HIST 2210: Ancient Greece (Knapp)

Ancient history tends to focus on the wealthy and powerful, in part because much of our evidence for how people lived comes from them, and in part because of the bias of many Classical scholars. For this assignment, you are asked to consider what we know about those who are not as often the focus of popular interest and scholarly inquiry.

Choosing an Area of Focus

Your general area of focus for this project must come from one of the following groups of people. You may also look at two overlapping groups (e.g. children with disabilities).

• Enslaved people
• Women 
• Children
• People with disabilities
• Craftspeople
• Non-Greeks
• Peasants (people involved in agricultural labor)

To decide which general area you would like to focus your term project on, go to the Term Project module in Brightspace and find ‘Choosing an Area of Focus.’ There you will find links to entries in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD) that you should start with to learn more about the peoples listed above and the limitations on researching them.

Choosing a Topic

Once you have a general area to focus your research on, you will need to start narrowing your topic. As you do this, you will need to do more preliminary research/reading in a pre-research resource, such as the Oxford Classical Dictionary, to ensure the topic is doable – not too broad or not too narrow.

If you—like many—do not know where to start when it comes to choosing a research topic, look at what you do know. What are your current interests? What are your interests in modernity, or another period of time? Then see if that topic transfers to an ancient lens (you’ll find it often will).

Narrowing Your Focus

One of the most difficult skills in research is narrowing the focus. Ultimately, your topic must be focused enough that you can thoroughly address it in the space you are allowed. A short paper thus needs a very narrow topic.

Once you have chosen your area of focus, you will need to narrow your topic by deciding:

• What element of their lives you are interested in investigating?
• What particular geographical area you are focusing on?
• What time period you are focusing on?

You could look at one particular geographical area/time period or compare two, but do not attempt a large geographical or chronological time span. Keep your focus narrow to ensure you can cover your topic thoroughly in a short paper.

The Proposal

The proposal asks you to give an overview of the research project you are designing and provide a preliminary bibliography. It is worth 10% of your final grade and consists of the Project Overview (4%) and the Preliminary Bibliography (6%). Submit it as one file to the Brightspace folder.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

include the following information:

A. Proposed Title in ALL CAPS.

B. Research Question

C. Topic Overview. A short, 2 – 3 sentence overview of your topic to give me a detailed idea of what you are interested in examining.

D. Primary Sources. A paragraph that discusses the types of primary sources that are available and any problems with them.

E. Modern Scholarship. A paragraph that discusses the modern research that has been done in your area and the types of questions scholars tend to ask when researching it.

F. Challenges. Notes about challenges you think you might face doing research in this area.

Formatting should be simple, with bold headings (use those in the list above) that introduce each section. Single space your text. Refer to the example in Brightspace for further guidance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Along with your Project Overview, include a Bibliography of at least ten entries. The entries much include:

A. At least one primary source. Choose ONE of the following:

• One text by an ancient author (max two). If you are including texts by ancient authors, make sure you find a translation that dates to after 1960.
• One sourcebook (max one). A sourcebook is a modern collection of ancient references to the topic. They are commonly themed and tend to focus on areas that ancient authors didn’t discuss in detail, such as slavery or women.
• One book that presents archaeological or artistic objects, such as illustrated catalogues or archaeological site reports (max two).

B. At least three scholarly articles from peer reviewed journals.

C. Two scholarly books. These should be monographs (books by a single author), rather than edited volumes.

D. At least three items from the last 10 years (2015 – 2025)

E. Annotations. 

• For every entry, include 1-2 sentences about why this is an appropriate or relevant source for your topic.
• For books, you may need to look at book reviews, either scholarly or online, chapter headings, and/or excerpts. BUT you must write these annotations yourself; do not cut and paste from abstracts or reviews.
• Also indicate if this item is accessible in the Langara library, the UBC library, or both. All sources must be accessible in at least one of them.

Do not include general books on Greek history, encyclopedias, popular articles (e.g. from National Geopgraphic), translations of ancient authors older than 1960, different translations fo the same text by an ancient author, children's books, popular books (for a non-scholarly audience), videos, sources older than 1960, book reviews (though you can look at these to assess whether a source you can't look at is appropriate), and websites.

The Bibliography should start on a new page after the Project Overview. Centre the title “Preliminary Bibliography” at the top of the page. Create a Chicago style ciation for each entry. Organize the entries alphabetically, according to the author's last name. 

The Term Paper

In your paper, rather than answer your research question, you will instead present an assessment of two items from your proposal bibliography for how well they would have helped you address your research question.

Paper outline:

1. Title page

2. Introductory paragraph

• Includes a finalized Research Question in place of a thesis

3. Overview of your search and chosen items

• Address questions such as: Do the ancient sources discuss your topic? What types of sources? Is this a well-studied area by scholars? What kinds of questions do scholars ask about your topic?
• At the end: introduce the two sources you have chosen to present and explain why you chose them

4. Analysis of your two chosen items

• Your items must be different types of sources – 2 of: monograph, journal article, primary source.
• Summarize each source. Consider questions such as: What is the author’s background? What are the source’s main points and purpose? Who is the intended audience? What sources/evidence were used? Can you detect any bias?
• Assess the source. Your assessment should focus on addressing whether this source would be useful for answering your research question? Why/why not?

5. Comparison of your chosen items

• Compare / contrast how well each item answered your question. Did each one use the same material? Which was most convincing?

6. Conclusion 

• This is partly a self-assessment. What have you learned, how well has your question been answered, and where would you need to go next? Would you change your topic? How? Is it too simple, too complicated, just right but needs more work of a particular type?

7. Bibliography

• Separate page.
• Include the 2 sources you have assessed and any others you used specifically to write the paper.
• Do NOT include annotations.