Interested in pursuing original research in Classics and graduating “With Honors”?  

Classics majors with a minimum of a 3.200 GPA overall (both FSU and Cumulative, not rounded to the third decimal place), a 3.400 in coursework in the major, 60 hours of college credit, and at least two semesters remaining before graduation are eligible to write an honors thesis and receive honors in the major at FSU. Honors in the Major is open to all major tracks in the Classics Department.

Guidelines for Honors in the Major

An acceptable length for honors theses for all of the majors in the Classics department will be 7000-10,000 words/20-30 pages excluding notes, appendices, maps, images, and bibliography. You should defend your thesis one full month before graduation (note that this is earlier than the University’s deadline), and you must agree in writing to a series of deadlines, in which written work is submitted regularly throughout both terms of course credit. Two missed deadlines will place you on probation, and the third disqualifies you from completing an honors thesis in the department. Theses should be of a high quality, both in terms of the writing and in terms of the argument. It might be helpful to think of your honors thesis as something you would submit as a writing sample to apply to graduate school, or as the expanded version of an article you would submit to The Owl, Florida State’s Undergraduate Research Journal.  

In order to write an honors thesis, you will register for two terms of Honors Work with a supervising professor (usually CLA 4909). Before your first of these two terms, you will choose a topic and work out a timeline with an advisor. These deadlines are departmental, and are earlier than the deadlines set by the Honors in the Major program. You are responsible for meeting the University’s deadlines as well.