Late Assessment Penalty

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, (a) a penalty for lateness will apply – 5 marks out of 100 credit will be deducted per day for assignments submitted after the due date – and (b) no assignment will be accepted seven days (incl. weekends) after the original submission deadline.  On submitting a Special Consideration request see Policies and Procedures below.

Marks are indicative until final review/moderation after the exam period is finished.

ASSESSMENT TASK 1 WEEKLY ONLINE DISCUSSION

All students will be expected to post at least one (1) response to the Online Discussion forum each week. This posting should be between 100-200 words and it should be in response to the questions posted for that week.

The assessment criteria for this task is based on participation and the quality of your postings.

Grading criteria includes clarity of expression and argument, evidence of independent thought, and the relevance of your response to the questions set by the tutor.

These posts are due at midnight of the Sunday of each tutorial week (i.e. Week 2 is from Monday 26^th Feb - Sunday 3rd March, and the online discussion should be made by midnight on Sunday 3rd March). You are welcome to continue posting to the weekly discussion forum after this due date, but any postings made after midnight on Sunday will not be counted for assessment purposes.

You are also welcome to start new discussions each week on topics of interest, but these will not be counted towards this assessment task.

The Online Discussion component is worth 15% of your overall assessment. You will need to post a response to at least 9 of the weekly forums from Weeks 2 to 4 and Weeks 6 to 12 (inclusive). Note that any postings that you make for Week 1, 5 and 13 will not count towards these 9 weekly posts.

ASSESSMENT 2 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Students will submit an annotated bibliography of 15 (fifteen) references that will be used for the Major Essay (Assessment 3). In a maximum of 1000 words, these references should include brief commentaries which summarise the work and its relevance to the major essay question.

Primary and secondary sources should be included. See weekly bibliographies and the general references in the Delivery and Resources folder below for ideas as to where to start.

ASSESSMENT TASK 3 MAJOR ESSAY

Major Essay Questions

1. Analyse the evidence for Justinian's policy of military and territorial reconquest and discuss the reasons why he would have adopted such a policy. How was it received by reconquered territories in the West?

2. What do you consider to be the main contributing factors to the second period of iconoclasm (813-843CE)? What role did Empress Theodora II play in the ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’?

3. How did the Fourth Crusaders justify their attack on fellow Christians and their looting of churches in Constantinople? Examine both Western and Byzantine accounts of the Fourth Crusade and compare their responses to the removal of holy relics and works of art from the city.

4. Choose three aspects of everyday life in Byzantium and consider the extant evidence to determine what it can tell us about the everyday lives of the Byzantines. Are there any issues with using these sources, and why is the evidence of everyday life less prominent than that of the lives of emperors and saints?

Assessment Tasks

Essay 55%

Annotated Bibliography 30%

Weekly online discussion 15%

Essay

Assessment Type 1: Essay

Indicative Time on Task 2: 25 hours

Weighting: 55%

Students are required to submit one (1) 3000 word essay. Students can answer one of the questions provided or devise their own essay question/topic on consultation with the course tutor. The essay topic should be based on one of the lecture/tutorial topics or a combination of both.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Cultivate a deeper appreciation of a range of cultural, social, religious, and political

issues when dealing with sources from the past

• Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of primary and secondary texts and

images through analysis, expression, and argument

Annotated Bibliography

Assessment Type 1: Annotated bibliography

Indicative Time on Task 2: 25 hours

Weighting: 30%

Students will submit an annotated bibliography of 15 (fifteen) references that will be used for the Major Essay. In a maximum of 1000 words, these references should include brief commentaries which summarise the work and its relevance to the major essay question.

Primary and secondary sources should be included.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Cultivate a deeper appreciation of a range of cultural, social, religious, and political

issues when dealing with sources from the past

• Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of primary and secondary texts and

images through analysis, expression, and argument

Weekly online discussion

Assessment Type 1: Participatory task

Indicative Time on Task 2: 25 hours

Due: Weekly

Weighting: 15%

Weekly online responses to readings.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of primary and secondary texts and

images through analysis, expression, and argument

• Participate actively in online discussions

1 If you need help with your assignment, please contact:

• the academic teaching staff in your unit for guidance in understanding or completing this type of assessment

• the Writing Centre for academic skills support.

2 Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY City of Constantine

See weekly readings on Leganto (link on the right of your ILearn homepage for this unit)

Reference works available online via MQ library

James, E. (ed.) A Companion to Byzantium. (Chichester, UK; Malden, MA, 2010).

Parry, K. (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity (Oxford, 2007).

Shepard, J. (ed.) The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492 (Cambridge, 2008).

General Reading:

Grig, L. and Kelly, G. (eds) Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2012).

See unit website

General reading has been updated to include online resources only. Weekly readings in Leganto have been updated also.