Unessay - Formal Proposal Guidelines
By Friday, October 8, you should submit via Canvas your formal proposal for your Unessay. Please keep in mind that this is simply an exercise to put your thoughts down on paper; it is not a binding contract. Details of your project can change as the semester progresses, and you can even change your project entirely at a later stage. The goal of this document is to get you started thinking about what your project will eventually be.
Your formal proposal should consist of the following elements:
- a brief declaration (even as short as one to two words) of the form of your Unessay (e.g., “a fanfic”, “an Unessayed essay”, “a painting”, etc.)
- a one to two sentence summary of the content of your Unessay (e.g., “In my fanfic, I will explore the backstory of the character of Lycaenion”, “In my Unessayed essay, I will analyze the gender dynamics of the novel”, “In my painting, I will depict Dionysophanes’ garden as described in Book 4”)
- a list of potential sources that you will use to complete your project. This includes primary sources (e.g., of course, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe) and secondary sources (e.g., scholarly articles, modern news articles, various websites). You must list at least one source, either primary or secondary; even the most creative projects should be grounded in a source that we can tie to the course or the course’s themes.
- a one to two sentence statement of how your intended Unessay connects to the themes of the course (Longus, the Greek novel, fiction, gender and sexuality, etc.).
- a one to two sentence statement of how your Unessay might help you develop as a Classicist (Will it help you practice your Greek skills? Will it help you understand Longus and the genre of the Greek novel more deeply? Will it enable you to understand broader connections to ancient culture?)
This proposal will be graded on a specification basis, meaning that a satisfactory grade results in full credit of 5%; an unsatisfactory grade means that you must edit and resubmit your proposal. A satisfactory grade will be granted to proposals that include each of the five elements listed above.
You can submit your formal proposal via Canvas. (Link takes you directly to the submission page.)
