Architectural, sculpted, and pictorial arts from the twelfth through the early fifteenth century North of the Alps. Gothic art in its relationship with urbanization, patronage, rise of literacy, changes in devotional attitudes, and new kinds of visual experiences. {H/A} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MW 2:40-4:00 p.m.
Brigitte Buettner
The reawakening of the arts in Italy with the formation of new religious organizations and the gradual emergence of political units will be studied through theoretical and stylistic considerations in sculpture, beginning with the work of the Pisani, and followed by the revolutionary achievements in painting of Giotto (in Padua and Florence) and Duccio (in Siena) which will inform the art of generations to come. A revival of interest in the Liberal Arts tradition and the Classical past beginning at the end of the Fourteenth Century in Florence, leading to the period known as the Renaissance during the following century in which such architectural designers as Brunelleschi and Alberti, sculptors such as Donatello and Verrocchio, and the painters Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, and Botticelli, among others, will be examined within the context of the flowering Humanist courts in Florence, Urbino, Mantua, and Ferrara. {H/A} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MWF 11:00-12:10 p.m.
Craig Felton
Requirements/Departments (Art)
English
MW 1:10-2:20 p.m.
Nancy Mason Bradbury
In "La Querelle des Femmes" medieval and Renaissance writers (1350-1650) took on misogynist ideas from the ancient world and early Christianity: woman as failed man, irrational animal, fallen Eve. Writers debated women's sexuality (insatiable or purer than men's?), marriage (the hell of nagging wives or the highest Christian state?), women's souls (nonexistent or subtler than men's?), female education (a waste of time or a social necessity?). In the context of the social and cultural changes fuelling the polemic, we will analyze the many literary forms it took, from Chaucer's Wife of Bath to Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, women scholars' dialogues, such as Moderata Fonte's The Worth of Women, and pamphlets from the popular press. Some attention to the battle of the sexes in the visual arts. Recommended: a previous course in classics, medieval or Renaissance studies or Women's Studies. {L} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
MW 1:10-2:30 p.m.
Ann R. Jones
A study of the language of Anglo-Saxon England (c.450-1066) and a reading of the Old English elegies.
{L/F} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
TTH 10:30-11:50 a.m.
Craig Davis
His art and his social and literary background. Emphasis on the Canterbury Tales. Students should have had at least two semester courses in literature. {L} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
TTH 10:30-11:50 a.m.
Nancy Mason Bradbury
The Old English poem Beowulf may be the most expressive document we possess for the cultural world of Europe from the 5th through 8th centuries AD, even though it survives in a single copy from c. 1000. Our interpretation of this poem has been enhanced by discoveries of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial in East Anglia, a huge 6th-century hall in Denmark, and other significant finds. This seminar will examine the way archaeological investigation, historical research and literary criticism all combine to create a more revealing, though still controversial, "assemblage of texts" from this formative phase of early European society. Enrollment limited to 12 juniors and seniors. (E) {L/H/A} 4 credits
{L/H/A} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
T 3:00-4:50 p.m.
Craig Davis
Requirements/Departments (English)
An introduction to the main historical, socio-political, artistic, and intellectual currents that shaped pre-modern France , a period whose values and concept of "literature" were dramatically different from our own. Close readings of the major literary forms of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries, such as Arthurian romance, lyric, farce, mock epic, and essay, viewed in their cultural context. Students will acquire a critical framework and a vocabulary for discussing and analyzing these texts in French. We will also consider manuscript images, architecture, and modern films. Topics may include: chivalry and the courtly code, love in the Western tradition, oral culture and the rise of literacy, humanism, scientific inquiry, religious reform. Basis for the major. Prerequisite: a course of higher level than FRN 220 or permission of the instructor. {L/S/F} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
TTH 1:00-2:20 p.m.
Nicolas Russell
What genres did women practice in the Middle Ages and in what way did they transform those genres for the own purposes? What access did women have to education and to the works of other writers, male and female? To what extent did women writers question the traditional gender roles of their society? How did they represent female characters in their works and what do their statements about authorship reveal about their understanding of themselves as writing women? What do we make of anonymous works written in the feminine voice? Reading will include the love letters of Héloise, the lais and fables of Marie de France, the songs of the trobairitz and women trouvères, and the writings of Christine de Pizan. {L/F} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MW 1:10-2:30 p.m.
Eglal Doss-Quinby
First Year Seminars
An exploration of the religious, political, social, and cultural impact of the Crusades on the Muslim World from 1095 CE until the present day. Special attention is given to the variety of Muslim reactions to the Crusades, to the effects of the Crusades on the course of Islamic history and religious thought, and to the cross-cultural interactions and influences. The enduring legacy of the Crusades in modern times including the rise of religious discourses that were foundational for the preception and treatment of the "other" in Christian and Muslim cultures. Religious and historical texts, films, novels. WI {H/L} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
TTH 10:30-11:50 a.m.
Suleiman Mourad
The premodern contacts, imagined and real, between East and West. Cultural, religious and technological exchanges between China, India and Rome. The interactions between these sedentary societies and their nomadic neighbors. The rise and fall of nomadic empires such as that of the Mongols. Trade, exploration and conquest on the Eurasian continent. We will sample pertinent travel accounts as a form of ethnographical knowledge that reproduces notions of cultural identity and civilization. {H} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
MW 2:40-4:00 p.m.
Richard Lim
224 The Early Medieval World, 400-1000 (L)
The Mediterranean world from the fall of Rome to the age of conversion. The emergence of the Islamic worlds, the
Byzantine state and the Germanic empire. Topics include the monastic ideal, Sufism and the cult of saints; the
emergence of the papacy; kinship and kingship: Charlemagne and the Carolingian renaissance, the high caliphate, and
the continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire; literacy and learning. The decline of public authority and the dominance
of personal power in societies built on local relations. {H} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MW 11:00 a.m.-12:10 p.m. (Lec.); F 10:00-10:50; 11:00-11:50 a.m. (Disc.)
Joshua Birk
225 Early Medieval World 1000-1500 (L)
Topics include agricultural technology and population expansion; organization of the countryside for the market; growth of a money economy, international trade and an urban culture; universities; chivalry and romantic love; scientific method; law and bureaucracy, growth of professional government; struggles between papacy and empire, evangelical awakening, feminine mysticism, the laity and the Inquisition; expulsion of the Jews; crusades against Muslims and Greek Christians; from Romanesque to Gothic. The course concludes with the Black Death. {H} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
MW 11:00 a.m.-12:10 p.m. (lecture); F 10:00-10:50 a.m.; F 11:00-11:50 a.m. (discussion)
Joshua Birk
227 Aspects of Medieval European History (C)
Topic: Crusade and Jihad. Religious Violence in the Islamo-Christian Tradition
This course juxtaposes the medieval understanding of religious violence and war in the Western Christian and Islamic traditions with modern understandings of those same phenomena. It traces the intellectual development of these concepts during the Middle Ages, and how medieval conceptions of violence are reinterpreted and redeployed in the 19th through 21st centuries. {H} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
MW 2:40-4:00 p.m.
Joshua Birk
The experiences of women, peasants, heretics, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, lepers and other groups on the margins of a Europe that increasingly defined itself as Christian. Did the high Middle Ages mark the emergence of a persecuting society? Differences in the treatment of these various outcast groups, their depiction in art, their legal segregation, and their presumed association with demonic activity. {H} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MW 2:40-4:00 p.m.
Joshua Birk
Detailed study of Dante's Inferno in the context of his other works. Conducted in Italian.
{L/F} 4 creditsOffered Fall 2009
TTH 10:30-11:50 a.m.
Alfonso Procaccini
An in-depth thematic study of Boccaccio’s literary masterpiece, Decameron, including its style, structure and historical context. Particular attention will be devoted to Boccaccio’s singular interest in how imagination effectively combats the various constraints and even tragic aspects of life such as the plague or certain forms of social, political, psychological oppression. In what way do Boccaccio’s novelle provide every reader the same “diletto e utile consiglio” which he was so intent on offering his gracious ladies? Conducted in Italian. Open only to senior Italian majors or by permission of the instructor. {L} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
MW 1:10-2:30 p.m.
Alfonso Procaccini
Latin
212 Introduction to Latin Prose and Poetry (L)
Practice and improveemnt of reading skills through the study of a selection of texts in prose and verse.
Systematic review of fundamentals of grammar. Prerequisite: LAT 100y, or the equivalent
{L/F} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MWF 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Nancy Shumate
213 Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid
Prerequisite: 212 or permission of the instructor. {L/F} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
TTH 1:00-2:50 p.m.
Thalia Pandiri
A study of selected orations, with attention to style and persuasive techniques; supplemental readings from the letters, which shine another light on the life and character of an ambitious Roman gentleman in one of Rome's most tumultuous periods. {L/F} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MW 2:40-4:00 p.m.
Maureen Ryan
A study of the "Augustan" content of selected poems of Horace and Book I of Livy's History of Rome. Do these texts anticipate or promulgate Augustan ideology? Special attention to Romanness and moral decline; the prescription of gender roles; Rome's imperial mission. {L/F} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
TTH 1:00-2:50 p.m.
Nancy Shumate
None in 2009-2010
Philosophy
124 History of Ancient and Medieval Western Philosophy (L)
A study of Western philosophy from the early Greeks to the end of the Middle Ages, with emphasis on
the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, and some of the scholastic philosophers. {H/M} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
MFW 11:00 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Susan Levin
Religion
The Qur’an, according to the majority of Muslims, is God’s word revealed to Muhammad through angel Gabriel over a period of 22 years (610-632 CE). This course will introduce students to Islam’s scriptural text: its content, form, structure, and history. It will also situate the Qur’an in the larger frame of the genre of Scripture: What does it mean for a text to be revealed? Study of the Qur'an as a 7th-century product, as well as the history of reception of this text. Analysis of its varying impact on the formulation of Islamic salvation history, law and legal theory, theology, ritual, intellectual trends, and art and popular culture. {H/L} 4 credits
Offered Spring 2010
MW 9:00-10:20 a.m.
Suleiman Mourad
Spanish and Portugese
250 Survey of Iberian Literature and Society I (L)
Topic: Sex and the Medieval City.
This course examines the medieval understanding of sex and the female body within an urban context. We will read medieval medical treatises on women's sexual health by physicians such as Ibu Sina. We will also address women's role as physicians in the medieval Iberian Peninsula. Texts include The Book of the Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sina, Milagros de Nuestra Señora by Gonzalo de Berceo, El Collar de la paloma by Ibn Hazm, Medical Aphorisms by Maimonides, and La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas. Enrollment limited to 19. {L/F} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2009
TR 1:00-2:50 p.m.
Maria Estela Harretche
Special Studies
404 Special Studies
Admission by permission of the instructor and the Medieval Studies Council
4 credits. Offered both semesters each year.
408d Special Studies
Admission by permission of the instructor and the Medieval Studies Council
8 credits. Full year course; offered each year.
Requirements/Departments (Special Studies)
430d Thesis
Admission by permission of the Medieval Studies Council.
8 credits. Full-year course; offered each yearPlease consult the Director of Medieval Studies for the application procedure.
Requirements: the same as those for the major, except that the thesis (eight credits) shall count as one course (four credits) in the area of concentration. The subject of the thesis should, preferably, be determined during the second semester of the junior year. There shall be an oral examination on the thesis.
Requirements/Departments (Honors)
      |