FYS 251

Spectacles of Blood:

Roman Gladiators and Christian Martyrs

Paper Form Analysis Page

• Your paper must have a title that relates to the content of the paper. Thus, a paper with the title "First Year Seminar Paper," or "Paper," does not satisfy this requirements. Conversely, a paper with a title like "The Circus Maximus," will satisfy the requirement. I have found personally, that spending time thinking of a good title actually helps you formulate and refine your thesis. Thus, a title like "Spectator Sport: The experience of the audience in the Circus Maximus," is significantly better than "The Circus Maximus."
  
  
• Your paper must have page numbers. I would prefer that they be typed, but I will accept handwritten. Because I provide comments on papers, I need page numbers (e.g., the comment. "this section repeats the argument you made on page 3," is more difficult for me to make if you don't have page numbers.)
  
  
• Length: The first draft must be five pages long with a word count between 1400 and 1600 words (excluding footnotes). Don't bother messing with font type and size. Do a word count on your text and put the word count on your cover page. Note, I penalize excessive brevity and excessive length equally. If you can only come up with three pages, you need to reformulate your thesis. If you can only say what you have to say in 12 pages you either need a) to edit some more; or b) reformulate your thesis. The second draft must be four (4) pages long (a word count betwee 1100 and 1300 words).
  
  
• If you cite primary and/or secondary sources in your paper, your paper must have a Bibliography page, which contains the name and citation of the primary evidence and secondary scholarship you have read in preparing your paper. Include material which you read, but chose not to include in your paper. For example, you might read 10 letters of Cicero or 5 articles about him, but only quote two letters and 2 articles in your paper. I still want to see everything you've read.
  
  
  • A bibliographical entry for primary evidence should include the name of the author and text you are citing.
  • A citation entry for primary evidence should include the author's name, work and the page of the work to which you refer or which you quote.
  • A bibliographical entry for secondary scholarship should include the name of the author, title of the book or article, name, year and volume number of the journal in which articles appear as well as the first and last page of the article [e.g., J. Bigshot, A New Light on Arpinum, 93 Journal of Roman Studies (1983) 27-54], place and year of publication for books [e.g., J. Bigshot, Ciceronian Studies (Oxford, 1993)].
  • A citation entry for secondary scholarship should include all the information included in the bibliographical entry, as well as the page your cite refers to. [e.g. J. Bigshot, A New Light on Arpinum, 93 Journal of Roman Studies (1983) 27-54, p. 42.
  • The Bates College Statement on Plagiarism contains excellent information about citation format. You should refer to it and ask me about any questions you have about citation form which the Statement doesn't answer. Other good books to consider are Kate L. Turabian. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (University of Chicago Press) [this is what I used in college] and University of Chicago Press. A Manual of Style [this is what I used in grad school - either is great, Turabian is easier to use than the Chicago Manual].

  The papers you write in this class will be essays, not research papers. However, you may want to use articles we've read for class in them. If you do, you need to cite them and include them in a bibliography. You will certainly need to refer to, and hence cite primary sources in our essays. Include these in your bibliography as well.

  
  

• Your paper must have a cover page which contains the following information:
  • Your name.
  • The paper's title.
  • The paper's word count.

Unless I have overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I will assume that your failure to conform to the formal paper requirements indicates that you don't care about your paper. Since I do give care about it, this would be a rather unfortunate assumption for me to have when grading your paper. 

Remember:

• Cover Page
• Page Numbers
• Title
• Bibliography
• Your Name
• Word Count