Senior Thesis: Deadlines and Hints

Here is the schedule for the senior thesis for this academic year (2009/2010):

Please send the name of your adviser, a thesis title, and a one-paragraph description to Jill Arbeiter (jilla@princeton.edu) by noon on Monday, November 9, 2009.

By noon on Monday, November 23rd you should give Prof Domingo Gygax a 500 word proposal for your thesis, with a separate page of bibliography. This proposal must be signed by your thesis adviser.

On the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of December each of you will defend your proposal in front of a small faculty panel. These faculty members will help you think through the implications of your proposal and the various directions in which your research could go. These defenses last about 20 minutes.

A first chapter is due to your adviser by Monday, February 1st 2010 (the first day of the second semester).

Three copies of your senior thesis (two bound and one unbound) are due in the department office by 5:00pm on Thursday, April 15, 2010.  The Department of Classics does not recommend any particular bindery so you should shop around. You will need to print out your final copy according to the binder’s specifications (i.e. with a wide left margin). Keep in mind that if you leave things to the last minute, the binders may well charge you more. You are responsible for these costs. Some students have opted to print out and bind their final version double sided.  Do not, however, print the unbound copy double sided.

PENALTIES for LATENESS:  Three (3) percentage points for each day or part of a day, starting at 5:00pm on April 15th (departmental policy).  Extensions have only been granted under very dire circumstances (e.g. you are actually in the intensive care unit)

Past copies of senior thesis can be found in East Pyne 161, the Classics Seminar Room. There is a schedule on the notice board outside the room, so that you can see when the room is not being used.  Timing and organization are key factors in completing a successful senior thesis:  Start now and work regularly and in an organized way.  Allow time for possible illnesses or other losses of time along the way.  Get your books early or you may find them checked out of the library or missing.  Ideally you should have a complete draft ready for Spring Break (i.e. by around the Ides of March). That will give you plenty of time to make sure that your overall argument makes sense. Contradictions can easily creep in as you edit and change your mind about things over time.

You need to take time to proofread your final manuscript carefully. It is best to get help with this task from friends and family. Lots of typos can make even the most brilliant argument look sloppy.  Keep track of your bibliography throughout your period of research. This is another area in which it is easy to lose references that can be time-consuming to rediscover.  Stay in touch with your adviser at every stage of the process. Do not hesitate to ask questions if you are ever unsure about a source or an argument.

The senior thesis is weighted at 35% towards honors in the Classics Department.

Note that this is a project that you should be working on steadily throughout your senior year. If you try to do it all in the second semester you are setting yourself up for a very difficult time, and perhaps even for a disaster. You do need to complete a senior thesis in order to graduate in June. Failure to complete the thesis by the university's official deadline of May 3, 2010 nearly always results in a grade of F.

Bibliography Recommendations:

Your bibliography should be divided into two sections:

(a) ancient and/or primary sources
(b) modern or secondary sources

For section (b), it is recommended that the following form be used:

Champlin = E.J. Champlin, Final Judgments: duty and emotion in
         Roman Wills, 200 B.C.-A.D. 250 (Berkeley 1991)

Kaster = R. Kaster, Guardians of Language: the grammarian and
        society in Late antiquity (Berkeley 1988)

Fantham (1) = R.E. Fantham, “The missing Link in Roman literary
        History,” CW 82 (1998-89) 153-163

Keaney = J.J. Keaney, “Aristotle, Athenaion Poloteia 20.5: Genitivus
        Partitivus or comparationis,” ZA 28 (1979) 73-74

[You will soon learn that CW is an abbreviation of Classical World: somewhat arcane is the knowledge that ZA stands for Ziva Antika (Living Antiquity).]

Abbreviations:

Greek authors and works: the standard list may be found in Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon xvi-xli.

Latin authors and works: a list in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, ix-xx.

Periodicals: a complete list of abbreviations of Classical periodicals may be found at the beginning of any of the recent issues of J. Marouzeau L’Annee Philologique (SC. 0459.125 in Firestone 3-11-G): for non-classical periodicals, if a standard or convenient and clear abbreviation is not available (e.g. JournModPhiloh=Journal of Modern Philology), it will be necessary to use the full title.

Forms of citation:

Ancient authors: (1) If an author is represented by only one work, the title of the work need not be mentioned; e.g. Thuc., 6, 48, 3 = Thucydides, Book 6, Chapter 48, Section 3. (2) If an author is represented by more than one work, the (abbreviated) title is also necessary; e.g. Verg., Aen. 6, 114-116 or Arist., Pol. 5,4,1304b20.

Modern authors: the following forms of citation are recommended (with reference to section 1 above):

Fantham (1) 45-35
Fantham (2) 154 n. 2
Champlin 32f.
Keaney 73-74

Footnotes:

• Footnotes should be consecutive throughout and not numbered in a separate series for each chapter.
• Footnotes may be placed at the bottom of each page or at the end of the work.
• You are advised to restrict the number of footnotes as much as possible:
  • single, double, or triple references to ancient or modern authors can be put into the text within parenthesis, e.g. (cf. Verg., Geor. 1.212, Aen. 1.12, with the comment of Servius ad.loc.).
  • footnotes proper should be used if there is a longish list of references which cannot conveniently be put into the text or in your reference requires some comment, which comment is not precisely germane to what you are discussing in the text.