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California State University Long Beach’s Classics program would like to announce that we are making our upper division Latin reading classes available to students via the web. These are not “online” classes; they are classes conducted with students in real time. People who are interested in joining our classes would attend class sessions virtually through a web interface, and thus anyone who wants to participate would have to be online during the specific class time.

For Spring semester 2014, we are offering two reading courses, Cicero and Caesar. The semester begins on Tuesday, January 21, and concludes on Friday, May 23, with Spring Break during the week of March 21. Each class meets three hours per week and earns a student 3 semester units. The prerequisite for each class is intermediate Latin; i.e., students will be expected to have facility with noun and verb morphology and an introductory knowledge of Latin grammatical constructions.

The Cicero class will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays, 5-6:15 pm, Pacific Standard Time. We will read the First Catilinarian speech, selections from Cicero’s letters, and selections from De Officiis (On Duties). Assignments will include translations with a parsing/grammar (noun/verb constructions) component, an oral/written report, and written summary and critical comment on scholarly articles. There will be one midterm and the final exam. The final grade will reflect the above components as well as in-class participation.

The Caesar class will meet on Tuesdays and Thursday, 5-6:15 pm, Pacific Standard Time. We will read Book I from Caesar’s De Bello Gallico. Assignments will include prepared translations with parsing and identification grammatical forms and constructions (at times parsing to be submitted in written form); options of summary and critical comment of a scholarly article, or research and classroom presentation on a historical, geographical, or cultural (e.g. Celtic) topic covered in B.G. Book 1. The final grade will be assessed on the basis of in-class translation participation, written/oral assignments, two midterm exams, and a final exam.

Anyone interested in joining our classes is encouraged to contact the course instructors directly for information on registration, technology, and course logistics. The Cicero class will be taught by Dr. Kathryn Chew (kathryn.chew@csulb.edu). The Caesar class will be taught by Dr. Elaine Wida (elaine.wida@csulb.edu). Though these are regular CSULB courses, registration will be handled through CSULB’s College of Continuing and Professional Education (http://www.ccpe.csulb.edu/ContinuingEd/).