not provide an alternative date for your convenience.

b.  Supplementary exams are for people who submit the appropriate application form, along with documentary evidence within 5 working days of the exam to the School of Humanities office (not us in Classics) on convincing medical or compassionate grounds. Those who get a mark between 45-49% overall also automatically get a supp. offer, provided that they have submitted all three written assignments. Make yourself available during the supplementary exams week! As with the main exam period, if you are not available to sit the supplementary exam, then itwill not be available to you.  The link is on the University exams website, and a link will be on MyUni for this course.

c.  We do not offer take-home exams, or any alternative assessment to the formal written exam.

 

Tutorial papers are to be handed in to your tutor, at the tutorial for that particular topic. Unless you have a medical certificate that you can present with your finished tutorial paper, or an official notification from a Student Counsellor (from the Student Centre), any late submission will incur the following penalties:

§  10% (of the final mark) off for the first week late

§  A further 10% (of the final mark) for the second week

§  No mark for any paper submitted more than 2 weeks from the due date

If you have any other good reason to hand up a paper late, you must consult with your tutor before the due date, not afterwards.

Things that do not count as a reasonable

1. excuse:  other essay deadlines (response: organise your workload better)
2. holidays, or family commitments for which you had plenty of time to plan ahead
   
3. headaches or minor ailments  or any events which are foreseeable and therefore for which you should have done some planning. 

Things that may reasonably be considered:

1. medical conditions that are not forseeable 
   
2. serious personal bereavement or family problems. 

Without wishing to be glib about this, real studies have been done in the USA of the apparent rapid rise  in mortality rates of grandparents around college exam times... 

Ongoing health conditions that might seriously affect your ability to complete tasks on time should be sorted out with a Disability Liaison Officer at the start of semester. Do not leave this until it all goes pear-shaped in Week 11, or you will may find yourself in a pickle, since you need to provide written (if confidential) evidence of the problem. 

The course will make use of SELT for course and teacher evaluation.