Sappho’s Unconventional Notion of Love

Explore Sappho’s unconventional notion of love (as a person-to-person choice) as against the social constructions of gender, hierarchy, and marriage in Classical Greece. A successful paper will do the following (among other things): 1. Demonstrate a serious engagement with the question and the works under discussion and reflect a depth of knowledge gained from class readings and class discussion. For example, works discussed should be properly contextualized chronologically and geographically, and analyzed in good detail using the proper vocabulary terms to the best of your ability (information available from your readings in the Sayre textbook and other sources). Make your argument through the works you discuss, not around them. That is, analyze the works, pulling evidence from them, rather than talking generally about them. 2. Have a clearly distinguishable and appropriately complex thesis. 3. Have a coherent structure. 4. Follow the conventions of academic writing (MLA style, mechanics, grammar, academic tone, etc.) 5. Produce ideas that go beyond a superficial reading. 6. Have textual evidence (exact quotations, accurately cited summary, descriptions of the work of art, etc.). 7. Use appropriate scholarly sources to buttress your argument. Wikipedia, as useful as it is, is NOT a scholarly source. If you want direction, use the internet. If you want proof, use the library (including its databases). Most of your sources should be PRINT sources or their equivalent (such as articles digitized from print sources, such as JSTOR). Scrutinize any web sources, because I certainly will.