Presentations.
- The main task is to present to us how we know
about these topics, a guide to the main primary sources, the
evidence upon which our 'knowledge' is based.
- Your presentation will be done from a PDF, which
you will send to me the day before your presentation so I
can post it for the class.
- It is up to you how you format it.
- Put your name and the topic at the top.
- The PDF should include the assigned reading mentioned above.
- If either the class reading assignment or the PDF are not
handed in on time, your presentation will be considered late
(docked 1%/day) and postponed until the class after you get
those two things done.
- Telling us about these topics is not your
assignment and is not what will be assessed, and taking time to
do it, while occasionally necessary, will take away from your
time to present what will be assessed.
- These presentations and their topics will be featured on the
monthly tests as 'short ID's.'
Learning goals: this assignment should hone your abilities in the
following areas
- Basic research skills:
- Drilling down to the basis upon which anything rests
is a fundamental skill. Here you are asked to drill down to
the basis upon which our knowledge of a historical phenomenon
rests.
- Understanding and intelligently applying the difference
between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.
- Finding sources.
- Figuring out how to refer to sources.
- Assessing sources
- trustworthiness
- earlier is better
- except when later are more trustworthy for some other
reason
- how did the source know about what they inform us about?
Suggested presentation topics for first presentations:
- Cyrene's founding
- Thurii's founding
- Autochthony and its importance in Athens (and perhaps other
city-states)
- Draco's Laws
- Solon's Reforms
- Solon's poetry
- the 'laws' of Athens: where did Athenians find one, what they
were written on, where can you read/see one now, etc.
- Cleisthenes' Reforms
- Ephialtes' Reforms
- Sortition in Ancient Athens
- Metics in Athens
- Cleruchies
- Ostracism in Athens
- Jury duty in Athens
- Who paid for the tragedies in Athens
- The Athenian amnesty of 403 BCE
- Pericles and political thought
- Lycurgus and political thought
- Zeno's lost work called Republic
- Aristotle's Lyceum
- Plato's Academy
- Aristotle's collection of 'constitutions' (almost all of which
is lost)
- Aristotle's 'published' works (as opposed to the works we have
that survived)
- Plato's 7th letter's political thought content.
- the concept of 'isonomia'
- the institution called 'euthynia' ('correction') of officials
- 'atimia' and enfranchisement in Athens
2nd presentation topics: I would appreciate it if you suggest
ideas of your own, but be aware that not every interesting topic
fits this assignment: it must be small enough, accessible enough,
relevant enough, etc.
- The 12 Tables in Rome
- Transition from Kings to Consuls in Rome: how/why did it
happen?
- dating Cicero's philosophical works
- how and why we still have the text of Cicero's De Re
Publica
- the Roman cursus honorum
- how and why we have the particular works of Aristotle that we
do have
- individual characters in Cicero's works (e.g. Laelius, Cato,
etc.): what is the nature of and what are the sources we have
about them other than Cicero?
- the 'laws' of Rome: where did Romans find and read them?
- what would you assign if we have another month to devote to
political thought in Rome after Cicero, and why would you assign
it?
- the 'laws' of Athens: where did Athenians find one, what they
were written on, where can you read/see one now, etc.
- Ephialtes' Reforms
- Sortition in Ancient Athens
- Ostracism in Athens
- The Athenian amnesty of 403 BCE
- Pericles and political thought
- Aristotle's 'published' works (as opposed to the works we have
that survived)
- the concept of 'isonomia'
- the institution called 'euthynia' ('correction') of officials
- 'atimia' and enfranchisement in Athens