Fall 2024
Reports
Everyone in LAT 530 is required to make a presentation to the class on a topic of your choice. Please choose a report topic and schedule a date to deliver the report as soon as possible. Here are some general suggestions (you may also develop a topic that does not appear here):
ROMAN THEATER
Costumes & Masks
Early Temporary Theater
Actors
PLAUTUS
Old Men & patria potestas
adulescens amans
Metatheater
Music
Letters & Literacy
Prostitution & Prostitutes
Aristocrats & Aristocratic Values
Slaves & Slavery
Slaveholders & Slavery
Translation (esp. Menander/Plautus: Dis Exapaton and Bacchides)
Prologues
Epilogues
Puns/Wordplay
Greek & Greekness
Improvisation
Marriage
Cooks
Humor
Religion
Philosophy
Law
Myth
War & the Military
The Carnivalesque (Bakhtin)
Contemporary Issues & Events
Reception
TERENCE
Prologues
Metatheater
Fathers & Sons
Women
Rape
Philosophy
Parasites
Prostitution & Prostitutes
Romanization
Humor
Aristocrats & Aristocratic Values
Slaves & Slavery
Marriage
Contemporary Issues & Events
Reception
Report Guidelines
Please choose a report topic and schedule a date to deliver the report in consultation with me as soon as possible. Your report should last 10-12 mins. (time will be allowed for questions and discussion afterwards). Shortly after delivering the presentation, please see me about developing a paper thesis.
(1) Your report must be well researched, carefully organized, analytical and substantive.
(2) Provide your audience with a carefully organized electronic Outline (i.e. what you will show your audience on the screen as you present, e.g. a PowerPoint) of your presentation that includes a relevant Bibliography; I’ll help you get started with the bibliography, but you must also search for this yourself using the course Bibliography and relevant search engines and databases listed on the Links page).
N.B.: an outline is not a script of what you intend to say during your presentation (and so it should avoid complete sentences); the purpose of your outline is to help organize your presentation – in bulleted items/talking points – for the benefit of your audience and to provide them with a "take-away" of main points afterwards.
(3) I will work closely with you in preparing the Outline, and so I need to see a first draft of this at least 48 hours before the date of your report); please send this and all subsequent versions of this in the format in which you will present.
(4) I need the final version of your report outline at least 8 hours before its delivery (it will be posted to the course website).
(5) Provide translations of Greek and Latin texts on your Outline—these must be your own (you do not need to provide translations for Latin texts we have read in this class). Avoid unnecessarily long block quotes.
Examples of our course's required bibliographic formatting (adapted from the American Journal of Philology)
Please follow these formats precisely:
Journal article:
O’Gorman, E. 1993. “No Place Like Rome: Identity and Difference in the Germania of Tacitus.” Ramus 22: 135-54.
Book:
Ross, D. O., Jr. 1987. Virgil’s Elements: Physics and Poetry in the Georgics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chapter in an edited collection:
Franko, G. 2001. “Plautus and Roman New Comedy.” In Greek and Roman Comedy, ed. S. O’Bryhim, 147-239. Austin: University of Texas Press.