CLST 307/FNAR 337/ROST 307: Art of the Roman World Rome Center Summer Session 2010 Dr. Jacqueline Long

General description of the assignment

• Reflections are a journaling assignment in which to deepen your engagement with particular works of art within our field of study.

Format and Content

• For each Reflection, approximately one page of your own original grammatically coherent writing (not less than 3/4 page and not more than 1 1/2 pages).
• 12-point Times Roman, double-spaced.
• As goes without saying, all principles of Academic Integrity must be respected.
• Each Reflection should focus on a single item from the preceding week's reading assignments or on-site or museum visiting that you have seen in person, yourself, that week - but not an item on which you have presented or will present an Item-Report.
  • "The preceding week" is counted from the last previous Reflection due-date, so that Friday 28 May counts as part of Week 2, as does the Pompeii trip.
  • You are not limited to items we have looked at as a class, if your own visiting to Roman sites and museums should have taken you to see an item Kleiner discusses in the week's reading we haven't visited.
  • But it's not fair -to others in the class or to your own opportunities to engage with examples of Roman art- to double up an item you're reporting on for an Item-Report and use it for a Reflection, too.
  • Nor do I recommend using material from another class, not that most other classes would involve items meeting the other criteria.
  • Each Reflection should involve a different item: don't limit yourself by repetition.
• Every Reflection must include a concise physical description of the work of art on which it is focusing. Questions to address include basically the same range of information as Kleiner's photo-captions, thus for example: Where is it located? What is it made out of? What physical features give it its specific form? How big is it? Also, not so much physical but equally important, to when does it date?
• Then go on from the physical description of the item to consider either the item's technical characteristics, its aesthetic qualities, or its relationship to its social and historical context. Discuss the specifics of the item in concrete detail so as to demonstrate your ideas about it. Connect the item to others Kleiner discusses or we have seen, so that valid comparisons put your item in perspective.
• Be concise, but be informative.
• Reflections must be submitted by 4:30 PM Thursday in each week for which they are assigned, to the instructor's mailbox at the JFRC.

Assessment

• Reflections are graded on a pass-fail-plus basis.
• Minimum requirements for a passing Reflection are clear evidence that you have met the goals of the assignment by personally viewing the item, thinking seriously about it, and writing yourself. Neither physical description nor technical, aesthetic, contextual, or other information may be merely copied from an authority, even with appropriate credit (which does need to be annotated): think it through and make sense of it within the context of your own inquiry. On the other hand, some delving into books may be necessary to find out some of the information you need. That's fine, even desirable. All regular academic rules for crediting your sources apply. Journal writing need not be formal in style, but must be grammatical and free from proofreading errors.
• A entry earns a "plus" if it is well-written and shows an especially high degree of engagement with and learning about the topic.
• Any missing Reflection will hurt your grade for this component even more than a failing Reflection would.
• A full set of passing Reflections will reinforce the letter grade you earn on other elements of the course assessment. "Plus" entries will contribute towards enhancing that grade, within the percentages set forth in Policies and Assessment.

Memorial value

• Towards the end of the term, each member of the class should select a passage or two from her or his own Reflections, totalling not more than one page single-spaced, to be photocopied with others' contributions and distributed as a volume to all the group.

Revised 20 May 2010 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/