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Academic Requirements

Page history last edited by Paul Diduch 7 years, 5 months ago
Course Requirements& Grading
I. Attendance & Daily Work: 30% of Final Grade.
 
Beginning with our classes here in Boulder in April, alert attendance is required. Distractions will abound in Rome, but it is in the best interest of each participant and the group as a whole for each of us to be a serious and dedicated member of our group, not only for educational reasons but for safety as well. Specific requirements dealing with conduct abroad are published by the CU Study Abroad Office.
 
Promptness is also important, for being late forces the group either to wait or to abandon one of its members, which is never a pleasant choice.
 
Along with the required attendance and class participation, there will be short, written assignments to be done on site. These will take the form of quizzes, simple sketches, written descriptions, and worksheets questions. Their main goal is to help you become careful and informed observers.
 
There will also be a short paper to be written prior to departure and presented on site in Rome. The topic will be presented at a relevant site in Rome. 
 
Much of our daily work should, with appropriate editing, be useful for your individual portfolios, so a good job here will help you greatly on subsequent assignments.
 
II. A Test: Just the facts, Ma’am. 20% of Final Grade.
 
There will be a short test on the next-to-last day of the program. It will cover some basic facts about art, architecture, the geography of the city, and the history of the three “Romes” we have studied. Most such questions will take the form of identifications. It will also require students to locate important points on a map of Rome.
 

III. Intellectual Portfolio: 50% of Final Grade

 

Each student is responsible for an intellectual portfolio based on our exploration of Rome. The general goal of the portfolio is to encourage you to think about what you see and to record your thoughts. In particular, it should capture your thoughts on how Rome has changed and how it has not. It thus invites your thoughts on Rome’s changes in religion, form of government, art, and culture in the most general sense. Every portfolio should be divided into sections on Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Rome, and each section may be subdivided further if and as you see fit. Every portfolio should have a table of contents, a list of sources cited, an introduction, and a conclusion. Although some students have done very good portfolios in prose alone, it is generally a good idea to include sketches, pictures, descriptions, questions, and observations pertinent to the guiding themes of the course. Faculty help with portfolios will be available on a daily basis during the course, but you have to ask! Edited versions of your daily work and of your written statement may be included in your final portfolio.

 

Intellectual Portfolios are due July 1. You may turn your portfolio in at the Lesser House, 8:00 - 4:30 pm, send it as an email attachment, or mail it to me at 437 UCB, Herbst Humanities, CU Boulder, 80309-0437 (with a postmark on or before the due date). If it is a large electronic file, you may also upload it at https://www.yousendit.com/, and I can retrieve it from the same site.

 

You should by now have some sense of the most important variables involved in this question – if you do not, consult http://culturewarsinrome.pbworks.com/Sample-Table-of-3-Romes for a way of getting started. (If you wish to note continuities as well as differences, that is of course just fine: surely we have seen that Rome since the Renaissance has tried to revive traits prominent in ancient Rome.)

Most students have used a combination of text and visual elements in order to make their points, but I have received some fine responses that were text only. All pictures should have captions explaining why you consider them important for understanding Rome.

 

More Specific Guidelines for the Portfolio:  

 

On Citing Sources:

Don’t plagiarize! (The claim “I did not know this was plagiarism” will not help.)

Cite all sources in a simple but clear way (Examples, to put in parentheses at end of paragraphs:  Blue Guide, p. 38-42; Reading Packet, pp. 12-13; Class, Student report on Augustus; http://romanchurches.wikia.com/wiki/San_Pietro_in_Vaticano, accessed 6/15/09; Ambler at Pantheon.)

Include photo credits for each photo or picture (e.g., photo by Jeff, photo from www.roma.it, my photo, etc)

Include page numbers (so things don’t get lost, and so I can refer to particular points)

Have a table of contents (to help you think about and show your overall structure)

 

Minimum Requirements:  

1. An introduction and a conclusion, so you can say something about the importance of what you have done (which may be linked to the importance of Rome!). Why should we give a darnn?

2. Table of Contents, to help organize your portfolio

3. Chronology, to help identify and locate “the three Romes”

You may borrow it directly from http://culturewarsinrome.pbworks.com/Time-Lines or you might want to design your own

4. At least 8 entries on pagan Rome (or some aspect thereof: consider art, buildings, written evidence from the Reading Packet, moral or political opinions, religion, et cetera); 6 entries on Christian Rome, and 4 entries on Modern Rome. An “entry” should be at least a half-page, single spaced. It may accompany a photograph, sketch, postcard et cetera. Your entries may include a fair amount of description, but try also to offer a reflection related to what you describe. Noting differences among the key periods in Roman history is especially useful. (For a simple example, “Here is a picture of the altar at S. Maria di Qualcosa, and below is the altar from the pagan temple to Antoninus Pius and Faustina. Note the following differences: . . . .”) Don’t be afraid to speculate (but don’t present speculation as though it is fact).

 

Further possibilities and suggestions for your portfolio:

1. Your portfolio may also be a more personal scrapbook, but not at the expense of the items listed above.

2. Even things so obvious as the following – if they are explained properly – can help you make a solid statement: a cross, a quadriga, a bottle of wine, a monk, a straight street, a foreign vendor, a warrior or picture of a warrior, a bored tourist, a particular work of art, the fasces, et cetera.)

3. Do not worry too much about perfect unity or coherence. It is probably a mistake to think one can “wrap up” Rome neatly in a short portfolio, so a list of impressions or thoughts on, say, Rome under the popes, or Rome in the 12th century, would be fine to include.

4. Get a decent folder or binder before you go to Rome so you can keep materials safe.

5. It is true that postcards and photos might be better suited for a scrapbook than an academic project, but a postcard or a photo with a thoughtful caption can help enlighten your viewer to the key characteristics of each of our several “Romes.”

6. Take a little time every day in Rome to record some of your better thoughts about, or reactions to, the sites we visit. With a little editing after you return to the States, they can be organized and added to your portfolio.

7. It is very nice to see something based on an independent “tour” or observation: don't limit your subjects to official group tours. 

8. Consider adding some questions for further exploration for each of your three Romes. (Show your knowledge by showing you know the limits of your knowledge!)

9. Keep your on-site written assignments. Edit them and add them to your portfolio. Do the same for the paper you present orally.

10. A few points from class, from your classmates’ presentations, from the Blue Guide, or from the Readings Packet will help improve your portfolio. Cite your sources!

11. Show the differences among the different Romes by noting and commenting on symbols that help to identify them and what they stand for. Consider both the symbols that each Rome would put forward and such symbols as you consider to be insightful. (Consider, for example, the story that Constantine put aside the Roman Eagle and took up the Christian Cross as the standard under which to fight the battle at the Milvian Bridge. Or ask yourself which represents modern Rome better, the Altar of the Fatherland or Gucci?)

12. Remember that the general goal is to shed light on the city of Rome and, in particular, the relationship among its main periods. http://culturewarsinrome.pbworks.com/What-we-are-looking-for might help identify the main “variables” to keep in mind.

13. There are many things a table of contents might include, but just to give you a general idea, here is a sample: Table of Contents, An Introduction to the Three Romes, Timeline, Ancient Pagan Rome, Thoughts on Paganism, What Happened in the Coliseum and What this Shows about the Pagan Romans, My Paper on the Pantheon, What a Roman Triumph Shows about Ancient Romans, My Sketch of the Arch of Titus, How the Roman Republic Differed from the American Republic, Christian Rome, The Arch of Constantine, What Constantine did to and for Christianity, Christian Morals According to the Sermon on the Mount, First Impressions of St. Peter's Basilica, Why I like Santa Sabina more than St. Peter's, How has the Papacy Lasted So Long?, Modern Rome, Modern Roman Conceptions of Beauty, Is Modern Rome Secular?, How does a Tourist differ from a Pilgrim?, First Impressions of the Vittoriano Monument

 

Here are some of the things that help make a portfolio stand out from the group. I base my comments in part on the 100 portfolios I have seen so far.

 

  1. Good analytical writing: This is wonderful to see and reminds me that a thousand good words can be worth even more than an equal number of pictures. Can you capture in your own words some defining trait of an important aspect of Roman culture? Can you share a thoughtful insight regarding something you saw in Rome or read about Rome?
  2. Sensitivity to Rome’s chronology and thoroughness in recording it: Rome’s history is long and complex, and it is not an easy task to convey it well. A time line with comments or illustrations is one possibility, but there are others.
  3. Thoroughness and novelty in commentary: Portfolios have differed in the extent to which supporting information was introduced to help clarify one Rome or another. Sometimes such information simply came from a tour on which there was no assignment strictly required; other times it came from some independent excursion or observation.
  4. Use of photos as a teaching opportunity: Some portfolios added thoughtful captions to the photographs that were included. Some added descriptions of details contained in the photos.
  5. What is true of photos can also be true of sketches.
  6. Improvement of assignments done on site: Some portfolios corrected and added to the assignments that were, inevitably, done hastily in Rome. They sometimes turned into very thoughtful, polished statements.
  7. Include somethings you learned on your own. Example: Eplain what a "[Christian] relic" is, and describe one that we do not visit as a group. The church of Santa Croce is filled with them, and the Scala Santa is worth a visit. Hunting an interesting relic will help you explore the city and will help you understand the spirt of medieval Christianity.
  8. And with every passing year, the web becomes a more powerful resource for study of Rome. Just be sure to cite your sites! 

 

 

 

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