Image/Word Postings

Each class, beginning on September 19, you are responsible for posting in the Discussion Boards on Sakai an image or bit of text having to do with a given term or phrase ("bit of text" = a sentence or paragraph; try to limit yourself to 100 words). There are 17 terms or phrases throughout the semester; you must post at least ten.

As you can see, the terms and phrases are related (sometimes clearly, sometimes more abstractly) with the readings we are doing for the day. There are several goals of this weekly assignment:

1. To ask you to do a bit of independent research, and explore what's "out there" in terms of women and religion in Greco-Roman antiquity (both in scholarly and non-scholarly areas);

2. To get you to think outside the text: I encourage you to try to search out images as much as possible in order to think visually about the subjects of our class (women did not live inside texts).

3. To get you to think creatively: what different images might you find having to do with Demeter? (Pictures of the goddess; temples in her honor; contemporary Greek women named Demeter?); what different texts might you find that mention the Virgin Mary? (Prayers? song lyrics? advertisements?)

Images and words must be posted by 9am on the day of class.

You may find your images or words anywhere on the internet, but I encourage you to think outside of Wikipedia and try the following Google Searches:

1. http://image.google.com (Picture search engine)

2. http://scholar.google.com (Academic search engine)

3. http://video.google.com (Video search engine)

4. http://books.google.com (Book search engine; Google Scholar will also pick up many of these hits)

5. http://blogsearch.google.com (Blog search engine)

Analysis Papers

You will write two essays for this class, both involving a close reading of a primary text that portrays women and religion in Greco-Roman Antiquity:

1. Euripides' Bacchae (paper due October 8)

2. Feature film Agora (2009; dir. Alejandro Amenábar) (paper due December 12)

Papers should be around 1500 words, typed, double-spaced, with pages numbered. You should not use any outside sources, although you may cite the introductory material from our edition of Bacchae and you may cite information about the film from its DVD package or The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/).

For both analysis papers, you are asked to explore the question of women's representation and what we, as cultural consumers, can do with these representations. You may think historically, politically, socially, spiritually, or creatively as long as you address the following points:

1. What roles do women play in this text? (You may define "role" as you see fit: literal place in the narrative ["They are the villains"], functional role ["They advance the plot"], gender role ["They are wives and sisters"], religious role ["Women are religious, men are skeptical"].)

2. Are these women realistic or fantastic? Are we to understand these women as representing how real women might behave, or as fantasies (and if they are fantasies, whose fantasies are they: men's? women's?)?

3. How is religion portrayed? (And here you may have to be precise about what counts as "religion"). Is religion a positive or negative force on society? How do women fit into this positive/negative nexus of religion and society?

4. Why would moderns find these narratives compelling? What draws us to think about ancient women and religion? What do we learn?

You do not need to have a thesis for your papers, and you can decided to break up your paper into sections ("Women's Roles," "Fantasy Women," etc.), or create a coherent essay incorporating all of these themes. You should cite from the text as much as possible (this will be more difficult for the second paper, but do your best).

Midterm

On the midterm, conducted in class on November 5, you will be asked to analyze and respond to several passages from our primary readings (WRGRW and online readings), focused on topics of analysis we have gone over multiple times in class (women's religious lives, authority, gender in antiquity, representation, and so on). In addition, you will be asked to consider at some more length (a slightly longer essay) the Hymn to Demeter (which will be attached to your midterm paper). Finally, you will be asked to discuss one or two images culled from the online postings (which you may want to review again) in the Sakai forums.

Blue books will be provided.

Final Examination or Paper

You may download a PDF copy of the final exam here.

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