Honors Study at Connecticut College reflects the highest academic or creative achievement of a student in his or her chosen discipline or interdisciplinary program. Students who have maintained, during their sophomore year and the first semester of their junior year, a 3.5 average in their major courses at or above the 200 level may apply for Honors Study in Classics.
In addition to the guidelines set out for all honors work at the College, the Classics, Arabic, and Jewish Studies Program has several additional requirements.
Recognizing that different types of investigations require different modes of presentation, the Classics, Arabic, and Jewish Studies Program does not set a specific page length for theses. Regardless of the focus of the project, several common requirements must be met. Every honors thesis must situate the topic within a body of scholarly literature and engage with the scholarship on the topic. Theses must also offer an original argument or approach to a topic. Finally, students must draw upon their knowledge of ancient Greek or Latin (or both) as they complete their thesis projects. To meet these requirements, honors theses in Classics should usually run about 80 pages in length.
As honors theses engage with and contribute to scholarly debates within the field of Classics, theses must follow established practices of classicists. References to primary literary sources are noted within the body of the paper using standard abbreviations (see the Oxford Classical Dictionary). When appropriate, these sources should be quoted in the original Greek or Latin, with English translations offered for each quotation. Translations may come from published sources or be of original composition by the student. Footnotes and bibliographies should follow the style guidelines set out for the American Journal of Archaeology.
Interdisciplinary studies in Classics are welcomed. As the discipline of Classics aims to investigate all aspects of Greco-Roman antiquity, research in Classics intersects with other disciplines such as history, philosophy, theater, art history, and the sciences, to name just a few. Classics majors are encouraged to make connections with other disciplines and unite their interests with honors work in Classics. When writing an honors thesis within the Classics Program, the primary adviser must be a member of the Classics Program faculty. For interdisciplinary topics, the secondary adviser/reader may be selected from outside of the Classics Program. If the second reader is from outside the Classics Program, a third reader must be selected from the Classics Program faculty.
The final component of a research project is the dissemination of one’s findings. The written thesis is one method by which ideas are shared with the scholarly community; public presentation is another. In conjunction with completing the written version of the honors thesis, students pursuing honors in Classics must also make a public presentation of their research findings. Every spring, candidates for honors in Classics will have the opportunity to present their work at an event sponsored by the Classics Program.