Course Description and Objectives

CLST 450 is an advanced, five-credit course in Greek and Latin literature in translation. Most people today are familiar with the Trojan war either through Homer's Iliad and Odyssey or through the movie Troy starring Brad Pitt. The latter differs in many ways from Homer's story of the war, and this gives rise to much wailing and gnashing of teeth about Hollywood "ruining" the epics. Yet, one could say the same of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, of whose titular characters one has but brief mention in the Iliad and the other exists not at all in Homeric epic. In fact, ancient traditions of the Trojan war covered much ground that Homer did not and gave rise to a vast body of later literature that differed from Homer's epics in interesting ways. Not every story, play, or even movie about the Trojan war derives from the Iliad. In this course, we read non-Homeric, often subversive accounts of the Trojan war and its aftermath to understand the broader literary context that gave rise to the medieval, Renaissance, and modern stories of the Trojan war. Along the way, students will gain exposure to a variety of ancient genres, from epic poetry to tragedy to sophistic rhetoric to elegy, and to secondary scholarship on ancient literature.

This course is designated WP2: upon successful completion of the course, you will have two of the three necessary Writing Proficiency points. This means that at least 30% of the course grade must derive from scholarly writing that teaches you the writing style and conventions of the scholarly field, in this case classical studies, as well as techniques for integrating evidence into academic papers and developing evidence-based arguments. Moreover, you will write multiple drafts of the paper and receive suggestions for revision of drafts.

Synchronous Class Times

CLST 450 meets every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3:00 to 4:20 PM online.  We'll use Canvas' Conferences feature to meet virtually.  If Conferences breaks down (as some in ATUS are starting to warn may happen due to server overloading), we'll move to an alternate platform.  The fallback plan is to meet using Jitsi or Zoom; if we do have to fall back to an alternate platform, you'll get notice through Canvas.

Our first online meeting is Monday, April 6, and the final online meeting is Friday, June 5.  We do not meet on Monday, April 27, to give you time for the midterm examination.  Classes do not meet on Monday, May 25, in observance of Memorial Day.

Other than the course meetings, your work is independent and asynchronous.  Your reading, research, and writing are things you can schedule at your convenience. You have due dates throughout the quarter to keep you on track, but I can also move dates around for you to give you flexibility if you need it.

Instructor and Office Hours

Miller Krause ( miller.krause@wwu.edu )
Office Hours: I can meet via Discord, Jitsi, Microsoft Teams, or Skype for Business if you e-mail me to set up a meeting.  

I also monitor an office hours channel on Discord for office hours without any e-mail setup.  Students enrolled in the class can find the channel addresses and times on the Miracles of Technology page.  This syllabus is open to the public; the Discord server is private.

Textbooks

CLST 450 is taught in English, with texts translated into English from Greek or Latin.

Most ancient literature and some medieval and Renaissance literature may be found freely available on the internet in translations prepared more than seventy years ago and thus out of copyright. You are free to use any translation you like, and some students find free texts from the internet acceptable for their use. More recent translations are also available for sale, generally for ten or fifteen dollars, and many students find the newer translations easier to read and paper books easier to handle. For those who wish to purchase printed books, I have asked the bookstore to make available the following modern translations:

• Isbell, H. 1990. Ovid: Heroides. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0140423556
• Frazer, R. 2019. The Trojan War: The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phyrgian. Boomington, IN: Indiana University Press.  ISBN 978-0253043429  (this is a brand new reprint of a 1966 classic)
• Meineck, P. and Woodruff, P. 2007. Sophocles: Four Tragedies. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. ISBN 978-0872207639 (if you have Doerries' All That You've Seen Here is God from CLST 360, you won't need Meineck and Woodruff: it's just for Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes).
• Svarlien, D. 2012. Euripides: Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. ISBN 978-1603847353

No English edition of Guido de Columnis' History of the Destruction of Troy remains currently in print, but the library has Elizabeth Meek's 1974 translation, so that won't be a problem. Some of the other readings scheduled, like Vergil's Æneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, are canonical and often used in other classes like CLST 370: feel free to use your translations from those classes if you have them; if not, I've provided links to free versions online.

Other readings are linked from the individual assignments. Click on the assignment on the calendar at the bottom of this syllabus, or in the Modules List or wherever you see the assignment, and you will find more information on the assignment. If the assignment is not in one of the textbooks listed above, there will be a link to the reading.

University Services for Students

I am more than happy to make accommodations for students with disabilities or other special needs. So that the Disability Access Center (DAC) can ensure that your needs are being met appropriately, all requests for accommodation must be made through the MyDAC system every quarter: accommodations do not automatically roll-over into future quarters. New students should enroll with DAC to receive accommodations. Accommodations are not retroactive, so you should obtain them as soon as possible.

Web: disability.wwu.edu
Email: drs@wwu.edu
Phone: (360) 650-3083

The Student Health Center not only provides primary care services but handles documentation of medical issues and medical leaves of absence for you, making your life easier.

Web: studenthealth.wwu.edu
Phone: (360) 650-3400

In the case of a family or personal crisis or emergency, please contact the Office of Student Life. During a personal or family crisis, the office of the Office of Student Life can coordinate non-medical leaves of absence for you, making your life easier.

Web: wp.wwu.edu/officeofstudentlife
Phone: (360) 650-3450

Academic Honesty

Don't commit academic dishonesty. See the University's website on Academic Honesty and explore the University's Integrity website.

Grading

This quarter, students will, by default, earn Passing (P) or Not Passing (NP) grades, with the option of earning traditional letter grades in place of the P/NP grades.  I shall keep all grades in Canvas as the traditional letter grades.  At the end of the quarter, I will convert a D+ or higher to a P (Passing) grade and an F, D-, or D to an NP (Not Passing) grade.  If you wish me to report your traditional letter grade instead of the P/NP grade on your transcript, e-mail me by June 5 (the final day of classes).

Traditional Letter Grading Scale

Course Components

Readings

This is a literature class. We read ancient literature (primary sources) and modern scholarship (secondary readings). Keep up with the reading: it is longer at the beginning of the quarter (a tragedy per night for a few weeks) than at the end of the quarter (five chapters of Guido de Columnis per night, which isn't much), so that you have more time for working on the paper at the end of the quarter.

Attendance and Participation (10%)

This class relies on your active participation in discussions, and therefore it relies on your online attendance. I realize that emergencies do arise, so I will drop three absences (ten percent of our sessions). After that, you must show me a good reason for being absent, or I will begin deducting points from your attendance and participation grade.

Anyone planning on missing class for athletics, university-sponsored events, military duty, or religious holidays should inform me of absences in advance. That lets me excuse absences and add time to Canvas assignments for those students in advance. Within the first two weeks of class, give me a letter listing the games/matches/meets, events, military service, or holidays requiring absences for the quarter, so that I can plan ahead to help you stay on track. I like planning ahead.

During online classes, you should have a microphone so that you can speak to others; I'd recommend USB headphones with microphone, like gamers tend to use.  You don't need a webcam: you can use one if you want, but in general video is a distraction and a waste of bandwidth.

Essays (20%)

Instead of "quizzes," there will be five essays at the end of major units, as outlined on the Modules page. For these essays, you will have a choice of topics on which to write to show off your knowledge of the texts we have read. You'll turn in your essay online on Canvas.  Please double-space them and don't let your essay exceed one double-spaced page in length. You may use any materials you like when writing your essay, and I encourage you to talk to one another about your essays: bouncing ideas off someone else is a great way to improve any writing.

Of the five essays, the first four open at the end of class on a Friday and are due by the beginning of class the next Monday. As with everything, there is a 24 hour grace period after the due date before the deadline, when Canvas closes down the essay submission.  The final essay is scheduled for the final week of classes; to keep it from intruding into exam week, you have from Monday of the final week until Friday, when it is due, and it remains open through Saturday.

Midterm Examination (20%)

The midterm will cover the classical Greek tradition of Troy, including tragedy and the first sophistic. The exam will consist of essay questions: you will be able to choose a few questions to answer from a larger pool of questions. For more details, see the Midterm Examination page in Canvas. You may use any texts or notes you like and the internet, and you may discuss your exams with others while you write them.  The examinations, like the essays, are designed to gauge understanding and deeper thought about complex topics, not memory recall: discussion prior to writing sparks deeper thought and is thus academically honest and useful in my view.

Final Examination (20%)

The final exam will cover the Roman authors, the second sophistic, and the medieval tradition. The exam will consist of essay questions: you will be able to choose a few questions to answer from a larger pool of questions. For more details, see the Final Examination page in Canvas. You may use any texts or notes you like and the internet, and you may discuss your exams with others while you write them. The examinations, like the essays, are designed to gauge understanding and deeper thought about complex topics, not memory recall: discussion prior to writing sparks deeper thought and is thus academically honest and useful in my view.

Research Paper (30%)

Research distinguishes a university seminar from a book club or reading group: the University's library, at great expense, provides you with access to a wealth of scholarship to which most people do not have access. That scholarship, in the form of journal articles, monographs, and chapters of edited books, condenses countless hours of diligent labor, building upon generations of previous scholarship doing the same, to provide you with a vast wealth of well-informed and diverse perspectives that an hour or two of reading a primary source or that I in a brief lecture cannot provide. Think on how little time you spend reading a source text and reflecting on it; think again on how much time goes into a published work, and how that work builds upon preceding works: research is the force-multiplier of academia. The minutes you spend reading a twenty-page article are worth countless hours that went into both that article and all the previous scholarship with which it engages. Every time you read a piece of secondary scholarship, you are multiplying your exposure to your primary sources.

In the ancient world, imperial fortunes were spent collecting books at places like Alexandria and Pergamum and fostering scholarship that pales in significance compared with the enormity of what the University places either at your fingertips or can fetch for you from libraries around the world, using Summit and ILL. Take advantage of that awesome power.

Since this is a WP2 class, scholarly writing must account for at least 30% of your grade. In this class, you will practice the writing style and conventions of conference papers in classical studies. To this end, you should familiarize yourself with the course style guide. The goal of the writing process for this class is to generate a five page research paper. A research paper's most important component is research, so we shall spend time talking about how to do that. The research paper component of this class will accordingly take place in two phases: research and writing.

The research phase, up until the midterm, will require you to write brief (250 words or fewer) review of three pieces of secondary scholarship. This is to force you engage with secondary scholarship and condense a wealth of information into brief summaries. The latter is a formidable skill. You will write two reviews and share them with the class in Canvas discussions:

• Review: Journal Article (15 points)
• Review: Journal Article, Edited Book Chapter or Monograph (15 points)

These are scheduled in the order listed above, because monographs and edited books can be harder to obtain: most articles are online, but only some books are.  Others will take time to arrive via Summit or ILL, and you might not be able to obtain them at all if those services are down.  There should be enough articles and electronic sources articles on the bibliography that you won't need to order anything through Summit, but those on campus may want to simply to increase their exposure to good research. I can help you with that. These might or might not be three sources that you use in your paper, but they should spark ideas about where you could go with your paper. When you post these reviews to the Canvas discussion boards, you are also creating a research tool for the entire class: a set of reviews of articles, chapters, and monographs will give all the students, including you, a quick overview of current scholarship. When you come to researching your paper topic, you will likely find these reviews very helpful in determining what you do and do not need to read. That is why these are Canvas discussions.

The writing phase, beginning after the midterm, will set a number of milestones to keep you on track to produce a decent, five page research paper. You could easily take a term paper of that length and work it into a seven to ten page paper for an academic conference, which you could later elaborate into an article or chapter for publication. We focus on producing the first step, the five-page term paper.

First, you will submit a paper proposal outlining your topic, thesis statement, and preliminary bibliography of at least three secondary sources. If you find yourself lost for ideas, you might consult the Research Paper Topic Suggestions or, what perhaps is best, read more secondary sources. Secondary scholarship not only provides you with the end result of a cumulative pile of earlier labors but also helps spark new ideas for new things to write. Remember, research always comes before writing. The proposal is the first sanity check in the writing process, ensuring that you have a direction, founded on research that you have already done, in which to continue working in future weeks.

Next, you will work on an outline that requires you to have a more firm grasp of where you are headed with your research, paired with a bibliography of at least five secondary sources. This, too, is a sanity check to make sure that you are progressing toward a goal.

Third comes the rough draft of five pages with five secondary sources. A rough draft is a complete paper that isn't quite polished. This should be done by Memorial Day, which will relieve a lot of stress during the last few weeks of the quarter. I will give detailed feedback on rough drafts, and Canvas will automagically assign peer editors as well for rough drafts.

The fourth and final step, the final draft, should only require polishing.

Your final paper should be five pages (not including bibliography) with at least five secondary sources. Be sure to follow the style guide for formatting.

Lost for ideas? Check out the Research Paper Topic Suggestions page and the Course Bibliography, and read more secondary sources.

Writing Components:

• Research Paper: Proposal and Preliminary Bibliography (10 points)
• Research Paper: Outline and Expanded Bibliography (10 points)
• Research Paper: Rough Draft (30 points)
• Research Paper: Final Draft (20 points)

Handy links for research:

• jstor.org—JStor provides PDFs of articles from many journals; it works better if you access it from campus or a VPN to the campus network
• scholar.google.com—Google Scholar searches over articles and books; it works better if you access it from campus or a VPN to the campus network
• library.wwu.edu—WWU's library catalogue is integrated with other databases.
• I've also compiled a brief Course Bibliography that might strike your fancy.

Weekly Schedule

Below you will find a schedule of all exams, essays, readings, and so forth.

This syllabus is subject to change. Changes, if any, will be announced in class. Since the syllabus is on Canvas, students will have the latest information available at all times. Students will be held responsible for all changes.

Canvas provides feeds to which you can subscribe, to keep all your course info in your favorite calendar program like Apple's Calendar or Microsoft Outlook. For details, see the Canvas Guide on Calendar.