Assessment Opportunities - GREK 301 - S23

Below you will find a summary of all the major assessments for this course.

Participation (250 points)

Participation is a key part of this course. Because there are only six of us in our class, it will be important for each of us to be prepared for class and willing to ask and answer one another’s questions.

Plot twist: I will not be grading your participation; you will be! You will set your own goals for participation and grade how well you accomplished those goals over the course of the semester. You will define your own goals for participation this semester (in addition to the bare minimum of attending class daily and being prepared to ask and answer questions relevant to the day’s material). Through a series of writing exercises, you will reflect on your participation goals, refine your goals, check in on your progress, and assign yourself a participation grade for the semester.

Grammatical Commentary (150 points; due February 14)

This project will ask you to develop a grammatical commentary on a short passage from Book 8 of Herodotus in which the historian speaks about what it means to be Greek.

You will comment on any relevant grammatical constructions, morphological oddities, or lexicographical difficulties that you feel would be helpful to students who are looking at this for the first time. In addition, you will also provide your own translation of this passage.

Further details on the grammatical commentary assignment can be found here.

Race and Ethnicity Commentary (200 points; due March 21)

In this project, you will comment on how the ideas in the same passage from Book 8 of Herodotus relates to other ancient and modern perspectives on race and ethnicty.

Your goal will be to highlight similarities and differences between the vision of Greekness articulated in this passage and other views of group difference. The goal here is to produce a commentary that gives a college student further insight into how race and ethnicity should be understood in the ancient world.

Further details on the race and ethnicity commentary assignment can be found here.

Passage Comparison (200 points; due April 13)

In this project, you will select and analyze three passages that we have read for class that you see as being closely connected to Herodotus’ definition of Greekness in the passage from Book 8.

You will comment on how these passages draw from, build on, and challenge Herodotus’ conception of Greek presented in Book 8, paying close attention to the terminology and ideology that are used in these passages. In addition, you will also reflect on how these passages relate to other ancient concepts of ethnicity as well as more modern conceptions of race and ethnicity.

Further details on the passage comparison assignment can be found here.

Final Podcast Project (200 points; due May 2)

For the final podcast project, you will pair with students from LATN 301 to create a podcast in which you will discuss at length two of the three passages from your passage comparison project. This will offer you a chance to share your ideas with other Classics majors at Holy Cross and to think deeply about the social construction of identity in the past and present.

The project will be due in stages to ensure that you have adequate time and space to work on and refine your podcast.

Further details on the podcast project can be found here.