CLST 295 / WOST 295: Women in the Classical World Fall Semester 2011 Dr. Jacqueline Long

Reading Journal

Goals

• To engage with current readings and class discussion, fulfilling goals of course work
• To practice critical thinking by reflecting on women, gender, and diversity in the Classical Greek and Roman worlds
• To fix your real-time reflections, provisionally, in verbal form so they can be shared and to aid your reexamining them from perspectives you go on to develop
• To practice skills of written communication

When are journal-entries due? What do they cover?

• Journal-entries will be collected every four or five sessions: see Schedule of Readings and Assignments
• Each journal-entry should focus on a topic arising from assigned readings and reflections on them prompted by study questions (or study questions after midterm break), scholarly reading, or discussions in class, since when the last journal-entry was due
• A journal-entry, for purposes of this class, presents your reasoned response to our collective work as it progresses over the semester. In contrast to the personal Research Journal described by Prof. Rael (which is also a valuable resource to build for yourself: go to Reading, Writing and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students and click the link for Keeping a Research Journal under the heading Research in the frame on the left), this assignment picks up at the point where you begin to work on answering some of the questions raised by your reactions to assigned readings and class discussions or addressing the problems you identify. For example,
  • that text that takes your breath away, it seems to come from such a different world than anything you're used to now: what cultural ideas or social practices would somebody have to be thinking in terms of in order to see life in this way? how can you reason from indications in the text to this background?
  • that text that takes your breath away, it says something that seems so familiar, even though so many facts of the writer's social and cultural life were so different from yours: what ideas and practices connect this statement (or whatever) to both the Classical world and ours? do they function the same way in both worlds? how can you tell?
  • a discussion begun in class got you thinking: how can you build on what we were saying and extend, correct, or refine those ideas?
  • how can you connect an assigned reading or class discussion to other course material?
  • how can you connect course material to other related material (e.g., other aspects of Classical Greek and Roman society and culture, other literary, documentary, or material sources, other elements of the experience of gender in Greek and Roman antiquity or in other periods and cultures; make sure to indicate your references so that I can follow up)

What format do journal-entries follow?

• 1-1 1/2 pages, word-processed (12-point Times Roman): 250-400 words
• You don't need to footnote everything like a research paper, but do give credit where it's due to authorities you have consulted (name, work, date, and precise enough identification of where in the work to look if a person wants to follow up your ideas), think substantively about the concerns you're discussing, and communicate your thoughts clearly
• You don't need to have worked out all the details of formal arguments, like an essay, but show where your reasoning currently brings your thoughts
• You don't need to write formally, but write correctly as to spelling and grammar: write to communicate as much of your ideas as well as you can capture them, without wasting words!
• What goes without saying for all work of learning, even an informal snapshot of learning-in-progress like these journal-entries, is that you must present your own thinking - take inspiration from elsewhere, experiment with ideas freely, but don't waste the opportunity by reproducing something that already exists elsewhere (think always of Academic Honesty)

Revised 26 August 2011 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/