NYU Professor Ostashevsky, Eugene GWA syllabus PDF

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this is the syllabus for Writing as Exploration from Professor Ostashevsky, Eugene...

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New York University Liberal Studies Fall 2021 Name of Course and section # Global Works in Society: Antiquity (GWA-UF 101). Meeting Days/Times: sec 33: MW 12:30pm-1:45pm, BOBST LL149 sec 53: MW 3:30pm-4:45pm, 25W4 C-4 sec 25: MW 4:55pm-6:10pm, 25W4 C-4 Professor Eugene Ostashevsky. Instructor Contact Information Preferred Method of Contact and Availability: email to schedule meeting. Office Hours: MW 2-3:15, by Zoom (university policy). Office Location: 726 Bway, 6th floor, room 667. Email: [email protected] Zoom address:…. WORDS AND ORDERS Course Description This course is a selective introduction to intellectual history of the period between the early first millennium BC and the rise of Islam. It focuses on the way ancient peoples thought about power, social organization, divinity, cultural difference, gender difference, choice, rationality, and language. Our range of reading will include ancient Mesopotamian historiography, books from the Hebrew Bible, Greek historiography, tragedy and philosophy, Chinese historiography and philosophy, the Gospels, Christian martyrology and theology from North Africa, and Islamic apocalyptic writings. Our aim will be not only to analyze textual terms, ideas, and arguments but also to relate them, as much as possible in a survey, to cultural settings and historical changes. The goal will be to think of concepts such as god, state, reason, choice, law, etc., historically: as contingent phenomena that form, reform and deform in accordance with social and political contexts. In plain English, the course tries to get you to think about how people who are not like you think. Learning Objectives This course is an intensive, with a lot of very different readings, and you should expect it to make considerable demands on your time. On the upside, it will make you think about difficult and existentially relevant things. A crucial skill you will learn is close reading, an interpretive technique where the reader tries to deduce the explicit and implicit meanings of a text. You will also learn to distinguish among different interpretive methods, especially between religious interpretation, where the text communicates a truth that is not limited by historical conditions, and secular interpretation, which treats the text as composed by people in a particular historical setting as a means to achieve certain ends. Finally, you will be asked to write papers consisting of clearly stated arguments whose evidence derives from the language of your sources. Required Text(s) available at NYU Bookstore (Use these translations only, please). The New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV translation, fifth edition, Oxford UP, 978-0190276089.

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Herodotus: The Histories, tr. Robin Waterfield, Oxford World Classics, 978-0199535668. Sophocles: Antigone, tr. Ruby Blondell, Focus Classical Library, 978-0941051255. Plato: Meno and Phaedo, tr. Alex Long, Cambridge UP, 978-0521676779. Confucius: Analects, tr. Edward Slingerland, Hackett, 978-0872206359. Laozi: The Daodejing, tr. Philip J. Ivanhoe, Hackett, 978-0872207011. Sima Qian: The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records, tr. Raymond Dawson, Oxford World’s Classics, 978-0199574391. Augustine: On Free Choice of the Will, tr. Thomas Williams, Hackett, 978-0872201880. Selections from these books are posted on the class website: James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, third ed. (Princeton UP, 1969). A. C. Piepkorn: Historical Prism Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, vol. 1 (U of Chicago P, 1933). Euripides: Medea, tr. Cecelia Eaton Luschnig. Han Fei Tzu: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson (Columbia UP, 1964). The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity. The Qur’an, surah XVIII. Grading An A on a paper in my class means that the work is outstanding: original in conception, clearly argued, supplied with sufficient evidence, and correctly documented. There are few As. There are some A-‘s. Most good papers get Bs. Paper #1: Paper #2: Midterm: Quizzes, presentations, etc.: Final:

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Exceptional participation and preparedness add a third of a letter grade to your final grade (i.e., BB+); the contrary subtracts it. Schedule/Calendar: Subject to change, like most things under the sun. Sept 8. Enheduanna, The Exultation of Innana (Pritchard, 579-82). Sept 13. Piepkorn: Ashurbanipal cylinder, edition B. Hebrew Bible: Book of Jonah (pp. 1319-1323 in your Bible, make sure to also read introductions). Sept 15. Hebrew Bible: Book of Daniel, 1-6; Jeremiah, 52:1-30; Isaiah, 45:1-14. Cyrus Cylinder. Sept 20. Exodus, 1-18. Sept 22. Exodus, 19-25, 32-35, and 40. Genesis 22 (logic of sacrifice, see also temple service in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur). Sept 27. Herodotus, Book 1, paragraphs 1-14, 23-24, 26-45, 53-55, 71-75, 79-80, 84-95, 107-140 and 178-216.

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Sept 29. Herodotus, Bk 2: 1-4, 2.35-2.37, 2.43-45, 2.50. Bk 3: 38, 80-87, 150-160. Bk 4: 1-7, 46, 59-89, 97-98, 102-143. Oct 4. Herodotus, Bk 7, 4-105, Bk 8, 40-119. Oct 6. Euripides, Medea. Oct 11. No class. Oct 12. Medea, review. Oct 13. Monday. Midterm. Oct 18. Sophocles, Antigone. Oct 20. Plato. Meno. Oct 25. Plato. Phaedo. Oct 27. Plato. Phaedo. Nov 1. Plato. Phaedo. First paper due. Nov 3. Confucius. Nov 8. Laozi. Nov 10. Laozi. Nov 15. Zhuangzi and Hanfeizi. Nov 17. Sima Qian. Nov 22. Gospel of Mark, 1-8. Jewish Messianism, handout. Matthew, 1-2. Nov 24. Gospel of Mark. Nov 29. Gospel of Mark. Dec 1. FINAL. Dec 6. Augustine on free will. Dec 8. Augustine on free will. // Zoom meetings for paper. Dec 13. Final Class. Qur’an: Surah XVIII, The Cave. // Zoom meetings for paper. Second paper due online at 12 noon December 20th. Early papers greatly appreciated. No late papers, please: I have only 72 hours to grade everything, and if I don’t get your paper, I won’t be able to pass you.

Quizzes There will be occasional classroom quizzes to make sure you are doing the reading. They will take ten mins and consist of simple identification questions. Paper Guidelines, Submission and Lateness For as long as we are meeting in person, your papers are to be printed out and handed in during class. School printers are busy and often broken: if you don’t have your own printer, please make

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sure to print out your paper several hours before class. Unexcused paper lateness will result in a lower grade: a third of a letter grade per 72 hours of lateness. Papers handed in after they have been returned to the rest of the class will be accepted only in the case of documented medical emergency. The Writing Center Students who feel they could benefit from additional writing help are encouraged to utilize the NYU Writing Center, which will be open for both remote and in-person consultations. Class Participation The in-person class will take place in a charmingly windowless NYU room with everyone wearing masks. This is not an ideal situation for discussion, but we will make the best of it. You are always expected to do the reading and answer the reading questions, when these are assigned, before the class starts. My in-class teaching method employs a lot of questions; I sometimes take volunteers, and sometimes cold-call on people. Sometimes we break up into small in-class groups. Sometimes I ask students to contact each other outside of class and prepare group presentations for the next session. Students who cannot attend in-person for a portion of the semester due to documented illness, visa problems, or quarantine should email me as soon as they find out about the absence. While I currently cannot promise hybrid or Zoom sessions, I will certainly provide you with make-up readings and assignments to help you stay afloat. If your absence is undocumented or you do not do the make-ups, your absence will be noted down as unexcused. Absence Policy You are responsible for doing the work even if you cannot come to class. If you miss a quiz for medically documented reasons, you will be given a make-up assignment. An unexcused absence for a quiz will result in no credit. If you plan to miss any classes for religious observance this semester, please email me their dates by the end of the first week of the term. You will not be penalized for such absences, but I may require you to submit any work due for these classes in advance. More than three undocumented absences, even if none falls on a quiz date, will add a minus to your final grade and make me contact the Advising Office. Six undocumented absences result in an automatic fail. Students who enroll in the class after the first session are expected to make up the work they missed. Academic Integrity : Plagiarism The American education system wants students to be conscious of intellectual property rights, and demands that instructors be extremely punitive in cases that it regards as “plagiarism.” This does not just mean that you will fail if you are caught glancing at someone else’s exam notebook, or passing off as your own an essay you downloaded or copied from a library book. It means that you have to be constantly on your toes not to commit plagiarism unintentionally. Even when you do

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research, you must keep careful record of what ideas and word combinations you found where, and carefully distinguish these from your own thoughts and reactions. When you are writing a paper, you must constantly ask yourself whether what you are saying needs to be documented in some way. Again, take great care to distinguish your words from those of your sources. Not one unattributed word cluster should be found online. This is no joke. I’ve had lots of cases of plagiarism that I suspect may have been partly or wholly unintentional, but they still wound up hurting the student, sometimes very deeply. A law school wrote my Dean in 2019 to ask why I gave their applicant a D in 2008, and I had to tell them I gave her a D because of plagiarism. It was a student who plagiarized in such a creative and complicated way that, had she just used quotation marks and footnotes, she would have easily gotten an A. My guess is that her law-school application, submitted eleven years later, was rejected. Also, I once had five grandmothers die during one finals week, so please… spare grandma. If you satisfy the requirements for this class, you will get at least a B or B-. To get a significantly lower grade, you have to make an effort to slack off (people have… and how!). The only way you can really, really screw up is if you regularly cut class, or if you cheat or plagiarize, even unintentionally. So don’t do it.

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NYU also asks me to add this: “Plagiarism is the word-for-word reproduction of another writer’s work or ideas; paraphrasing without proper attribution also constitutes plagiarism. Neither will be tolerated in this class. Please see the discussion of plagiarism in the Academic Integrity Guide for more detailed information. Penalties for plagiarism range from a failing grade for a paper or a course to dismissal from the University. Plagiarism is not, however, the only form of academic dishonesty: Any violation of or attempt to circumvent a course, program, or university academic policy is considered a breach of academic integrity. Examples include, but are not limited to, cheating on an examination; attempting to gain an unfair advantage over other students on graded work; or facilitating any of these acts on the part of other students. In addition, course materials such as syllabi, assignments, and test questions belong to the instructor and may not be reproduced or shared in any fashion without the instructor’s explicit written permission. Should remote instruction become necessary, remote learning on online platforms includes a commitment NOT to: 1) record video or audio, 2) take screenshots, or 3) quote texts or chats from the course without explicit consent from the instructor and fellow students. It forbids capturing, reposting, sharing, or distributing in any form other participants' conversations, opinions, or course materials (including presentations, quizzes, and exams).” Eating and Drinking in Class Please do not eat or drink in the classroom even between classes because of (a) mask mandate; (b) spills; (c) cockroaches; (d) other students’ allergies. Student Accessibility [LS Statement] Students who believe that they may need accessibility accommodations in this class are encouraged to contact the Moses Center for Student Accessibility at (212) 998-4980 as soon as

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possible to better ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion. For more information, see the Moses Center website: https://www.nyu.edu/students/communities-andgroups/student-accessibility.html. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) [LS Statement] Liberal Studies shares NYU’s commitment to “an inclusive community in which every member feels they have a rightful place, is welcome and respected, and is supported in their endeavors.” We expect students to work toward this shared goal. You are invited to bring forward any concerns about diversity, equity, or inclusion to your instructor, your advisor, or other faculty member. For further resources that might be useful to you, see https://liberalstudies.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/liberalstudies/student-life/diversity-equityinclusion.html, and NYU’s resource page: https://www.nyu.edu/students/student-diversity--inclusion.html. Bias Response Line [LS Statement] The Bias Response Line (BRL) provides a mechanism through which members of our community may share experiences and concerns regarding instances of bias, discrimination, or harassing behavior that occur within our community. The BRL is located in the Office of Equal Opportunity and will be monitored by experienced administrators. NYU students, faculty, administrators, and staff may report incidents to the BRL by calling 212-998-2277 or emailing [email protected]. Wellness Exchange [LS Statement] The Wellness Exchange is the University's extensive health and mental health resources designed to address your needs. You can call a private hotline 212-443-9999, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which will put you in touch with a professional who can help to address day-today challenges as well as other health-related concerns. These might include medical issues, academic stress, depression, sexual assault, anxiety, alcohol and other drug dependence, sexually transmitted infections, eating disorders, and others. In-Classroom Safety Protocols [LS Statement] Students must adhere to all NYU safety protocols in the classroom, including mandatory maskwearing, social distancing, and completing a daily COVID screener on the day of class. You will also be assigned a seat for the duration of the term at the beginning of the semester. Please consult the NYU Returns website and the Classrooms and Classes page for further information. Remote Instruction Contingency Plan [LS Statement] In the event that the university mandates a switch to an all-remote mode partway through the semester, we will initially plan on meeting as a full class over Zoom during our regularly scheduled class period. The instructor will email the class as soon as possible to confirm these details and the Zoom link. Following that first class meeting, further modifications to the weekly schedule during the period of remote instruction will be posted to NYU Brightspace as needed. A switch to fully remote instruction will not change the assessment components or percentages on which your final grade will be based, though it is possible that the format of certain assignments will need to be adapted for

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a fully remote environment. Any such modifications will be communicated to the class ahead of time.

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