CLAS 362, Women and Gender in Antiquity

CLAS 362, “Women and Gender in Antiquity”

Fall 2014 1:00–1:50 p.m. MWFML 310

Marble image of L. VibiusTros, his wife Vecilia Hila, and their son L. VibiusFelicio, erected by their freedwoman Vibia Prima.Photo from VRoma Project Image Archive.

Instructor:Marilyn B. Skinner()

Office:LSB 322

Office Phone and Messages: (520) 621-0140 and (520) 621-1689 (Marcela Thompson)

Office Hours:MW 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

On-line in the Chat room:TBA

Other times by appointment, or e-mail me at any time

Graduate Assistant:Melanie Zelikovsky ()

Office:Graduate Pods (ask at Department of Classics Information Desk)

Messages: (520) 621-1689

Office Hours:TTR 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Requirements Met by This Course

CLAS 362 is a Tier Two Course in the University-Wide General Education Curriculum under the category of Individuals & Societies. Tier Two courses in Individuals & Societies study both the rules and values that given societies collectively impose upon members and the individual behaviors of persons responding to those rules and values.

CLAS 362 satisfies Gender/Race/Class/Ethnicity Non-Western Civilization requirements.

This is a Writing-Intensive course. It presupposes that you are able to write at a level appropriate for a student with junior or senior class standing. All students taking the course for credit will be expected to meet an upper-division level of writing proficiency. However, you will be given ample opportunity to improve your writing skills through personalized assistance from the instructor before your paper is submitted. Once the paper is graded, you may also be permitted to rewritefor a higher mark.

Objectives and Scope of the Course

Ancient Mediterranean cultures provide a model for understanding how gender roles, that is, concepts of proper behavior for men and women,affect the lives of individuals and at the same time incorporate a wide array of other cultural assumptions. This course will introduce you to classical Egyptian, Greek and Roman views of gender and sexuality and demonstrate how they shaped the historical realities of women’s existencein the hope that you will thereby gain new insights into sexual difference as it operates within our own culture. A secondary objective of the course is to provide practice in critical thinking through on-line group discussions and through writing essays on modern reception of ancient themes.

You will be asked to apply a spectrum of archaeological, historical, and literary approaches to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman materials including English translations of ancient documents, literary and non-literary, and, for extracredit,scholarly discussions of ancient evidence.

Assigned Textbooks

1. Robins, G. (= “Robins”), Women in Ancient Egypt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993.
2. Fantham, E., withH. P. Foley, N. B. Kampen, S. B. Pomeroy, and H. A Shapiro(= “Fantham”), Women in the Classical World. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.

This is a green classroom. All supplementary course materials must be accessed on-line through D2L and all quizzes and writing assignments submitted electronically. The only exceptions will bethe midtermand final, for which hard copy exam booklets will be distributed. No blue books are required.

On-Line Materials: D2L Content Page

1. Syllabus: The final syllabus is posted as a PDF onthe first module, “Course Materials.” During the semester other course materials may be added to this unit.
2. Lecture Outlines: Outlines for each class lecture are posted as both a PDF and a Word file onthe second module.These outlines are intended to reduce the work of note-taking, since you can add further information to them as you follow along. However, you will be responsible for all information presented in lectures, not just what is contained on the outline itself.
3. PowerPoints: All 21PowerPoints shown in lectures are posted onthe third module. Since PowerPoints for particular days are noted on the syllabus, you are advised to download and view them ahead of time. You are responsible for all content on PowerPointsincluding images.
4. Assigned Readings: Textbook readings and other reading assignments for each week are listed on the syllabus. PDFs of assignednon-textbook readings are posted on the fourth module.
5. Extra Credit Readings:Materials to be read for extra credit are posted on the fifth module.
6. Writing Assignments: As noted below, you will be responsible for three 750-word writing assignments. General writing assignment guidelines and instructions for each writing assignment are posted as PDFs on the sixth module. It is your responsibility to read these guidelines and instructions before undertaking the assignment.
7. Study Guides: Before the midterm and the final, an exam study guide will be posted on the seventh module. Availability of each guide will be announced as “News” on the D2L course Home Page. Answer sheets for the midterm and final will also be posted there after the examinations are graded. Audio tapes of review sessions will be available on this module as PanOpto recorded sessions.

On-Line Tools: Discussion Group

Once you enroll in the course, you will be randomly assigned to adiscussion group ofapproximately ten members.To find which group you belong to, go to the Classlist page, click on the menu button after your name, and click on “View group enrollments.” Your group number will appear in a new window. To learn who the other members of your group are, go to the “Groups” page and click on “Members” for your group number.You will continue to work with the same group throughout the semester.

Each week a new Discussion Forum will be unlocked and made available for participation. Go to the Discussions page, select the Forums & Topics list, and join the discussion for your numbered group.For each weekly Forum, individual group membersmust respond toa prompt measuring comprehension of current week’s reading assignments.Reference topassages in your readings is essential. You must finish the readings before you start to post so that you can easily recall information contained in them.Prompts will be the same for all groupsalthough each group will be able to access only the responses of its own members.

Once you have started a thread by responding to the prompt, you will be able to read the responses of those members who have posted earlier and reply in turn to their postings. You will be expected to read the postings of every other member of your group.Participation in discussion by starting a thread and reading postings is mandatory.

Arriving at a satisfactory answer to the prompt is necessary because midterm and final examinations will incorporate some questions originally posed in the Forums. It is in the best interests of all group members, then, to help correct an erroneous response posted by a student through a tactful reply.

While discussion postings on weekly Forums will be available for viewing during the entire semester, so that you can review them for the midterm and final, discussion itself will be cut off at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday of that week. If you have not started a thread and read all the comments of the other group members, you will receive a “0” for that week.

Participation will be assessed on an individual basisand will count for 15% of the final grade.

On-Line Tools: Virtual Office Hours on Chat

Chat is set up for live, real-time discussion.Only participants logged into the Chat room at the same time can exchange postings or access them later. If one or more students would like to join me in the Chat room for a virtual office hour to ask questions or go over particular points, please feel free to e-mail me to make the appointment. Virtual office hours can be held any time at the convenience of the instructor and the student, so evenings and weekends are possible.

On-Line Tools: Glossary

Go to the “Glossary” page to find definitions of many of the most important terms used in this course. You will be responsible for knowing a selection of these terms for both the midterm and the final.

On-Line Tools: FAQ

Before you e-mail the GAT or the instructor about course policies, check the “FAQ” page to see whether the answer to your question is already on-line. If not, go ahead and ask it, but don’t be surprised if it gets added to the list.

On-Line Tools: Quizzes

Quizzes (see below) will be found on the “Quizzes” page.On the day after the quiz is administered, it will be made available, together with correct answers, on the same page. You are advised to review each of the quizzesas part of your preparation for the midterm and final.

Extra Credit Discussion

Participation in Extra Credit Discussion is optional, but it is a way to earn Extra Credit points that will count toward your final grade.

Every Monday (or on Wednesday if Monday is a holiday) the instructor will post a question or observation for individual comment. Questions will be open-ended (there are no correct answers and you don’t have to reference readings or lectures) and may ask you to draw on personal experience. As an alternative, the instructor may assign an article or post a link to an on-line reading and ask you to relate its content to lessons learned in class. Responses should be e-mailed to the instructor by 11:59 p.m. on Saturday of that week. The instructor will summarize comments received and post them on D2L sometime in the following week.

While individual responses will not be graded, the instructor will reread comments at the end of the semester to evaluate the overall quality of each person’s contributions and assign a score of up to 5 points for Extra Credit Discussion. In order to be eligible for Extra Credit points a student must have sent the instructor at least one response each week. Extra Credit points will be added directly to the student’s cumulative final score before grades are assigned.

Course Requirements

ATTENDANCE AND PREPARATION. To get the most out of this course, it is important that you come to class each day with the complete reading assignment prepared in advance. Attendance will be taken and poor preparation will be noted. If you must be absent, please notify the GATbeforehand so that she can excuse you. More than five unexcused absences will result in a lowered course grade.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS.Three short papers will be assigned during the semester. Each paper must be at least 750 words long. You will be asked to evaluate a contemporary popular media portrayal of an ancient female figure and discuss what changes have been made to her representation and why. Papers will be expected to cite textual or visual evidence to support a claim; the instructions for the particular writing assignment will explain how to do that.

All written assignments must be submitted electronically to the appropriate dropboxfolder on the precise day they are due. Dropboxes labeled “Graded Papers” will be open for 24 hours on that due date, but not before or after. Be sure to submit your paper to the correct folder!!Unexcused late assignments may be penalized by lowering the grade, and such late grades cannot be subsequently adjusted.Papers that do not follow instructions—for example, a paper that simply regurgitates general class notes instead of responding to the prompt—will receive a failing grade. Papers that do not meet minimum length requirements will not be graded; the student will be asked to bring the paper up to the proper length and resubmit. Under these circumstances, resubmitted papers, even if accepted, may still be treated as late papers.

Predrafts and rewrites are allowed in this course. They are submitted to separate folders on the dropbox page according to paper number.A predraft is an early draft submitted for feedback regarding content and organization; it is NOT the same as a “rough draft.” You will be expected to submit clean copy, proofread and free of typos and grammar and spelling errors. On the graded version, any uncorrected mechanical errors will be penalized more heavily if your attention was called to them. Subject to conditions, each of the three papers may be rewritten once to earn a higher grade. See the general writing guidelines for more information about rewrites.

TESTS.Your broader grasp of course material and lectures will be assessed through quizzes and examinations.

Quizzes: Each Monday, except when noted, you will be expected to take a ten-minute on-line quiz on the previous week’s material. The quiz will consist of T-F and multiple choice questions. It will be available on the “Quizzes” page that whole day, from 12:00 a.m. until 11:59 p.m.,and will time out after ten minutes whether you have answered all the questions or not. You are therefore strongly discouraged from consulting books or notes while the quiz is in progress. There will be twelve quizzes administered and the two lowest scores will be dropped. If you miss a quiz, you will have no opportunity to take it on a later date; it must count as a dropped quiz.If more than two quizzes are missed, subsequent ones will be scored as “0”.

It is your responsibility to make sure your computer is in working order, your electric bill has been paid, your phone isn’t receiving calls or text messages, and the door is locked (if necessary) during the ten minutes you spend taking the quiz. Excuses involving abruptly failing hard drives, etc., will be treated with a lack of sympathy born of long acquaintance with them.

There will also be a one-hour in-class midterm examination and a two-hour in-class final examination. Examinations will be objective, testing knowledge of factual material learned from readings and class lectures. Going over group answers to discussion questionsis strongly advised. The final is cumulative and may include materials previously covered on the midterm. Test format could contain any or all of the following: brief identifications, true or false and multiple choice questions, matching columns, and short response questions, including image questions.

Grading

Since this is a writing-intensive course, 50% of the grade will depend upon written assignments. The writing grade will be based upon the average of the three individual paper grades.

NOTE: To pass this course, you must complete all written assignments. Even though you may have received a satisfactory grade on your tests and discussion, failure to hand in one or more papers will result in an automatic failing grade in the course.

Weights

Papers: 50%

Quizzes: 10%

Discussion: 15%

Midterm: 10%

Final: 15%

Attendance, preparation, and class participation will be taken into account in borderline situations. I reserve the right to modify the grading scheme described above in the interests of overall fairness.

PLEASE NOTE: As a matter of policy, I do not give extensions on assignments or grant incompletes except in documented cases involving a serious personal emergency (e.g., illness requiring hospitalization, death in family, etc.). You will be expected to take examinations and hand in papers on the appointed dates as specified below. Please plan your schedules accordingly.

Cheating and Plagiarism

Violations of the Code of Academic Integrity, which prohibits students from cheating on examinations or attempting to earn credit for written work not their own, will be punished by the instructor in accordance with sanctions prescribed by the Code. Sanctions that may be imposed by the instructor include a written warning, a grade reduction or loss of credit for the work involved, and a failing grade in the course. Instructors may also recommend probation, suspension or expulsion.

Disruptive Behavior

Please show courtesy to your classmates at all times and avoid behavior that makes it difficult for others to concentrate on the lecture and discussion (such as talking among yourselves while someone else has the floor, making noisy entrances and exits during class time, etc.). Reading a newspaper or checking e-mail and Facebook during the lecture irritates instructors, who wonder why you bothered to attend class. Turn off phones before entering the classroom; beepers should be set to vibrate, not sound. Please leave the classroom if you must respond to the beeper. Phones must be switched off and put away during tests. In cases of habitual, seriously disruptive conduct, the instructor reserves the right to report the offender.

Adult Content

Analysis of medical writings and texts concerned with sexual norms and behavior, as well as viewing images with graphic content,arenecessarystrategies for the study of gender in the ancient Mediterranean world. Such materialsare assigned in this course. I will make every effort to present them in an objective and non-offensive way. Needless to say, providing information about pre-modern notions of gender, sexuality, and sexual mores does not constitute an endorsement of those notions!

Schedules

Quiz Dates

Sept.8: Quiz 1, covering Weeks 1 and 2