CLAS 24/WLIT 24
Myths/Legends Trojan War
Prof. Jacques Bailly
Graduate Teaching Assistant Madeline McIntire
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Annaliese Holden
Spring, 2022
University of Vermont

Office Hours:  Tuesday 9-10, Thursday 10:00-11:00 at 481 Main St, third floor first door. Also, feel free to ask for an appointment: we'll find a time.
We also have two TA's, who are both available: email them for an appointment or to ask a question.

contact: jacques.bailly@uvm.edu (most effective), (802)656-0993 (less effective)
GTA: madeline.mcintire@uvm.edu
Undergraduate TA: annaliese.holden@uvm.edu

This official syllabus is online, not printed out: bookmark the syllabus and use it online. Changes to the syllabus will be announced in class and updated on this official online syllabus. Significant changes will be announced to your uvm.edu email as well. Refresh your browser to make sure it is not using a stored copy.

NOTE: We will use Blackboard for handing in all written assignments and for some grading. We will use Microsoft Teams for all remote attendance and for a discussion forum.

Schedule
Final Exam: May 10 at 11:30 (NOTE THAT THE FINAL STARTS AT 11:30, NOT 10:30 in our regular classroom. FINAL REVIEW GUIDE

Students with special needs that are documented, such as disabilities or athletics or the like should contact Prof. Bailly as soon as possible so that suitable accommodations can be made.

UVM has a clear code of academic conduct: http://www.uvm.edu/policies/student/acadintegrity.pdf. Any breaches of the code will be prosecuted as severely as possible. Do not stain your soul or annoy others by violating it.

Electronics: you may use your electronic devices in class ONLY for class-related activities, but obviously NOT for quizzes or exams or the like. If you do use electronics, please sit in front on the side of the classroom to minimize distractions to others. If any breaches of this policy are noted, the individual will lose the privilege of using electronics and be asked to sit in front on the other side of the room.

At times, one's life or another's life becomes complicated by difficult things, such as death, illness, psychological issues, or just bad luck or bad choices. You and your fellow students are at a particularly exciting (but also vulnerable and dangerous) stage of your lives: young adulthood and real independence. Fortunately, we care about each other and can help ourselves or others to get help. UVM and the larger community have many many resources to help us deal with such issues. If you or someone you know is suffering, please avail yourself of those resources: Prof. Bailly is ill-equipped to deal with many things, but he wants to help you in any way he can to get help. You should also know that he and Ms. McIntire are mandatory reporters for things like illegal activities: in a way, that means that we can only hold what you say in confidence if it is not dangerous to others or yourself and not seriously illegal.

Please get exercise and sleep. They are absolutely essential for your well being. Walk, ride, run, kayak, climb, step, or dance for a bit every day. And don't push it with sleep: you'll get run down, sick, and become low-functioning.

THE COURSE

Superficial Goal: To acquire familiarity with "The Trojan War," the war between King Priam's city of Troy and the army of Agamemnon, the one depicted in various works of literature, including Greek Epics and Tragedy as well as Roman Epic. Think "Star Wars" fan familiarity: love it!
Why do that? Well, first off, because it is culturally, aesthetically, intellectually, historically, and personally interesting. But also because of further goals that cannot be fully accomplished but will be attempted in part in this course: to understand the role that war and literature and associated phenomena have played in various cultures, including Archaic Greek, Classical Greek, Hellenistic Greek, Roman, and other cultures up to and including present ones.
In order to do that, we will need to discuss oral culture/orality, myths/legends, literate culture, archaeology, cultural appropriation, literary genres, construction and maintenance of cultural identity, history, historiography, philology, deciphering lost languages, the alphabet, geography, and more.

Activities: above all, this is a reading course. You must read the assigned reading, and it is extensive. Reading needs to happen before the class for which it is assigned. Simple reading is just sliding the words thru your mind via your eyes, but it is insufficient: what you need to do here is much more complicated. You need to read for understanding the work as well as connecting it to others. To do that, take notes, underline, reread, discuss, and above all, love it. It is also a writing and analyzing course: writing is itself a form of thinking. Simple writing is just putting words on a page: what you need to do here is good analytical prose writing. For that, you need first to write your thoughts and ideas until you realize what you should write about, and then start the assignment. And while writing that, you should be re-writing it constantly. Good writing IS re-writing, improving, re-organizing, deleting, starting over, never being satisfied. If you are not revising heavily, you are simply doing it wrong. It is also a presenting course: you will present material to the class. To do that, you have to first re-compose it (i.e. think it, re-think it, write it, re-write it, repeat) and then rehearse it. Presenting is rehearsing, constantly improving.
And why do all of that? Because it is interesting and makes anything we do more interesting by making ourselves more interested, and better at any thing we want to be good at, whether that is writing technical manuals, working in the insurance industry, being a tool and die maker, teaching high school, serving hot dogs, or walking dogs. Simply put, it makes our lives better. Like many other aspects of "the UVM experience," these academic things add up: at the end of several years of social engagements and other mere fun, what do you have to show for it? A few stories you can tell at social engagements. At the end of 4 years' hard work educating yourself in courses, you actually have something to show for it: knowledge and abilities, and if you do it right, a bunch of social capital from those you studied with. What is more, knowledge and skills are pretty hard to lose or have taken away. What is even more, they will fuel your future. What is even more, the more you devote yourself to them, the more skilfull and knowledgeable friends you will have. But they take time and work: they are "slow fun" rather than the quick and easy fun of a party that evaporates quickly. Please think about that as you balance your priorities in the extremely complex life of a university student. Basically, literature is a way to record and create meaning in life, and a life without meaning is, uh, meaningless.

Assignments: above all, do the reading for the day before you get to class (for example, if it says Feb. 31, Iliad 10-12, you should have read books 10-12 of Iliad before you had class on Feb. 31. Other assignments are on the schedule.

Typical Class: A mini-lecture or two on a discrete topic or two, connection of that topic to class concerns, a presentation or other student-created item, reading aloud, discussion.

Required Texts:
The following are all available in the bookstore, but any translation with line numbers will do.
Graded Assignments:
Attendance: in place of attendance on Tuesdays, you will hand in at the end of every class in which there is not a quiz or midterm a daily comment or question about the class, called a "daily comment." This can be about any aspect of the class, but it must show active thought (those that don't won't be counted, but you won't know that until it's too late). Particularly appreciated are good questions for future discussion!
If there are 30 class sessions for which a daily comment will be turned in, at the end of the semester, if you have turned in 27, that is great. If you have turned in fewer, 1% will be deducted from your grade for each one missing. Basically, attend at least 90% of the classes and hand in a comment.
IF YOU ARE ATTENDING REMOTELY, YOU MAY EMAIL your daily comment to annaliese.holden@uvm.edu.

Discussion forum: There will be a discussion forum on our Teams site. You can contribute as much as you want. It will count as follows: if you contribute meaningfully before a class, you will get 1 point for that class day. If you pile up 10 points, you get 100% on a low quiz instead of whatever your grade was (to be allotted at the end of the semester). Bailly, McIntire, and Holden may visit and comment and occasionally empty the discussion forum into an archive.

Quizzes: for Thursday quizzes:
Ancient Greek: If there are enough (3 or 4 at least) students who have some Ancient Greek and want to read a little Homer, we can certainly do that. We'll talk about how it counts.

Late policy and makeup policy:

First off, let's be clear: this is about 2 things: making sure that you can focus on your health and solving your urgent problems, AND succeeding in this course. We as a community want everyone to succeed and be healthy.
Let's brace  ourselves for an 'interesting' semester: do everything you can to attend and get everything in on time, because it looks like many of us may have our semester disrupted by the covidiocy.
Quizzes cannot be made up.
To make up what you missed in class, Bailly will try to record every class, so you can 'attend' live or late even if you aren't there in person. These sessions will be available 'live' to those of you who are ill or have another good excuse, but not to everyone all the time (that is what the provost and her staff advise). Availability will be limited because this is not an online course, and the experience will not be as good as being in person. Bailly also posts extensive notes about all his lectures, and they are available to everyone all the time.
IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM INVOLVING ABSENCES, TALK TO BAILLY AS SOON AS YOU REALIZE THERE IS A PROBLEM: DO NOT PUT IT OFF. A quick email will do wonders.
If, in Bailly's opinion, it is possible to succeed in the class without making up lost work, and Bailly is satisfied that your education won't be significantly compromised by that, then you may be "forgiven" what you missed. Succeeding does not necessarily mean getting high grades.
If it is no longer possible to succeed without making up lost work, Bailly and you will have to make a plan, if that seems advisable to Bailly.
If you have to miss a midterm or final exam, talk to Bailly ASAP: if you didn't talk to Bailly before the midterm or final, your excuse had better be absolutely solid (car accident, fire, covid symptoms appeared that morning AND you have a letter from the dean's office), because ordinarily those things cannot be made up.
Life skill: GET IT IN WRITING: if you only talk to Bailly, later on he may or may not understand the situation the same way you do/did: if you email and Bailly replies back to confirm a plan, you've got it in writing.
EVERYTHING THAT BAILLY HAS APPROVED FOR MAKEUP MUST BE MADE UP BY THE LAST DAY OF CLASSES.

Extra Credit: Attend an academic guest lecture on campus in any subject, write up a one-page summary of it, and hand it in to Bailly. 100% on your lowest quiz for every 2 of these you do.

OVERALL GOALS of education as Prof. Bailly sees it: you are in a course in the College of Arts and Sciences, not a professional school. Arts and Sciences does not stoop to mere usefulness. It soars and aspires to help you explore the wonders of the world, humanity, and everything, and to become part of that wonder, to add to it and expand our knowledge of it. Sure, along the way, you acquire skills that propel you beyond others in any future money-earning activities, perhaps a career, and result in statistically significant excess of material rewards over others, but that is not the target. Faster and better advancement in a job is merely a nice perk, a fortuitous unintended consequence of your education in Arts and Sciences. Whether you are figuring out the chemistry of rattlesnake venom and how it works, the minimum number of colors needed on a toroidal map, a contemporary art piece by Mark Tansey, or the Trojan War, the aim of the activity is to turbo-charge your mind and soul, to feed it material that will propel it forward to develop its potential as fully as possible, to help you become and be a good citizen of the world, someone who is interested and interesting, not merely a useful cog, but a beautiful informed intelligent soul who contributes.

As I waited to watch the 2017 Full Eclipse of the Sun from an island in a river off of a remote peninsula in western Kentucky (had to kayak to get there), I  met a house appraiser who also happened to be there. He was sitting on his lawn chair, up to the seat in the water, and his son was there in tow. He told me, "Education may be expensive, but ignorance is more expensive." Truer words were never spoken.
Embrace the goal of learning as much as you possibly can: be a maximalist, not a minimalist, when it comes to education. You can keep learning all your life, and you will, but this here right now is your best chance to turbo-charge it. Most people aren't as fortunate as I to be in school all their lives, or even as you to have a few years cleared out for this. Take full advantage!