Ancient History Majors? (1 Viewer)

Scorch

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Are there any Ancient History majors around the place? I'm a second year, doing Ancient Imperialism, Historiography: Ancient and Modern and Greece in the First Millennium BC (Archaeology but still) this year (and Intermediate Italian too :p). Anyone else doing those this semester?
 

izzy88

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Here!
I'm third year ancient major. I'm doing ancient imperialism and research issues in roman history (aka Cleopatra).

How's historiography? I did it last year with Julia but i hear you've got Ben this semester...
 

Scorch

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Ancient Imperialism? How're you finding it? I liked Alistair better actually.

And Ben Brown is brilliant in his own mind-warping way, much cooler in tutes than in lectures. It has been a new development of the last week that we now get breaks in our 2 hour lectures with him. =/ But the course is fascinating, itself.
 

izzy88

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alistair is great, but i'm more interested/understand Rome better- I think Kathryn's great (i also have her for the cleopatra subject). :)

How many people are there in the historiography course?

when i did it last semester there was about 22 of us all up so we didn't have lectures, but more everyone just sitting round a big board table and discussing the readings for two hours, then we had a one hour tut (with about 11 people) and we just discussed more...lots of discussion! it was really good actually because everyone wanted to be there/had done the readings.

but it sounds as thought its being run quite differently this semester- i must say ben is brilliant- but, especially in tutes, i find it annoying how he talks all the time- tutes aren't really supposed to be that way! (well that was what happened in tutes i've had with him in the past)
 

Scorch

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Yeah, Ben is brilliant, but he tends to take the lead in tutes. The Historiography course has about 50 in it this semester, though the number in the lectures is slowly dwindling. It's an interesting course, and I easily rate it above any archaeology courses.

Alistair is great, yeah. Kathryn is good but nothing compares to Tatum. Nothing.
 

izzy88

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Tatum and Kathryn are very very different!

Tatum is great to listen to, and his lecture style is cool- but his lack of anything technological got to me last year. There was no reader, none of the readings were put on e-reserve so you always had to go and photocopy from reserve- which was not great when there's over 100 other people scrambling for the readings and the unit outline was quite hard to understand.
But yeah- agree that he is fantastic to listen to/knows his stuff- and he constantly brings it back to the present which i like- makes me feel i'm studying something relevant!

I still like Kathryn though- very organised, knows her stuff and goes out of her way to talk to you/ help get readings etc approachable. But i've had kathryn for about 4 su bjects now so i'm used to her/how she works :)

hmm- i wonder if anyone else is doing an ancient major on here? :p
 

44Ronin

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I'm doing both Historiography and Ancient Imperialism.


Alistair is great, yeah. Kathryn is good but nothing compares to Tatum. Nothing.
Alistair is good but I reckon he needs to stay closer to source material. Too much time spent in regression.


I enjoy Ben Brown's Historiography the most. He is really excellent. He is truly captivating. Jonathan is a really great tutor.

The lectures for Ancient Imperialism are fairly good.


I have Hannah Mitchell as a tutor for Ancient Imperialism. My opinion is that she simply critiques people's reading of source material and tries to get people to mind-read her rather vague interpretations of them. She doesn't relate source material to any real understanding of the topic. She doesn't welcome thought that is independent of her own understanding and perspective. Her tutoring style is dry, boring and stale. She is an efficient, calculating and industrious scholar, but isn't as good a teacher as she is a scholar far as I'm concerned.

Her tutorials are basically her enforcing how she interprets the reading material. Recently she's been wasting valuable time gossiping about weddings and other such nonsense. I really want to change tutes but it's impossible.
 
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Scorch

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I have Hannah Mitchell as a tutor for Ancient Imperialism. My opinion is that she simply critiques people's reading of source material and tries to get people to mind-read her rather vague interpretations of them. She doesn't relate source material to any real understanding of the topic. She doesn't welcome thought that is independent of her own understanding and perspective. Her tutoring style is dry, boring and stale. She is an efficient, calculating and industrious scholar, but isn't as good a teacher as she is a scholar far as I'm concerned.
I had her last semester and now have her this one and I agree entirely.

Her tutorials are basically her enforcing how she interprets the reading material. Recently she's been wasting valuable time gossiping about weddings and other such nonsense. I really want to change tutes but it's impossible.[/quote]

woah wait! you may be in the same tute as me. tuesday 11am?
 
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