Last Call: "At-A-Glance"

Dear Writers of Rome,

Just an urgent note about the At-A-Glance handouts for the site presentations in Rome, which were called for several days ago in this blog post.

I'm missing seven of them: if I've emailed you, you know who you are. But please read on.

I won't waste your time and mine by calling this situation unacceptable: it clearly is, as is the fact that I have to badger some of you to submit your work.

A larger, more concerning issue is that I've heard from several of you that you had no idea that we need handouts and are making a booklet.

This news is worrisome because, as both Dr. Spinner and I noted before the end of the semester, this transitional time between Reading and Writing Rome is critical to the success of the travel seminar. We have posted and will continue to post notices up until departure and in Rome, so you must read everything that comes across your screen fully and carefully.

In the meantime, if those of you with outstanding At-A-Glance sheets could please get them to me by noon tomorrow (Tuesday), I'll have time to include them in the booklet: Office Services tells me that they can work with a truncated production schedule.

Please review the original At-A-Glance post and follow the formatting specs to the letter. I've spent the better part of the day deformatting many an improper handout, and time is running out.

If I don't receive a handout from you, the book will have to go to press as is, and you'll start TX 200 with red in your ledger. That's regrettable, but there's nothing else for it.

Thanks for your attention in this matter.

DC

Website Update: Site Reports

Dear Roman Writers,

Our Site reports page is now available on the official Writing Rome website. Please navigate on over and have a look.

The page offers, in addition to a rudimentary schedule of presentations, guidelines for successful reports as well as the evaluation form that the instructional team will use for grading purposes.

We suggest that you spend some time now looking over both the page and the form so you can begin, if only subconsciously, to plan ahead.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

DC/gs

Practice Presentations: Revised Guidelines

Dear Roman Readers,

This is the first of our posts outside of class to alert you to important developments.

We're happy to announce that the revised guidelines for the site report dry runs are now available on our website. You'll find them at the very bottom of this page under Milestones > Practice presentation:

http://www.skidmore.edu/~dcurley/rome/sites.html

Please read them and follow them scrupulously: to do so will significantly increase your chances of success on the site-reports portion of your grade in Reading Rome, not to mention in Writing Rome, too.

Please let us know if you have questions.

DC/gs

(No) Quizzes for Weeks 9 and 10

Dear Readers of Rome,

After the quizzes due tonight (Week 8), there will be no quizzes due Week 9 (the week of break) or Week 10 (the week after). Rather, Prof. Spinner and I want you to concentrate on the annotated bibliographies for your site reports, due Sunday, March 29 (not the 28th, as mentioned in class today).

We'll resume with quizzes in Week 11. At some point you can expect a large review quiz on Unit 2, but not just yet.

Happy researching,

DC

Some Announcements

Dear Readers of Rome,

Please read the following post carefully, since it offers some policies and suggestions for the immediate future. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact either me or Dr. Spinner.

(1) SATURDAY EVENING DEADLINES for both writing assignments and the site reports will now be moved to Sundays at noon. This includes the upcoming writing assignment (#2).

(2) WEDNESDAY QUIZ DEADLINES will be extended to 11:59 p.m.

(3) TIME ON QUIZZES (except on those repeated over the course of the term) will be extended slightly to allow more time for completion.

Items 1–3 are in response to suggestions and comments from you, the students. We hope the new policies will prove helpful.

(4) PLEASE STAY PUT DURING CLASS, unless you are suddenly and seriously ill. There's been a rash of folks getting up and leaving in the middle of things lately, and it's distracting for everyone else.

(5) SITE REPORTS: Now that you've all been oriented by our peer mentor, let me suggest that you begin researching your sites before break. Put in a little time this week, maybe as much as 2–3 hours, going through the books we've set aside and taking your first round of notes. Otherwise, when we come back from break, you'll have less than a week to get started.

DC

Assignment for Wednesday, 02-11-15

Dear Readers of Rome,

For Wednesday, February 11, please do the following:

(1) Visit and read the Site reports page of our website and familiarize yourself with the details and dates. Please note any questions and come to class prepared to ask them.

(2) To prepare for our class on pleasure, sport, and spectacle, please read the following sections in the Blue Guide:

• Colosseum (pp. 105–9);
• Crypta Balbi (pp. 137–9);
• Stadium of Domitian/Piazza Navona (pp. 177–8);
• Theater of Pompey (p. 212);
• Theater of Marcellus (pp. 233–4);
• Circus Maximus (p. 248); and
• Circus of Nero (p. 413, second paragraph: "In the middle of the piazza...").

(3) Using your Streetwise Rome Map or the maps in the back of the Guide, try to pinpoint all of these locations.

If you missed class and didn't get the handout of important ancient Roman dates, download it here.

DC