course archive

ART & ARCHAEOLOGY

ART 100 Introduction to the History of Art: Ancient to Medieval
Nino Zchomelidse
MW 10:00 am - 10:50 am

A survey of Western art from ancient civilizations through medieval with an emphasis on the major artists and works of art. Includes some side glances at non-Western traditions.

ART 312 The Arts of Medieval Europe
Nino Zchomelidse
TTh 12:30-1:20pm

This course covers a thousand years of magnificent artistic productions that have played a fundamental role in the development of Western consciousness, from late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. Through a combination of historical and thematic approaches - ranging from the apocalyptic imagery of early Medieval manuscripts to the monumental programs of Gothic Cathedrals - students are introduced to fundamental analytical tools for the study and appreciation of Medieval art as it is considered both in its original socio-historical context and its universal significance.

ART 430/HLS 430 Medieval Art
Slobodan Ćurčić,
Th 7:30 – 9:50 pm

Byzantine Monasteries: art and architecture of the monastic sphere within the Byzantine Empire and the related lands, from c. 400 to c. 1500. The aim is to understand the main religious, social, and cultural factors within the Byzantine monastic sphere, and the manner in which these factors were expressed in art and architecture created directly under monastic auspices.

ENGLISH

ENG 301 The Old English Period
Sarah M. Anderson
TTh 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm

This course introduces the chief features of Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons in the British Isles from about 450-1100 CE, and places OE within the broader development of the English language. By the end of the first week, we will start reading riddles, sermons, biography, charms, letters, law, and elegiac verse. Although the goal of the course is to enable students to read OE with a dictionary, we will also examine the historical contexts of OE literature and, as time permits, engage with the material setting of these texts in the books that have preserved them.

ENG 305 The Medieval Period
Kathleen M. Davis
TTh 10:00 am - 10:50 am

Law and Literature to 1500: This course examines the interrelation of law and literature as attested in medieval English texts. We will read romances, poetry, tales, and chronicles alongside statutes, wills, charters, and constitutions, and study their mutual concern with theories of representation, interpretation, and authority. We will consider struggles over the power of testimony and the written word, whether enacted by kings, bishops, heretics, merchants, or fairies. We will attend throughout to the interdependence of legal and literary conceptions of property, rights, jurisdiction, ownership, exchange, and the legal subject.

ENG 514 Middle English Religious Literature: Devotion and Negation
D. V. Smith
M 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm

How do religious texts express what cannot fully be named? We will answer this question by examining medieval and contemporary forms of negation: apophatic expression in pseudo-Dionysius, and Denis Hid Divinity; forgetting in The Cloud of Unknowing, Heidegger, and Adorno's Negative Dialectics; logical negation in medieval dialectics and Hegel; the aporia in Plato, Derrida, Marguerite Porete and William of Heytesbury's Insolubilia; renunciation and disavowal in Julian of Norwich, the Ancrene Wisse, and Freud; loss in the Harley Lyrics and Pearl; iconoclasm in Lollardy; devotion in the vernacular.

FRENCH & ITALIAN

ITA 303/MED 303 Dante's [Inferno]
Simone Marchesi
T 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm

Intensive study of the "Inferno", with major attention paid to poetic elements such as structure, allegory, narrative technique, and relation to earlier literature, principally the Latin classics. Course conducted in Italian with highly interactive classes and preceptorials.

German

GER 324/NES 220/JDS 220 Topics in Germanic Literatures: King Arthur of the Germans
Nikolaus Wegmann
TTh1:30 pm - 2:50 pm

One of the most intriguing characteristics of the Middle Ages is the fascination of various aristocratic cultures with the story of King Arthur and his knights, the so-called Matter of Britain. This course examines the Arthurian milieu as it took shape in medieval German literature. How did the Germans interpret the French invention of Lancelot? Why were the Germans more interested in Arthur's knights than in his origins or kingship? What work did these stories do politically, culturally, aesthetically?

GER 508 Middle High German Literature: An Introductionr
Sara S. Poor
W 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm

Introduction to Middle High German language and literature 1100-1300. Selections from Arthurian romance (Parzival, Tristan), epic (Nibelungenlied), lyric poetry (Minnesang), and mysticism (Meister Eckhart, Mechthild von Magdeburg). Additional readings on history and culture also examined.

HISTORY

HIS 343/CLA 343 The Civilization of the Early Middle Ages
TTh1:30 pm - 2:20 pm

The course will focus on the emergence of medieval civilization from the hey-day of the Roman Empire to about 900 A.D. It will examine the transformation of Roman civilization under the impact of Christianity, and the symbiosis of barbarian and Roman in the west to form a new Christian society of very different culture, associated with radically new social structures and ideals. It will also set this development against that of the neighbors of Western Europe--Byzantium and, later, Islam. The goal is to understand this development and also to relive it.

HIS 544 Seminar in Medieval History
William C. Jordan
T 9:00 am - 11:50 am

Reading and research seminar on rural society in northern Europe in the High Middle Ages. Reading knowledge of French required and of German and Latin encouraged.

Medieval Studies

MED 227/HUM 227 The World of the Middle Ages
Rob C. Wegman, Peter G. Jeffery, D. V. Smith
MW 8:30 am - 9:50 am

An introduction to medieval culture in Western Europe from the end of the classical world to 1400. The course focuses on themes such as theories of writing and reading; subjectivity, autobiography, allegory; anthropology, cartography, cosmology; relations between and among Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; hagiography, romance, encyclopedia; university, monastery, heresy; arts of building, arts of rule, arts of dying; religious and secular orders; political and natural catastrophe; crusade, chivalry, piety; classicism, humanism, renaissance; the modern institutions of the Middle Ages. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

NES 220/HIS 220/JDS 220 Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Middle Ages
Mark R. Cohen
TTh 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm

An introduction to the history and culture of the Jews in the Middle Ages (under Islam and Christendom) covering, comparatively, such topics as the inter-relationship between Judaism and the other two religions, interreligious polemics, political (legal) status, economic role, communal self-government, family life, and cultural developments.

SPANISH & PORTUGUESE

SPA 301/MED 301/COM 358 Topics in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age: Women in Medieval and Golden Age Spain
Marina S. Brownlee
TTh 11:00 am - 12:20 pm

An investigation of the literary treatment of women in medieval and Golden Age Spain. We will consider works written by both male and female authors, thus enabling us to compare ways in which women saw themselves with the ways in which they were seen by men. A series of oral reports will focus on the position of women in society, thus allowing a comparison of literary images versus actual social roles.

SPA 538 Seminar in Golden-Age Literature: Bodies of Evidence - Medieval and Early Modern Spain
Marina S. Brownlee
Th 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm

Bodies of evidence, bodies of knowledge, the body politic, bodies-inviolate to mutilated, saintly to criminal- are figured in Medieval and Early Modern Spain in ways that reveal not only cultural paradigms, myths and obsessions, but also some widely divergent realities. This course explores the body and its inscription, the history of the senses, of sexuality and gender in a variety of works and contexts.