1. Seminar Paper: Topics for discussion and written assignment are set out under each week on the unit's iLearn site. ONE written assignment (seminar paper) is to be submitted for assessment by WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 1ST by 11.59 pm. It will count for 20% of the final mark. (Preparation for each tutorial, however, is advised, since you digestion of the material covered in seminars will be examined, including the topics in the 2nd half of the unit).

The appropriate length of seminar papers will vary with the topic but should not exceed 1000 words. The paper is not necessarily to be regarded as a mini-essay. What is often required are succinct, sharply-focused and tightly expressed answers to the particular questions set. The paper must be documented and based on a direct examination of the ancient sources. If modern scholarship is used, a bibliography should be attached (see Essay Presentation Guides on the Ancient History website at <http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_ancient_history/current_students/teaching_materials/>.

To reiterate and clarify, we will be assessing:

(i) the degree to which you answer the question(s) set (within the word limit);

(ii) the degree to which you cite the ancient evidence in support of your arguments and;

(iii) the clarity of your presentation and written expression.

2. Essay: One essay, counting for 40% of the final mark, is required. It should not exceed 2000 words. IT IS DUE WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 15th by 11.59pm (Virgil's birthday). Topics will be handed out early in the session. Students planning to write an essay in the field of Roman or Early Christian studies (which may not have been covered in lectures) should consult Tom Hillard or Chris Forbes respectively.

Again, we will be assessing:

(i) the degree to which you answer the question(s) set (within the word limit);

(ii) the degree to which you cite the ancient evidence in support of your arguments and;

(iii) the clarity of your presentation and written expression.

Submission of Assignments:

All written assignments should be submitted electronically via the iLearn website at: <https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/login/MQ/>.

Note that you should always keep a copy of completed tasks in case of loss.

3. Examination:

There is a two-hour examination worth 40% of the final assessment.

Important: The University Examination period in 2nd session 2014 is from 17th November to 5th December.

You are expected to present yourself for examination at the time and place designated in the University Examination Timetable. The timetable will be available in Draft form approximately eight weeks before the commencement of the examinations and in Final form approximately four weeks before the commencement of the examinations at: <http://students.mq.edu.au/student_admin/timetables>.

The only exception to sitting an examination at the designated time is because of documented illness or unavoidable disruption. In these circumstances you may wish to consider applying for Special Consideration. To be eligible for Special Consideration, a student must notify the University of a serious and unavoidable disruption within five (5) working days of the commencement of the disruption (Disruption to Studies notification). All Disruption to Studies notifications are to be made online via the University’s Ask MQ system. Information about the unavoidable disruption to studies process is available under the 'Policies and Procedures' section of this Unit Guide.

You are advised that it is Macquarie University policy not to set early examinations for individuals or groups of students. All students are expected to ensure that they are available until the end of the teaching semester, that is, the final day of the official examination period.

Grading:

The grade a student receives will signify their overall performance in meeting the learning outcomes of the unit. Grades will not be awarded by reference to the achievement of other students nor allocated to fit a predetermined distribution. In determining a grade, due weight will be given to the learning outcomes and level of the unit. Markers in the unit will use the following grades:

HD = High Distinction 85–100

D = Distinction 75–84

Cr = Credit 65–74

P = Pass 50–64

F = Fail 0–49  

Return of marked work:

We will endeavour to return seminar papers within three weeks of their submission and essays that have been submitted by the due date by the end of the session.

Over the course of AHIS340 your work will be marked by at least two members of staff.

UNIT REQUIREMENTS AND EXPECTATIONS

Classes

For lecture times and classrooms please consult the MQ Timetable website: <http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au>. This website will display up-to-date information on your classes and classroom locations.

Lectures: There are two lectures a week for most weeks of the session. The importance of regular attendance is that in the lectures we signal the topics that we deem significant. We shall expect you to discuss these topics in the historiographical section of the examination.

Seminars: There is one seminar a week for most weeks of the session.

Students are expected to attend two lectures and one seminar each week. It is expected that each student will have undertaken the reading for each week’s seminar and will contribute to the best of her or his ability to the discussion. A unit like this, drawing on such a broad range of material and different perspectives, works best when everyone brings their thoughts to the table. Participation in seminars is considered a vital and hopefully rewarding part of the unit, but you should attend only if you have completed the reading prescribed for the week. Unexplained and persistent failure to attend or to participate may incur a penalty of 10% of the total mark of the course.

Student Workload: In accordance with Senate Guidelines, a student workload of 3 hours per credit point (i.e., 9 hours per week for this 3-credit point unit) for 15 weeks (13 weeks of lectures + 2 weeks of recess) is expected.

Required and Recommended Texts

The areas covered in this unit are too broad for a single set text. Students will, however, be asked to purchase a Book of Readings which will be used for specific tutorials and in examination preparation.

Recommended Purchases: The work which marked a major change in the academic landscape, Sarah B. Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves. Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, Schocken Books, 1975) treats most of the periods covered by this unit. A copy has been placed in Reserve.

Also highly recommended for purchase (and a book which most students interested in this subject will want to have in their own libraries) is Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant's Women's Life in Greece and Rome: a sourcebook in translation (Johns Hopkins University Press, third edition 2005).

The literature is now immense, and growing annually. Students can pick their own ways through the bibliographies which will open up with the reading of each new work. Every time we teach the course, we used to issue a new bibliography, and it was out of date before we have finished the session. We shall now direct you to certain readings as the semester unfolds. Overall, we direct you to the Diotima site: <http://www.stoa.org/diotima/> which contains a wealth of bibliographical material published before 2011. There you will find far more than you hoped for (!) — and we shall all start sharing exciting new finds.

(Other internet sites are discussed by John Younger 'Gender and Sexuality on the Internet' in Maria Wyke [ed.] Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean [Oxford, 1998], 209-213. Please share with us any useful sites found.)

Other general coverages will be found in Eva Cantarella's Pandora's Daughters. The Roles and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Baltimore & London, 1987) and Bisexuality in the Ancient World (1988, Eng. trans. Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, New Haven, 1992). There is also a general survey of the subject in Gillian Clark's Women in the Ancient World (Greece & Rome. New Surveys in the Classics 21 (Oxford, 1989). See also Susan Treggiari, Women of the Ancient World vol. 1 (London, Routledge, 2007).

Those of you interested in what survives of women's own writings from antiquity (all too little) should buy a copy of Macquarie's own Ian Plant, Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome (London, 2004). He has to put his daughter through university.

Technology Used and Required

The unit has an iLearn page which can be accessed at: <https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/login/MQ/>. PC and internet access are therefore required. Basic computer skills (e.g., internet browsing) and skills in word processing are also a requirement. Please consult teaching staff for any further, more specific requirements.

Satisfactory Completion of Unit

In order to complete the unit satisfactorily students must gain a mark of 50% or more overall.

ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSIONS

ALL written assignments (seminar paper, essay) must be submitted online through the AHIS340 iLearn site via Turnitin.

You are required to present yourself for examination at the time and place designated in the University Examination Timetable. The only exception to sitting an examination at the designated time is because of documented illness or unavoidable disruption. In these circumstances, please consult University Policy for the available procedure.

EXTENSIONS

Extensions for assignments and waivers for penalties for non-attendance can only be granted for medical reasons or on compassionate grounds.

Without documentation (medical or counselling certificate), a penalty of 2% a day (including weekends) will be applied.

If you need an extension this must be agreed on after discussion with the course convenors, who may ask for documentation. You must apply for an extension before the assignment due date. Extensions asked for after the date will not be granted.

Unexplained and persistent failure to attend seminars or to participate may incur a penalty of 10% of the total mark for the course.

Note: Always retain a copy of completed tasks in case of loss.

"The fall of the Roman Empire was the outward manifestation of the fact that classical culture, that manner of life and thought originating in Greece and adapted to a non-Greek world, had perished.  This was evident even before the breaking of that iron ring of legions which had held together in security the lands where this culture had flourished.  Germans inherited the ruins, while the Christian Church continued to propagate the idea, in the spiritual domain, of an universal empire, now as the corpus Christianum.  Church and empire, the two conceptions which dominated the Middle Ages, had their origin in this ancient world.  In the schools and their teaching, in church language and theology, methods and ideas survived, transformed, sometimes even deformed, which derived from the classical world.  They provided points of departure, and contact for the revival in the Renaissance, which might dream of a renewal of the world of the ancients viewed as an ideal but which was in reality the beginning of a new era and the basis of that culture which we now know as the Western European or Atlantic.  This culture differs greatly from its model, but nevertheless it bears both internal and external traces of its origin. 

Whenever the nations of Europe reflect upon the common link which distinguishes their culture from that of other peoples, they find that it is the teachings of Greece and Rome, together with Christianity which have determined the fundamental differences in thought and feeling.  We are so steeped in the ideas of classical antiquity that many regard these foundations as so natural to us that they tend to forget that they are merely inherited.

The Graeco-Roman world and culture are things of the past.  Their works, however, live on, sometimes as models, and they survive as living teachers for all who are conscious of having inherited this classical tradition.  In this manner Greece and Rome have become intrinsic parts of Western European life.  Without them the modern world could not have acquired its present form.  What is more, in the ancient world deeds were done and ideas formulated which, however much a part of their native life and environment, outlived this origin and inspired all mankind."

A.A.M. Van Der Heyden and H.H. Scullard (eds) Atlas of the Classical World (1959), 176

"How difficult, but also how rewarding, it is for us in the late twentieth century to think of the ancient Greeks as astoundingly alien from ourselves ... their daemonology and biology are very different from ours, and play a role in Greek ideas about the self that matches little in our experience."

Ruth Padel In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton University Press, 1992), 10, 12

"I shall stress some unacknowledged similarities between Greek conceptions and our own ... [concerning] the concepts that we use in interpreting our own and other peoples' feelings and actions ... We are, in our ethical situation, more like human beings in antiquity than any Western people have been in the meantime."

Bernard Williams Shame and Necessity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1993), 2, 166

"Elsewhere I have spelled out my own position ..., taking up a position with some feminists and opposing Foucault.  The issue in question ...: whereas Foucault stresses radical discontinuities between ancient and modern sexual systems, I stress continuity.  He is interested in differences between ancient and modern definitions of male-male sexuality, I am interested in the persistence of misogyny and homophobia.  Questions of method and approach arise.  I have argued that Foucault's errors and omissions stem from his selection of sources ..."

Amy Richlin 'Towards a History of the Body', in M. Golden and P. Toohey (eds) Inventing Ancient Culture (London, 1997), 19-20