Unessay - Formal Proposal Guidelines
By Thursday, March 4, at 5pm, 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 vocal performance”, “an Unessayed essay”, “a cross-stitched image”, etc.)
- a one to two sentence summary of the content of your Unessay (e.g., “In my vocal performance, I will deliver the First Catilinarian from start to finish”, “In my Unessayed essay, I will trace philosophical themes in 1-3 of Cicero’s speeches”, “In my cross-stitch, I will reproduce this famous painting that depicts Cicero’s delivery of a speech”)
- a list of potential sources that you will use to complete your project. This includes primary sources (e.g., Cicero’s Pro Archia; Cicero’s de Oratore) and secondary sources (e.g., secondary readings from our responses, 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 (Cicero, oratory, etc.).
- a one to two sentence statement of how your Unessay might help you develop as a Classicist (Will it help you practice your Latin skills? Will it help you understand Cicero and the late Roman republic more deeply? Will it enable you to understand broader connections to Roman 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.)
