A Guide to Doing the abstracts        HUM 302

 

An abstract is a summary of points to be made in a larger paper.

 

Goals:

 

To have you engage in research and come to your own, independent, even if preliminary, view about some aspect of our course material.

 

To have you learn some of the basic strategies of academic writing, especially in the humanities.  In this course, we'll work on writing an argumentative essay, as distinct from, e.g. an encyclopedia article or a book review.

 

To have you develop your writing skills.  (If there are too many mechanical errors, you will be asked to correct and resubmit your paper in order to get a mark.)

 

To have you work out some preliminary thoughts about a subject that you may want to take up in a more elaborate way in the research paper or annotated bibliography (or both). 

 

Procedure:

 

Do all of the assigned reading and take note of whatever may be relevant.  Take some time to brainstorm: look for opportunities to compare and contrast; seek out key terms and concepts; think about the source(s); anticipate objections.

 

Assume that your reader is another student in the class who has been doing the reading but has not given as much thought to the point you want to make.  While you should use a formal, academic tone, there is no need to retell the details of the assigned texts to this person.

 

Make a single, clear statement of the point you want to make (your thesis statement) and then back up that statement with arguments (in the first paragraph) and specific evidence, which support the arguments (in the subsequent paragraphs).

 

The first paragraph should give your argument in a nutshell.  Do not cite specific evidence in it.  Subsequent paragraphs should detail the argument.  The conclusion should look beyond your paper to associated issues.                    

 

Do as much of the thinking as possible by yourself.  Avoid quotations - they represent someone else's thinking.  Paraphrase rather than quote, but cite the relevant passages.

 

Keep the paper within 500 words.

 

 

Mechanics:

 

Put all identifying information (e.g. your name, the date) on one line at the top of the first page.  Do not use a title page.  A short, descriptive title will be useful.

 

For any specific or disputable information or a quotation, cite your source. Do not use footnotes to cite the ancient texts.  For instance, if you use Thucydides for specific information, write (Thuc. 1.48) at the end of the sentence before the period to indicate that your information stems from the Thucydides, book one, section 48. (Subsequent citations of the Iliad can omit the "Thuc.".)  Use a bibliography only if you are reacting to some work of scholarship.

 

Consider information gleaned from footnotes in your texts as background information.  It can save you from errors, but it should not play an active role in your papers.  The same is true of class discussions.  That is, neither the footnotes nor the discussions should ever be cited.  If specific information cannot be grounded on our texts, or on reading of some identified outside scholarship,  it should not appear in your papers.

 

Check the mechanics of your paper thoroughly for grammatical errors, spelling, and typographical mistakes.  It is even better to ask a classmate to proofread your paper once you have done so.  Feel free to pencil in changes on your typescript.  The most common errors are comma splices, dangling modifiers, and confusions between "it's" and "its".  Be aware that I tolerate split infinitives with difficulty.

 

Double space and use standard margins, font (e.g. Times), and font size, that is, 12 point.

 

Caveats:

 

When referring to events in a text under discussion, use the present tense even if the text narrates them in the past tense.

 

Avoid saying much about the modern world.  You may briefly illustrate a point by mentioning a modern parallel, but remember that you are writing about classical mythology and its context.  We are not interested in your views about the modern world (at least, not for this course).

 

Write nothing about yourself or your opinions; it wastes space.  I know that what I'm reading represents your thoughts.  Instead of writing "in my opinion," write something like "it appears that" if you want to qualify a statement you are unsure of.  Better yet, explain why the statement needs to be qualified.

 

Avoid trite conclusions such as those that claim that the classical world and the modern world are similar.

 

Avoid colloquialisms, slang, and contractions.  Although you are writing as if to your classmates, keep a formal distance.

 

The spellings of classical names vary in this course as they do in our language in general.  You need to get used to this fact.  Some spellings are influenced by the literary transmission through Latin, while others attempt to transliterate Greek spellings directly.  You dont want to bother with all the details, and you can certainly use in your writing any spelling that appears in our course material.  As rules of thumb, remember that C = K (Kastor/Castor), OI = OE (Oidipous/Oedipus), AI = AE (Aiskhylos/Aeschylus), and OS = US (Ouranos/Uranus).

 

The abstract should include the following information:

 

 

 

David MIRHADY                                                     Democratic Rituals: Jury Selection in Athens

 

Jury selection in Athens was informed by considerations more of democracy than of either religion or justice.

            In a Festschrift for Mogens Hansen (Just Rituals, in Polis and Politics 2000), Victor Bers argues that the rigmarole of jury selection described in Ath. pol. 63-66 is best understood as a ceremony aimed at alleviating the Athenians anxiety about the democratic jurors – their general quality, number, and probity (553), and that the ordinary man is likely to have felt that it was not an entirely random process that assigned dikastai (558), i.e., there was a divine element in the lottery.  Bers paper represents a solid advance on previous accounts (cp. Rhodes in Eder 1995), but it seems unlikely that most Athenian citizens had anxieties about democratic jurors, for a great number of them were Athenian jurors themselves.  And the religious origin of the lottery seems a forgotten element inasmuch as the selection system conceded that the lottery could inadvertently select unqualified jurors.  The Ath. pol. itself remarks repeatedly on measures being used that prevented cheating, but that seems a fascination of its author rather than a defining element of the system. 

            The democratic elements of the jury selection process that need clarification are those that depart from the purely random selection of citizens.  They include the age requirement, tribal distribution (including divisions within tribes), and the level of jury pay.  That the dikastai were all at least thirty years old seems akin to the requirement that public arbitrators had to be fifty-nine, that is, the Athenians put some premium on experience.  That the dikasteria included equal numbers from each of Athens ten tribes, randomly divided in ten further divisions, suggests that the Athenians valued geographical distribution.  That the Athenians introduced jury pay at two obols, increased it to three obols, and then stuck with that number, while levels of pay for other forms of democratic participation climbed, suggests that they had some appreciation for a level of payment that would produce what Aristotle describes in the Politics as an appropriate mixture of rich and poor.

            The premiums put on experience, geographical distribution, and the level of jury pay created a dikastrion that was not a purely random selection of the dmos.  Experience no doubt led to better informed judgments, but it also served the democratic value of equality by balancing off judicial power against the physical superiority of younger citizens.  Geographical distribution served the interests of political unity, and jury pay served to redress practical inequities of opportunity to participate among the rich and poor.  The rigmarole that Bers laments evolved over time, as Boegehold has documented (Athenian Agora 28 21-41), with new innovations being added incrementally.  A selection system created de novo would no doubt have been more efficient.  However, the innovations appear always to have served to perfect the randomness of the selection process and thus the democratic principle of equality.