40 Workshop 1

WORKSHOP ONE 8/24/20

General Instructions:

For this workshop, you’ll be organized in a Zoom Breakout Room with a group of approximately four students.  Select a person to be the timekeeper.  This person should keep the group moving along according to the time allotments on the worksheet.  This job is crucial, since without it, the group will not complete the experience which the worksheet is designed to bring about.

This workshop has four parts and is designed for 1 hour and 45 minutes.  There is a 15-minute break and a 15-minute moveable part, which will allow time for the faculty to pop in for a chat.  Please note your start time and end time before beginning.

Although we must use the internet in order to meet, please refrain from using a search engine (e.g. Google) to look up answers to questions.  If a question arises during discussion that you cannot answer without external research, please bring your question back to the seminar for discussion and/or use it as a writing prompt and do your research outside of class.

You will need paper and something to write with for at least one part of this workshop; I recommend making notes — either on a printed copy of this workshop or on your own paper — throughout.

Part I: Introductions (30 minutes)

1. (5 minutes) Please begin by appointing a timekeeper and introducing yourselves.

2. (15 minutes) Working independently, thoroughly review the “Course Information,” “Schedule,” “Communiqué,” and “Resources” pages of the course website at https://romasexualis2020.wordpress.com.  Read the “Student Contract.”  Note any questions.  Begin to think about your responses for your “Student Contract.”

3. (10 minutes) Briefly discuss your interests and aims in this course. What brings each of you to this course?  What are your aims for yourselves this semester?  Discuss any questions you have about the Website, Course Information, and initial Schedule details, etc.

4. (5 minutes). Please develop a response to the requirements and first assignments, noting any questions, concerns, worries, problems, elements that you feel enthusiastic about, etc. You will be asked to report your conclusions.

Part II.  Break (15 minutes)

Part III.  Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Rome (45 minutes)

This course centers topics at once familiar and difficult to pin down.  Please take some time to think about – and discuss – the organizing themes of the course.

1. (10 minutes) What do the terms “gender” and “sexuality” mean? Can you define these words? How have you developed your current understanding of these concepts?  What influences and/or experiences have shaped how you think about these terms?

2. (10 minutes) What is “Ancient Rome”? What do you know about it? What images, connotations, or associations do you have with the idea of ancient Rome?  Where, primarily, do you suppose your ideas about Ancient Rome have come from?  If you have learned about Ancient Rome in a school setting, see if you can think of what ideas about Ancient Rome you’ve encountered outside of the academy.

3. (10 minutes In addition to gender and sexuality, we will also be centering themes of race, ethnicity, social status, and class. Why do you think it is important for us to also consider these vectors of subjectivity in connection with gender and sexuality?

4. (15 minutes) The people and culture of Ancient Rome are not the only focus of this course; we each bring our own subjectivitity and positionality to our scholarly work, and self-reflection will be an important part of what we do. For this part of the workshop, please take five minutes to journal to yourself and then reconvene with your small group and discuss how your positionality as individuals has informed the perspective you bring to our inquiry.

Please look back at your notes from Part One, question 3.  How have race, class, gender, sexuality, social status, and other subjectivities (taken together, your positionality) shaped the interests that brought you to this course?  What advantages helped you arrive here?  What obstacles have you overcome to be here today?  What are your aims for this class?  Why will being self-reflective be important in helping you work toward those aims?

Part Four: Moveable Chat (15 Minutes)

At some point during the workshop time, Jody will pop in for a 15-minute chat.