The following courses allow students to explore interests in the premodern world and fulfill requirements for the Medieval Studies Major/Minor/Graduate Concentration.
CWL / MDVL / SCAN 252: Viking Sagas in Translation
Prof. Horsfall
TR 9:00-10:20
Studies Old Norse-Icelandic literature: kings' sagas, family sagas, mythical-heroic sagas, and romances. Texts and lectures in English.
This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Spring 2023 for:
- Cultural Studies - Western
- Humanities – Lit & Arts
ENGL 202 / CWL 253 / MDVL 201: Medieval Literature and Culture
Prof. Stoppino
TR 2:00-3:15
Introduction to the diverse literatures and cultures of the global Middle Ages (approximately 500-1500 CE). Students will read works by medieval authors in Modern English translation, with particular attention to placing works in their historical and material contexts.
Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Spring 2023 for:
• Cultural Studies - Western
• Humanities – Lit & Art
HIST / MDVL 247: Medieval Europe
MWF 2:00-2:50
From the fragmentation of the Roman Empire to the formation of territorial monarchies, this course surveys the events, innovations, crises, and movements that shaped western Europe in a pivotal era known as "the Middle Ages." Topics will include the spread of Christianity, the migration of peoples, fundamental changes in economic and social structures, the development of political institutions, the role of women, and the cultural achievements of different communities (the monastery, the town, the court).
This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Spring 2023 for:
- Cultural Studies - Western
- Humanities – Hist & Phil
LA / ARCH 222, ARTH 219: Islamic Gardens and Architecture
Prof. Ruggles
Meeting days and times: recorded lectures; hourly section meetings will be arranged
From the 7th century to the present, the Islamic world extended at various times from Spain, across northern Africa, the Middle East and Balkans, to Central and South Asia and Indonesia. The built environment is characterized by architecture centered on large open courtyards, often gardened, and a sophisticated system for organizing, irrigating, and cultivating the landscape. The themes for the course, which is both topical and historical, include the greening and settlement of the desert, the formation of an Islamic culture with a distinct visual vocabulary, the agricultural landscape, gardens of myth and memory, architectural and garden typology and symbolism, and architecture as a theater for political display.
ARCH 407: Rome, City of Visible History
Prof. Grossman
T/Th 11:00-12:20
Rome, the so-called Eternal City, has also been dubbed “the city of visible history.” While perhaps primarily associated in popular imagination with antiquity, Rome has always been a vital, changing, and challenging urban center from the time of the Roman Republic to the present. Medieval and Renaissance Rome saw the city’s form and architecture develop in new ways, following the social, political, and spiritual needs of its inhabitants. Italians from around the country and diverse immigrant communities made their homes in Italy’s capital in the twenty and twenty-first centuries. Recently, as one of Europe’s centers of design and culture, Rome has seen both glitzy monuments by starchitects and grass-roots projects from emerging practitioners, as well as significant efforts to protect and renew the city’s layered heritage within the contemporary cityscape.
This course considers the city of Rome from its foundation until today, using critical strategies for understanding urban environments as well as individual monuments. Rome’s many layers allow for the study of multiple periods and styles of architecture (and how those intersect) within a single urban fabric, and the effects of politics, economics, religion, culture, and societal change upon architecture and vice versa. We will look at this history of Roman urbanism and architecture with the aid of a variety of evidentiary materials: individual monuments, maps, photographs, prints, primary texts, and films. We will emphasize critical histories of the city, analyzing why differing architectural monuments and ensembles were created and how they have affected the lives of Romans over time.
3hrs; sophomore standing required; for architecture students ARCH 210 is prerequisite for this course. Students from Art History, Art and Design, Classics, Medieval Studies, History, and other disciplines are welcome!
Prof. Trilling
MWF 12:00-12:50
Geoffrey Chaucer has been called “the father of English literature,” and he is one of the earliest English-language authors whose poetry was recognized and appreciated during his lifetime. He was also a page, a courtier, a diplomat, a civil servant, a soldier, a pilgrim, a customs agent, a politician, and the first person to be buried in Westminster Abbey’s famous Poets’ Corner. Informed by this varied and sometimes checkered life experience, Chaucer explores a wide range of themes in his considerable literary production, including the social context of spirituality, different versions of love and sexuality, relations of class, gender, and power, and the role of art in society. In this course, we will encounter some of Chaucer's most famous works, including Troilus and Criseyde and selections from The Canterbury Tales. But we will also take the time to look at some of his shorter poems, including The Parliament of Fowls, The House of Fame, and some lesser-known lyrics and ballads. Texts will be read in Middle English, and part of the course will involve learning to work with this earlier stage of the English language—no prior experience is required.
HIST / EALC 420 China under the Qing (1644-1911)
Prof. Chow
W 1:00-3:50
This course addresses several fundamental questions in modern Chinese history concerning political and ethnic identities, women, tradition, and the modalities of modernity. Being the last dynasty under the rule of an originally non-Chinese people, the Qing state is as important as it is intriguing in its impact on the history of China in the past three centuries. What was the impact of the Manchu regime on the course of Chinese history in the late imperial period? How did the Manchu rule change the social, economic, political, and intellectual landscapes of China after a period of more than half a century of profound economic, intellectual, and cultural change in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries? Why did the Manchus, a small ethnic group, succeed in conquering the vast Chinese empire, and how did they maintain their control for over two and a half centuries? Were the Manchus engulfed by the powerful cultural tradition of China (sinicization), or were they successful in resisting the latter? What was this “cultural tradition”? How important was it in creating a sense of "Chineseness" and a "Chinese" life style for several hundred millions of people living in different dialectal and ethnic communities?
Was the Manchu state just another imperial regime in the "dynastic cycle"? Or when the Qing attempted to change its bureaucratic practice in order to cope with a host of problems created by commercialization, export surplus, population explosion and massive migration, it was knocking at the door of modernity? Was Qing China confronted with a similar array of problems shared by the most advanced European states in the same period? How successful was the Qing state in its attempt to deal with the problems of food supply, depletion of natural resources, peasant rebellions, and its senile Manchu warriors? Were women subjected to even more oppression under the Qing? Why and how did the Manchu regime fail to meet the challenges from within Chinese society and from the intrusion of Western imperialist powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Finally, why did the Chinese abandon the imperial system they had embraced for over two thousand years? To answer these questions, we will investigate broad trends of change in politics, population, the economy, thought, culture, social structure, and the relationship between the state and local elites. Class participation is crucial and students need to have some background in Chinese history.
ITAL / MDVL / CWL 413: Dante’s Comedy
Prof. Stoppino
TR 11-12:20
Enter the world of Dante through his masterpiece, the Divine comedy. We will explore the three realms of the afterlife, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, as well as the medieval historical, religious, and cultural context of Dante’s work. Taught in English with special classes in Italian for Majors and interested Minors. No knowledge of Italian required.
SLAV 417: 11th-17th Century Russian Literature and Language
Prof. Brenier
TR 12:30-1:50
Historical grammar, origin, and development of the East Slavic/Russian literary language, survey of literary genres of Old Russian Literature.
3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: Graduate standing; for undergraduates, completion of or placement beyond RUSS 301-RUSS 302; or, consent of instructor.
ENGL / MDVL 514: Seminar in Medieval Literature: Ecocriticism and Chivalric Romance
Prof. Barrett
M 12:00-2:30 pm
The knight errant is the archetypal protagonist of chivalric romance. He is also a participant in a vast actor-network that links humans to countless more-than-human entities: the warhorse he rides, the steel armor he wears, the mixed oak forest he explores, even the calfskin page and iron gall ink that record his adventures. In this seminar, we will use ecocriticism to examine medieval romance’s enmeshment with natureculture, paying particular attention to the form’s articulation of the gendered and racialized wilderness discourse we still inhabit in the twenty-first century. With one exception (the Old French Lais of Marie de France, which we will read in a facing-page edition), we will be working with well-glossed Middle English texts: Four Romances of England (Havelok the Dane and Bevis of Hampton), The King of Tars, The Middle English Breton Lays (Sir Orfeo, Emaré, Sir Gowther, and Sir Cleges) and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Students will also be asked to purchase Greg Garrard’s Ecocriticism (2nd ed.). All other readings will be provided in PDF format. Assignments will include short reading responses and the obligatory term paper.
MDVL 500 / HIST 542: The Materiality of Manuscripts in the Middle Ages
Prof. Mathisen
M 10:00-11:50 am
Traditionally, historians have valued medieval manuscripts as a source of texts and art historians have seem them as a source of illuminations and illustrations. But there also is a third, less well studied and appreciated, dimension of manuscript studies: a manuscript’s material nature, irrespective of the texts and illumination it contains. This comprises such factors as a manuscript’s size, page layout, ordering of texts, writing materials, binding, and subsequent reuse. These considerations have much to tell us about how, why, and for whom a manuscript was created, its place of manufacture, and the purpose that it served. This seminar will focus on case studies of how manuscripts from various places and periods during the Middle Ages can be appreciated for their purely material aspects. In the process, making use of local archive resources, students will gain hands-on working experience dealing with the materiality of medieval manuscripts.