course archive

ART & ARCHAEOLOGY

ART 205 Medieval Art in Europe
Francisco Prado-Vilar
MW 3:30 – 4:20
P01 2:30 – 3:20
P02 12:30 – 1:20

ART 205 explores European art from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages, with an emphasis on cultural context, thematic content and the functions of art in Medieval society. Students will become familiar with selected major monuments and styles in a range of media, as well as with the primary textual sources on which our understanding of Medieval art is based.

ART 430/HLS 430 Seminar: Medieval Art
Francisco Prado-Vilar
Th 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm

The Enchanted Gaze. During the 11th and 12th centuries, the Romanesque gave visual expression to the intimacy of the monastic cloister, the haunting landscapes of the pilgrimage roads, and the magic quests of chivalric romances. Taking a cue from a celebrated author of the period, Chrétien de Troyes, this course is designed as a quest, punctuated by a series of encounters with major monuments of Romanesque Art, monuments that will be rendered unfamiliar and endlessly fascinating by a constant shifting of analytical perspectives. The final reward will be the discovery of a treasure trove of formal and conceptual challenges.

ART 535/HLS 535 Problems in Late Antiquity and Byzantine Art and Architecture
Slobodan Ćurčić
Th 7:00 – 9:50

This seminar entitled – “Accessing saints in the Eastern Christian World (ca. 300-ca. – 1500)” – will explore the impact of the cult of saints on the development of architecture and art in the world of Byzantium and its sphere of influence. The role of pilgrimage, specifically the accommodation of pilgrims in churches and its effects on church planning will be explored. Along with major symbolic changes, this may have been a key factor in the shaping of Byzantine church architecture. Literary, archaeological and other forms of evidence will be scrutinized in hopes of identifying thus far overlooked in scholarship.

ART 540 Art & Culture/Middle Ages & Renaissance
Sarah B. Benson
W 1:30 – 4:20

Rome and the Invention of Tourism. As seat of the Catholic Church and center of a crumbled empire, Rome was a destination for both pilgrims and cultural tourists. Our exploration of the visual culture of travel will include architecture, antique collections, and souvenir images and artifacts. Critical questions will include how travelers’ experiences were mediated by visual records and textual descriptions of the city; how urban planning reflected travelers’ expectations; and how the packaging of Rome for visitors informed the emerging practice of tourism elsewhere. Readings range from the medieval Marvels of Rome to Hawthorne’s Marble Faun.

CLASSICS

CLA 332/MED 332 Women and the Classical Tradition
Janet M. Martin
TTh 11:00 – 12:20

A study of medieval and modern women and men as gendered agents of the transmission, imitation, and adaptation of Greco-Roman literature and ideology. Our primary emphasis will be on the Latin Middle Ages and on 19th and 20th century America. Representative issues addressed include: is there a tradition of women’s writing?; classical themes, ancient authors, and changing perceptions of Antiquity as sources of inspiration for women writers; gender, race and class in the curriculum and the profession of Classics; and classical education and social action.

ENGLISH

ENG 304 Medieval English Literature in Modern Version
Sarah M. Anderson
TTH 1:30 – 2:20

This class will present readers with some forms of heroic experience as represented in many of the best texts of medieval English literature. We will pay due attention to familiar standards of masculine heroic excellence as we find them in Beowulf and the Arthurian tales, and we will also consider immensely popular-but less exalted-heroic figures like Robin Hood. Finally, we will complicate this model by turning to the problems of female authority during the medieval period and by considering how exploration and commercial travel change the man-or woman-of action into a cultural anthropologist avant la letter.

ENG 511 Special Studies in Medieval Literature: Dying Medieval
D.V. Smith
M 1:30 – 4:20

The literature of death and dying in the English Middle Ages; the theology and ethics of dying, this history of death; the economics of death; forms of memorial; the ars moriendi. Liturgical practices, penitential actions, consolation, and the place of death in important Middle English texts will be considered with the aid of theoretical and theological writing from Augustine and Boethius to Baudrillard and Gillian Rose, and historical surveys by Jean-Claude Schmitt, Jacques Le Goff, and Patrick Geary, among others.

FRENCH & ITALIAN

FRE 332 Topics in the French Middle Ages and Renaissance: Gender and Sexuality in Medieval France
Sarah Kay
TTh 1:30 – 2:50

How closely do social categories of masculine and feminine correspond with the subjective experience of desire? This course will be based on a series of key medieval French texts that use magical or mythical themes to explore gender roles and the possible tensions between them and sexuality. Drawing on anthropology, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and queer theory, it will analyze themes such as the gift, the wound, the gaze, and performance, which are central both to these texts and to subsequent European concepts of gender and sexuality.

HISTORY

HIS 367 English Constitution
William C. Jordan
MW 10:00 – 10:50
P01 TBA

To explore the development of institutions and theories of government in England from the Norman Conquest to about 1700.

HIS 444/MED 412
William C. Jordan
T 9:00 – 11:50

This course explores ideals and practices with regard to political order in various principalities in Europe in the period 1100-1350

HIS 543 The Origins of the Middle Ages
P.R. Brown
W 9:00 – 11:50

Reading and research on the transition of ancient into medieval society, religion, and culture are the focus of this course.

MEDIEVAL STUDIES

MED 412/HIS 444
William C. Jordan
T 9:00 – 11:50

This course explores ideals and practices with regard to political order in various principalities in Europe in the period 1100-1350