MA Classics and Ancient History / Course details

The core seminar is a year-long foundational course, designed with three aims in mind:

• to give students specific training in academic/research skills
• to introduce students to specialist fields of research within the broad subject area of Classics and Ancient History  
• to help students develop a better understanding of possible career paths, develop, recognise and articulate transferable skills in their CV

Semester 1 consists of a series of training workshops and classes. These include workshops on academic/research skills and interactive, practical seminars on specific areas of expertise/modes of research, covering between them a range of fields in Classics and Ancient History, from reception, intertextuality and writing and using commentaries to pots, epigraphy, papyrology and numismatics.

In the second semester, the MA students themselves take it in turns, to present papers on a subject of their own choosing (which may but need not relate to their planned thesis-topic). A properly written-up version of this seminar-presentation is submitted three weeks later. The oral and written versions each count for 50% of the overall mark (training on presentations and their assessment is provided).  

CLAH60510 is restricted to students on Classics and Ancient History programmes (please check your programme structures for further details).

1. To introduce students to the advanced study of Classics and Ancient History

2. To provide them with a first experience, in a supportive environment, of being a postgraduate member of an academic audience

3. To provide the opportunity to learn, by both example and direct experience, how to give a research presentation to such an audience

4. To give students a sense of the range of intellectual activity encompassed by research in the subject

5. To provide students with at least a nodding acquaintance with a range of technical research skills in the area, and with the opportunity to develop further those that are of particular relevance

 

 

 

Objectives:

On successful completion of the course-unit, students should have acquired the following (not all of these objectives are subject to formal assessment):

1. The ability to give a formal presentation, with appropriate supporting material, on a topic where they have some degree of specialist knowledge

2. The ability to convey something of the excitement and value of that knowledge to a wider audience of non-specialist Classicists

3. The ability to contribute to discussion of academic topics both close to their own subject-area and more broadly across the range of ancient material

4. The basis for wider knowledge, and a spirit of enquiry, within the subject as a whole 

• The ability to assimilate and summarise large quantities of evidence, and to engage critically and analytically with this evidence;
• The ability (as needed) to engage closely with specific skills in ancillary disciplines of classical study, such as epigraphy
• The ability to construct an argument in written and oral form; 

• The ability to work co-operatively in small groups, and to engage in critical discussion and debate.
• (as needed each week) the ability to carry out practical exercises appropriate to the week’s study topic (e.g. decipher an inscription and carry out research on it)

• enhanced abilities to engage in critical discussion and debate and independent research.
• improved analytical and observational abilities

 

Feedback method Formative or Summative

Written feedback Formative and summative

Class discussion and oral feedback formative

Weekly preparatory reading will be provided for each seminar. However, every student should ensure that s/he has read (in translation) Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid.