New W Course: Think Like a Roman

Ellen Lee of the Classics Department has successfully proposed a new writing-intensive course, CLASS 1640: Think Like a Roman:

"The course explores the ancient world through the lens of cognition, examining a variety of socio-historical topics, like emotion, spatial and temporal perception, color cognition, and memory and mnemotechnics, as viewed through ancient literature and modern research in cognitive psychology. Through written assignments and group discussion, students practice interpreting psychological research and Classics scholarship that looks at ancient texts through the lens of cognitive science. In addition to studying ancient cognition, students reflect on their own learning, while engaging with research onmetacognition to develop evidence-based practices for improving their writing and study habits. This course is designated as a Writing Intensive course, and students will conduct an independent research project that applies cognitive methods to ancient literature, history, or art." 

Students write a weekly journal entry, alternating between reflections on course material and on their own writing and scholarship. They write an essay in which they read, summarize, and analyze a scholarly article in the field of Classics that makes use of cognitive methods and an essay in which they read, summarize, and interpret a psychological study, then they further develop one of these essays. And they write a long essay in a couple of drafts.