3. Presentations on a Secondary Source

You’ll make presentations to the class on two of the scholarly articles assigned as class readings, one in the first half of the course and one in the second half. You’ll then turn in 2–3 page essay write-up that:

• Briefly summarizes what the document says and, more importantly, analyzes what the author is trying to say about the subject at hand. In other words, you need to identify and discuss what you believe is the author’s interpretation, bias, and point of view and how it affected the author’s treatment of the topic. Give examples from the document that illustrate your assessment of the author’s spin.
• Provides perspective by relating the material in the document, and the author’s bias on it, to the bigger picture—the material being discussed in class.

The main point of the presentation and the write-up is NOT to summarize the reading. Summary should be less than 25% of your presentation and your write-up. The main point is to analyze the reading and talk about what it means and what it tells us about that place and time in ancient history.

Your write-up needs to be posted on the weekly discussion page the night before the class meeting for which we are reading that selection, so your fellow students can react to it during our discussions. At the same time, also upload your essay to BlackBoard for grading.