The following material has been published on the web by Prof. Tom Sienkewicz for his students at Monmouth College. If you have any questions, you can contact him at toms@monm.edu.
CLAS210 Ancient Literature: Epic
Article Summary and Review
Each student will prepare a review (c.1000 words) on an article dealing with the Iliad or the Odyssey as epics. The article must come from the Hewes Library collection, including the American Journal of Archaeology, American Journal of Philology, Archaeology, Classical Journal, Classical Outlook, Classical Philology,Classical World, Helios, Phoenix, andTransactions of the American Philological Association. Since individual articles cannot be reviewed by more than one student, you should confirm your choice with the instructor as soon as possible. Each review must include in its top matter standard bibliographic information about the article. A photocopy of the article MUST also be submitted to the instructor along with the review. This review must contain both summary and evaluation. Within the body of the review you must address the following questions: 1.) What are the main points of the article? 2.) How does the author illustrate these points? What ancient sources and evidence are used to illustrate these points? 3.) How does this article contribute to your understanding of the epic? How is this material related to topics and evidence discussed in class? and 4.) What is your own evaluation of the author's work? Why? All reports are to be submitted electronically to all members of the course via the college computer network. Click here for some further guidelines for this assignment. The grade for this project will be 15% of the final grade
Both the instructor and one other student will write statements evaluating this review (which will be submitted only to the author of the review, not to the entire class). Authors are encouraged to use the reviews of other classmates as resources in revising their reviews for resubmission. Your evaluation of a student's work should address at least the following questions: 1.) Does this review follow the assignment guidelines? 2.) What are the best features of this review? 3.) How would you improve it? 4.) How would you use this review to improve your own review?
Students are expected to read all of these reviews, which become part of the course material. Since all of these materials are part of the non-circulating holdings in Hewes Library, students will be responsible for accessing these articles on their own. Those who make significant reference to this material in other assignments, and especially on tests, will automatically receive higher grades.
NOTE: Ideally, this article review will lead you naturally into a topic for your individualized project.