Gens 145: Antiquity and Modernity

Professor Patrick Frierson

The class meets Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10 am in Olin 155.

My Office Hours are 2:30–3:30 pm on Tuesday, 11–12 am on Wednesday, and 9–10 am on Thursday.

I can be contacted at frierspr@whitman.edu

A copy of this syllabus is available on my webpage http://people.whitman.edu/~frierspr

(look under “Courses”)

“Antiquity and Modernity” is a two-semester exploration of the formation and transformation of some western world views (ways of understanding nature, society, the self, and the transcendent). The course will focus on the World of Antiquity and the Modern World. Attention will be given not only to the continuity in the transition of dominant world views, but also to competing and alternative visions. The course will examine some of the important individuals and events which have significantly shaped, reshaped, and challenged these world views. In this process, revolutions in thought and society, encounters between peoples and cultures, and perspectives on "us" and "them" will constitute major objects of study. The study of primary sources, discussion, and writing will be emphasized. The two semesters will be taught as a single year-long course, with the first semester a prerequisite for the second. The P-D-F grade option may not be elected for this course. Three class meetings per week.

Gens 145, for which this syllabus is designed, is the first half of this year long course.

Course Format & Requirements

I have organized this course around a balance of writing and classroom discussion. You will be specifically graded on your writing, but your final grade in the course can be substantially modified either up or down based on classroom discussion. (In other words, someone who gets all A’s on their papers but doesn’t participate in class or misses substantial numbers of classes will get a B+ or even a B as their final grade. Someone with a B paper average who participates well could get a B+ or even – though this would require extraordinary participation – an A-.)

To allow for a distribution of effort between reading and writing, the course is designed as a five day a week course. We will only meet three days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday), but you are expected to be actively engaging the material at least five days a week. (Active engagement here means that you should budget at least 2 hours a day, five days a week, to keep up to speed with the reading and writing.) To allow for this even distribution of effort, papers will generally be due on days that we do not meet for discussion.

Discussion: In order to do well in classroom discussions, you must come to each class having read and reread the material assigned for that day. On your first reading, you should be trying to get the main points of the reading, and you should also be highlighting passages of particular importance that you will spend substantial time working through on your rereading. You should come to class with a general sense of the plot and main characters of the reading (for narrative), the most important points from the reading (for all readings), some possible implications for the original audience, and an assessment of the reading. You should also ensure that any questions and confusions you have about the reading are as clearly formulated as possible. “I didn’t get it” is not a good response to a reading. “I can’t figure out whether Herodotus’s description of X is supposed to be positive or negative, since he says such-and-such, which sounds negative to me, but he seems to mean it in a positive way” is a great question/confusion. I will feel free to call on any of you by name to pose questions/problems, summarize the plot or main point, or assess the reading. (If the thought of this scares you to death, let me know. I will still call on you, but I will work more with you to make it a less terrifying experience.)

Papers: The format for submission of papers is as follows: All papers should be emailed to me by noon on the day that they are due. Papers should be in MS-Word format, and should have the following filename: Firstname Lastname Paper #.doc. For example, my first paper would have the filename Patrick Frierson Paper 1.doc. You should save a copy of the email you send me until the end of the semester. If I cannot find a paper in my email account, it will be your responsibility to provide it.

I will generally grade and return papers as quickly as possible. You should save all of the graded versions of your papers. In an effort to avoid some of the bad psychological effects of letter grades, I use a numerical grading system, explained at this link. If you would like to know what letter grades the numbers correspond to, or if you would prefer to simply have letter grades assigned to your papers, please let me know.

For all of the papers in this class, here are some general tips. (See too the grading criteria for more of what I expect in papers.)

1. Answer the assigned question.

2. Your grammar must be perfect. Throughout the semester, we will be reading chapters from Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manuel (available in the Bookstore). You should ensure that you are familiar with the principles laid out on those papers, and you should write your paper in conformity with them. There is a website companion to the book at dianahacker.com/pocket. If you are having trouble with grammar or think that you might have trouble, you should complete the exercises for the relevant chapters and have the results emailed to me at frierspr@whitman.edu. If your rough draft makes any mistakes from the assigned pages, it will receive a 0. If the final draft makes any mistakes from the assigned pages, it will also receive a 0 and must be revised again for grammar. (If you completed the relevant exercises from dianahacker.com/pocket before you submitted your final draft, I will average the scores on your failed paper and your revision.)

3. Use the text. You are required to include references to relevant points in the text. These references can be quotations, and you should use quotations whenever the specific language of the author is important for your argument. The references may also simply be page numbers referencing the pages that confirm your interpretive points. You should use page numbers when quotes are not necessary and would make the paper excessively long.

4. Brevity is beautiful. In these papers, you should say as much as possible as concisely as possible. If I get two papers with the same amount of substantive content, the one that is shorter will get the better grade. If I get two papers that are the same length, the one that is able to say (and defend) more in that length will get a better grade.

5. Make complex claims with simple language. In your use of language, you should try to say things that are as sophisticated as possible using terms that are as straightforward as possible. I am not impressed by the use of complex (or abstruse) terminology, and using sophisticated terms poorly is much worse that using ordinary terms well. (In other words, don’t use a thesaurus.)

6. For some general advice about writing papers (oriented towards philosophy papers, but useful for most of the papers you’ll write here), see The Philosophy Writing Tutor (online).

7. Turn papers in on time and in the proper format. See above for the proper format. If you turn in your rough draft after the due date but before our class meets, your final score on the final draft of the paper will be lowered by one point. If you turn the rough draft in after the class meets, you will get a zero for that paper. In general, papers turned in late will get comments very late (if ever). Papers turned in on time will get comments promptly.

Specific Papers Required

· 11 Short Papers (8% of final grade each): Each week during the semester (with the exception of the last two), I have assigned a paper on a specific thesis, question, or topic. These papers must be at least 400 words (slightly more than one page). There is no strict word maximum for the papers, but if they are more than 800 words, you should make sure that every word counts (see guideline 4 above). (I have assigned a total of 12 papers, so you may skip one over the course of the semester. If you complete them all, your lowest score will be dropped.)

For each of these short papers, you are required to write both a rough draft and a final draft. I will score both drafts, but your final score for the assignment will be the score on the final draft, with one exception. If I get the sense that you are blowing off the rough drafts, then I will, after warning you, average your scores to get your final score. The final draft should take into account not only my comments on the rough draft, but also the additional class discussion and reading done between drafts. In general, you should not substantially change your thesis based on the additional readings, though you may need to do so based on my comments. The point of these final drafts is rewrite the paper in order to give an excellent snap-shot of the ideas that you were developing in your rough draft. You also do not need to add quotations from the additional reading, but you should add further references. (Thus, where you once had “blah blah blah” (Coolbook, p. 7), you might in your final draft have “blah blah blah” (Coolbook, p, 7, see too pp. 48, 69, 177). You might even, if you come to find passages that contradict your thesis, end up with things like “blah blah blah” (Coolbook, p, 7, see too p. 48, but contrast pp. 69, 177).)

You may, if you choose, submit a third draft of any papers during the semester. In that case, your final score will be the average of your second and third drafts. There is no guarantee that the score on your third draft will be higher than on your second draft, however.

· 1 Long Paper, Presentation, or Poster (12% of final grade): The last two weeks of the semester, you get a little respite from the incessant writing of the rest of the semester. During this time, however, you should be working on developing an important thesis of your own to turn into a final paper, presentation, or poster. The final project must substantially engage with Augustine and at least one other text from Core. Papers should be at least 1500 words. Presentations should be 15-20 minutes, and you should practice your presentation out loud several times before delivering it in class. Posters must be substantial. You need not include 1500 words of text on your poster, but you should include as much content as would be in a final paper of at least 1500 words. The papers will be turned in like all other papers; the posters must be turned in on the last day of class; the presentations must be delivered either on the last day of class or in an on-campus public lecture during the last week of classes. All papers, posters, and presentations must include a 100 word abstract. I very strongly recommend that you produce these papers, presentations, and abstracts with the goal of presenting them at the Whitman Undergraduate Conference. (I’ll give more details about this at the end of the semester.)

Course Timeline of Reading and Assignments

Click here for a similar timeline (for the Spring semester) with great links for each day.

		Reading or Writing	Hacker
Jan.	15	Gilgamesh, Tablets I-III
	16	Gilgamesh, Tablets IV-VIII. Paper #1 rough draft due: Did Gilgamesh err in refusing to marry Ishtar (tablet VI)? You should answer this question with reference to one of the main themes of the Epic. (I’ll give an example in class.)	Chapters 1 and 3
	17	Gilgamesh, Tablets IX-XI.	Chapters 4, 5, 9
	18	Paper #1 final draft due.	Review
	21	Paper #2 rough draft due: Defend the following thesis: Although Herodotus might seem to support Solon’s claim that only one who has died can be called happy (p. 16), in fact his account of history shows that such a claim fails to capture the extent to which one’s present disposition and circumstances determine one’s ultimate happiness. (Topic: Happiness/the good life) (Question: What is Herodotus’s view of happiness?)	Chapters 14 and 15
	22	Herodotus, The Histories, pp. 3-45.	Chapters 17 and 19
	23	Herodotus, The Histories, pp. 49-61, 95-98, 109-119, 170-189.	Chapters 28 and 34
	24	Herodotus, The Histories, pp. 197-210, 413-439.	Chapters 34 and 39
	25	Paper #2 final draft due.	Review
	28	Paper #3 rough draft due. Choose a key topic from the Histories and articulate a clear and interesting question based on that topic. Then write a clear, complex, interesting, and controversial thesis answering that question and defend that thesis using support from the text.	Review.
	29	Herodotus, The Histories, pp. 448-51, 456-64, 477-500.	Chapters 29, 31, 40, and 41.
	30	Herodotus, The Histories, pp. 501-43 (VIII.1-120), 600-603 (IX.114-22)	Review.
	31	Euripedes, Medea (entire). We will probably have a writing workshop on this day.	Review.
Feb.	1	Paper #3 final draft due.
	4	Paper #4 rough draft due. Who is responsible for the greatest suffering in the Medea? Why?
	5	Euripedes, Medea (entire)
	6	Euripedes, The Bacchae (entire)	Chapters 31-32.
	7	Tragedy Comparison Day	Chapters 31-32. (See especially 32a #19.)
	8	Paper #4 final draft due.	Be sure to use MLA style for your references.
	11	Paper #5 rough draft due. Use one key character or scene from earlier in the semester to either defend or criticize the account of love articulated in one of the first 5 speeches from Plato’s Symposium.
	12	Plato, Symposium 1-47.
	13	Plato, Symposium 48-60.
	14	Plato, Symposium 61-77.
	15	Paper #5 final draft due.
	18	Paper #6 rough draft due. Who is more piously erotic, Socrates or Alcibiades?
	19	Euripedes, The Bacchae (entire)
	20	Plato, Euthyphro
	21	The Tanakh, Genesis 1-11
	22	Paper #6 final draft due.
	25	Paper #7 rough draft due. Is the God of Genesis 22 worthy of being worshipped (and/or obeyed)?
	26	Genesis 12-22
	27	Exodus 1-15
	28	Exodus 16-23, 32.
	29	Paper #7 final draft due.
Mar.	3	Paper #8 rough draft due. In the book of Job, who best deals with the problem of suffering? (For the purpose of this paper, you should consider the narrator to be an attempt to deal with the problem of suffering, not a narrator in the ordinary sense.)
	4	Job 1-27; 29-31
	5	Job 38-42
	6	Ecclesiastes. Paper #8 final draft due.
		SPRING BREAK
	24	Paper #9 rough draft due. Choose one event in Jesus’s life (such as a miracle) or one teaching or parable of Jesus and use it to argue for at least one way in which Jesus is fundamentally unique as a hero (relative to the other characters we have studied this semester). You need not compare Jesus to every other hero we have seen; rather, you should pick one or two. (Good candidates might include Gilgamesh, Cyrus, Dionysus, Socrates, Abraham, Moses, or Job.) OR: You may write a paper on the topic and question of your choice, but you should engage with both Luke and at least one other text we have read this semester.
	25	The Bible, New Revised Standard Version, The Gospel of Luke, chapters 1-19.
	26	Gospel of Luke, 12-21
	27	Gospel of Luke, 22-24.
	28	Paper #9 final draft due.
	31	Paper #10 rough draft due. What is the most important way in which Paul’s Christ is different from Luke’s Jesus? Given this difference, would it be possible for Luke’s Jesus to play the role that Jesus Christ plays for Paul (especially in 3:21-26 and 5:1-21)? OR: You may write a paper on the topic and question of your choice, but you should engage with both Romans and at least one other text we have read this semester.
Apr.	1	Paul, Romans 1-8 (focus on 1-5)
	2	Paul, Romans 6-end.
	3	Apuleius, The Golden Ass, I-III
	4	Paper #10 final draft due.
	7	Paper #11 rough draft due. According to The Golden Ass, what is the primary motive/driving force of human actions?
	8	Apuleius, The Golden Ass, IV-VI
	9	Apuleius, The Golden Ass, VII-IX
	10	Apuleius, The Golden Ass, X-XI
	11	Paper #11 final draft due.
	14	Paper #12 rough draft due: You may write a paper on the topic and question of your choice, but you should engage with both The Golden Ass and at least one other text we have read this semester.
	15	Whitman Undergraduate Conference: No Class You should all attend at least two presentations and check out the posters.
	16	Vibia Perpetua, Perpetua’s Passion, pp. 61-95.
	17	Vibia Perpetua
	18	Paper #12 final draft due.
	22	Augustine, Confessions, 1-3
	23	Augustine, Confessions, 4-6
	24	Augustine, Confessions, 7
	29	Augustine, Confessions, 8-9
	30	Augustine, Confessions, 10.
May	1	Workshop on Final Projects. Presenters may “present” rough drafts on this day.
	2	Final Papers and Posters Rough Drafts Due. Presenters may “present” rough drafts on this day.
	6	Wrap-up. Final Drafts of Final Projects Due (by 9 AM). Presenters who do not give public lectures must give their presentations on this day.
	8	(Date of Scheduled Final Exam…There will not be an exam for this course.)