Grading Contract | Absence Policy |
Guidelines: Responses | Quizzes | Final Exam |
Final Essay | Creative Projects
Grading and assessments in this course will be unorthodox. We will be following a form of specification grading, in which all assignments and assessments (including quizzes) are graded on a satisfactory or unsatisfactory basis. Each assignment and assessment will have an explicit set of guidelines and criteria for what will be considered “satisfactory.” Your semester grade, then, will be based on the number and type of satisfactory assignments and assessments completed. In other words, you will be in control of your semester grade — you decide the grade that you want and commit as much time or energy towards that grade as you desire.
The following is a rubric for semester-end grades in the course.
| A | A- | B- | C- | D- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unexcused Absences | 0 | ≤ 2 | ≤ 4 | ≤ 6 | ≤ 8 |
| Responses | 14 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 6 |
| Quizzes | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Final Essay or Exam | X | X | X | X | X |
| Creative Projects | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
To achieve a certain grade level, you must complete the listed number of satisfactory assignments or requirements from each of five different categories. For example, if you want a B- for the semester, you must have no more than four unexcused absences, and you must complete 10 responses to secondary readings, 2 creative projects, 4 quizzes, and a final essay or exam. When you have completed the minimum number of satisfactory assignments for the final grade that you want, you do not need to submit further examples of that assignment type.
Once you have reached a certain grade level, you can improve within that letter range (e.g., from a B- to a B or a B+) by meeting the criteria for the responses or creative projects in the next grade range. For instance, a student in the B- range would move to a B by completing two more responses OR an additional creative project and would earn a B+ by doing both of those things. Then, at the end of the semester, if the student has completed the requirements for a B+ and accrued no more than 2 unexcused absences, the grade goes up to an A-. If, however, the student has accrued 3 or 4 unexcused absences, the grade remains at B+.
It is possible to make up unsatisfactory assignments. At the beginning of the semester, each student will be allotted three tokens. One token can be used to make up an unsatisfactory response or quiz or to subtract 1 from your number of unexcused absences, and three tokens are required for another attempt at an unsatisfactory essay, exam, or creative project. No late assignments will be accepted without a documented reason.
You must attend each meeting of the course to attain a good grade. I will be explaining many terms and concepts in class in ways that are not readily available through any other course materials, and your participation in the class’ discussion of the course’s readings and ideas is vital to building a strong classroom and your own foundation of knowledge.
Attendance will be taken via a sign-in sheet at every class meeting. The sign-in sheet is the only way to verify that you were in attendance at class that day.
If you must miss a class meeting for any reason, please inform me as soon as you know of the absence via e-mail before the class meeting begins, and we will correspond accordingly. If you notify me before class begins, the absence is considered excused. The reasons for an excused absence can range from illness to family emergency to mental health or anything else; you do not need to specify it to me. All I ask is that you notify me via e-mail before the class begins.
Any absence without a notifying e-mail can be considered excused for compelling and verifiable reasons (including but not limited to extended illness, a death or medical emergency in the family, a wedding in the immediate family, and participation in a college-sponsored athletic event). Such an absence falls under Holy Cross’ Excused Absence Policy and requires a note from your Class Dean. See the full Excused Absence Policy here.
Any absence about which I do not receive an e-mail from you or which is not excused by a note from your Class Dean will be considered unexcused.
The semester grading contract takes into account only unexcused absences, though I reserve the right to take excused absences into account if the student’s number of excused absences become excessive.
This requirement asks you to respond to secondary articles, chapters, or podcasts that treat ancient gender and sexuality. Articles or chapters to which you can respond are designated with an asterisk in the course schedule and in the course general bibliography. You are encouraged to write responses to articles, chapters, or podcasts that deal with a topic in which you are interested. So, you may choose to write four responses to the four articles and podcasts listed in Week 3, or you may opt to write no responses for that week and focus instead on general interest articles — it’s up to you!
There is no particular due date for any given response; if you feel so inclined, you may, for example, read 14 articles and write 14 responses in the first week of the course and then not have to write any for the remainder. Do keep in mind, though, that the opposite is not true: all responses must be received by 6pm on May 6 (the final day of class), and you may submit no more than six (6) responses in the space between April 30 and May 6. So, it behooves you to keep up a regular response submission pattern — if you aim for one response per week, you’ll get to 12-13 responses, with only 1 or 2 more needed for A credit.
Your response should be written in one of three formats: 3-2-1, argument analysis, or personal reflection. All three formats should be 1-2pp. double-spaced. If you go beyond 2 pp., that’s fine too; 1-2pp. is just a general guideline. The response will be graded “satisfactory” if it answers each prompt or question under the appropriate heading below.
All responses on textual articles or chapters should be submitted via the upload portal with the filename convention: [LAST NAME] - RESPONSE - [AUTHOR LAST NAME] [DATE]. For example: Libatique - Response - Herz 2015.pdf.
All responses on podcasts should be submitted via the upload portal with the filename convention: [LAST NAME] - RESPONSE - PODCAST - [WEEK OF ASSIGNMENT]. For example: Libatique - Response - Podcast - Week 4.pdf.
3-2-1
Write down three (3) things that you learned.
Write down two (2) things that you found interesting and want to learn more about.
Write down one (1) thing that was unclear or one question that you still have about the material.
A 3-2-1 does not need to be written in paragraph form; you can use bullet points or numbered lists.
Argument Analysis
Answer the following questions:
Personal Reflection
If the article speaks to you on a personal level (in terms of gender, sexual orientation, etc.), what resonates with you? How can you connect the topics or ideas in the article to events, relationships, or beliefs in your own life?
There will be six (6) quizzes administered in class throughout the semester at the end of the class period to which it’s assigned. Each quiz will be graded out of 10 points; a satisfactory grade will be a 7/10 or higher. The format of the quizzes will vary, from multiple choice to fill in the blank to matching. All quiz-able material will be drawn from the underlined terms on the slideshows. Once you complete four (4) satisfactory quizzes, you are exempt from taking any remaining quizzes. If you do not complete four satisfactory quizzes within the six administered in class, we will correspond privately about further quiz opportunities.
Anyone who did not opt in to writing a final essay by W 4/10 will by default be taking a final exam on Friday May 10 at 8am. The final exam will be composed of a combination of multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks, matching, and one or two essay questions. Material for the multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and matching may be drawn from any of the underlined terms on the slideshows. Material for the essays may be drawn from any topic discussed in class. The exam will take about an hour and a half to complete. The exam will be graded out of a total of 50 points, and a satisfactory grade will be 35/50 or higher.
You must have opted in to writing a final essay by W 4/10. The final essay will be 5-6pp. double-spaced and encourage you either to make and substantiate an argument about gender and sexuality in the ancient world or to reflect personally on what you’ve learned this semester. To be clear, 5-6 pages is not a lot of space; the challenge of this essay is making a persuasive argument using proper primary and scholarly secondary evidence in a small amount of space. Sample prompts include:
You will be required to draw on at least two primary sources and two secondary sources to write your essay.
The final essay will be due on Friday, May 10, by 5pm.
Detailed guidelines can be found here.
Example citations can be found here.
I will designate a number of possible projects for you to complete that will draw on your creativity. The tasks range from writing poetry to creating artwork, recording a podcast to recording a video, analyzing an object to looking for ancient gender and sexuality in modern media like movies or music. If you would like to complete a creative project that isn’t listed in the possibilities here, you are more than welcome to pitch your idea for a creative project to me via e-mail or in office hours.
All text-based creative projects should be submitted via the upload portal on the course website with the filename convention: [LAST NAME] - CREATIVE PROJECT - [TYPE OF PROJECT]. For example,
Libatique - Creative Project - Poem.pdf
Libatique - Creative Project - Sappho.pdf
etc.
The guidelines for submission of all media-based creative projects is listed under the appropriate heading.
All creative projects must be submitted to me by 5pm on Thursday, May 9 (the first day of the exam period). There is no due date for any given creative project, but if you do more than one, it behooves you to spread the wealth time-wise, as it were, as some projects may take some time to complete.
If you’re going for an A for the semester (i.e., completing 4 creative projects), I recommend attempting to complete the four projects according to the following timeline: