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Syllabus
RELS 110-601 CLST 110-601 Carl Seaquist |
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A. About the Course
This course surveys the history of religion in the Greek and Roman worlds from the Bronze Age until the advent of Christianity. We will examine the range of religious expression in the ancient world, including ritual, priestly organization, the problem of belief, views of the divine, myth, iconography and religious architecture. We also will consider Greek and Roman religious culture in the context of contemporary societies in India, Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China, and look at evolution over time. In addition, the course is focused around a central theme: the relationship between religion and literature. As we will begin discussing early in the term, the primary form of religion in the ancient world was cultic, the religious rituals of individual city-states and regions in Greece and Italy. But our evidence for cultic religion is limited and partial. Our best evidence is literary, because literary texts from antiquity were widely copied during the Middle Ages and hence survived into the modern period in large numbers. Since clearly the religions of cult and of literature differ in significant ways, one of the main problems for any student of classical religions is to decide how to reconcile these disparate types of evidence and types of religion to form a unified picture. For some further thoughts on how this course works, click here. The instructor for this course is Carl
Seaquist. Contact information is as follows:
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B. Textbooks
The following required books can be found at the Penn Bookstore (36th and Walnut Streets):
The following was going to serve as our textbook for Roman religion, until I was informed that it was out of print. It seems the bookstore did manage to locate about 10 copies, so this will be a required book if you can easily get a copy, and an optional one if you can't. People who can't get a copy will have alternative assignments for a couple of weeks. This system actually works out rather well, since it will let us cover more material without doing more homework. Officially, this book is optional for everyone.
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C. Course Schedule
This is available on a separate web page, which can be accessed at GRRsch.htm.
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D. Grading
Grades for this course will be based on two book reviews and a final paper. Details about these follow. Briefly, the book reviews will be written on the Veyne and Feeney volumes, and are intended as critical reviews. The final paper will address the relationship between religion and literature in Greece and Rome, referring to assigned secondary source readings, other secondary source readings if you like, and a selction of primary sources of your choosing. The final paper will account for roughly half the course grade, with the other half coming equally from the two book reviews. Class attendance is not a formal part of the course grade, but all students are advised that regular class attendance is, as a practical matter, necessary in order to do well on the written assignments that are graded. Not only will you learn things in lecture that are necessary background, but you will learn what I think about the subject matter and what I expect on the reviews and paper. My attitude is that I should earn your attendance by making classes interesting and useful. I am also open to allowing students to pursue research projects on subjects
covered at some point in this course, even if they do not relate to the
religion-and-literature theme that structures the course. In all
likelihood, only majors in Classics or, perhaps, Religious Studies will
have the background and skills in an introductory class to pursue serious
independent research, so I will not advise anyone to write a research paper.
However, it is useful, for example in applying to graduate schools, to
have a file of research papers ready at hand, and I will certainly help
any students who feels the desire to take this harder means of satisfying
the course requirements. If you want to write a research paper, please
speak to me early in the term. Grades for such students will be based
entirely on the one term paper, though I will also expect you to give an
oral presentation of your research to the class in one of the weeks after
Thanksgiving.
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E. Class Organization
This class will be run in a seminar format. I will prepare some
formal lectures for every class, because my experience teaching this course
shows me that most students appreciate some lecturing. But I would
rather have active class discussion than formal lecture, and I will run
the class in ways that encourage discussion. Thus, I will designate
one or two students for every class session (what I call "session leaders"),
who will plan to be especially well prepared for class that day.
This means you will be asked to make a short (5 minutes, perhaps) presentation
(maybe an answer to a pre-determined question) early in the class, and
you will be prepared to help keep discussion going. Since leading
sessions is not a formal part of the grade in class, this is not strictly
required. And students who are highly uncomfortable with public speaking
can opt out of leading sessions entirely. But I expect everyone to
volunteer since this will help the course maintain a seminar flavor
and should make it a better academic experience for everyone. The
more you participate, the less I will have to lecture at you.
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F. Book Reviews
These are critical reviews, not just plot summaries. They should have two major components: a summary of the book's main thesis, including a discussion of the author's use of sources and his argument; and your educated reaction to this thesis. These do not need to be formally separated into distinct sections of the paper, though this might be the easiest format to follow. In fact, how you structure the paper is up to you, as long as you follow a style appropriate to scholarship in the humanities. If you have any questions about format or style, feel free to ask me. Your summary of the book is not a trivial part of this review: it forces you to select some topics and omit others, and to create the object that you will react to in the rest of the paper. There are a number of possible, good readings of each book, but there are more bad readings than good ones. So you have a lot of freedom in this assignment, but the book you review will be a objective check to your summary. Your reaction to the book's thesis may make arguments not found in the book and may refer to evidence that the book does not mention, but it should be a reaction to the thesis of the book, as you understand it. If you assume a five page review, perhaps two pages should be devoted to your summary, and three to your reaction. But these are only very approximate guidelines. Think of the audience for these reviews as the average Penn student, or your parents, or the average intelligent, college-educated person in the business world. In other words, you can't assume knowledge of what has happened in our class, and you can't expect much knowledge of the ancient world beyond what is found in standard European history courses. We will discuss these books in class to some extent, but one reason
I am asking you to write reviews of these books is because there is not
much time in the schedule to talk about them in class. Probably we
will discuss Feeney's book in more detail than Veyne's, since it is more
central to the main theme of the course.
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F. Final Paper
This is in many ways the culmination of the course. It will seek
to address the following question:
Notice that this question is formulated in the language that Feeney uses in his book: this paper is the natural extenstion of the work you did in your two book reviews. (In fact, Feeney relies heavily on Veyne's book, so the second book review is in the same way an extension of the first review.) The week before Thanksgiving, I am asking you to give me a summary, or outline, and/or working bibliography of your final paper. This gives me an idea where you are in working on your paper, and will allow me to plan our last two classes to maximize the benefit to you. You won't be graded on this summary per se, but the more effort you put into it, the better off you will be when the time comes to write your final paper. For a fuller explanation of what is expected for the final paper, click
here.
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last updated: August 24, 1999