Courses
Spring 2016
Art History and Archaeology
3310 Greek Art and Archaeology (Classical Foundations)
Susan Langdon. MWF 11-11:50 Tate 110
3530 Late Medieval Art. Writing Intensive
Anne Stanton. (can be taken as lecture tutorial ARHA 7960 for graduate credit) Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:00-10:50 Middlebush 13.
4520/7520 Art and Archaeology of Early Medieval Europe
Marcus Rautman. TR 9:30-10:45, McReynolds 82
Our course explores a time of dramatic culture change brought about by interaction of the western Roman empire with its northern neighbors. Local groups greeted Rome’s “civilizing mission” with varying enthusiasm, and between the 4th and 10th centuries articulated complex identities as Celts, Gauls, Huns, Vandals, Goths, Alamans, Franks, Langobards, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, and others. Traditional questions of conflict, economy, ethnicity, and migration are given fresh urgency by current events in Europe. Our challenge is to investigate the material evidence of these critical centuries as a way to understand how different peoples dealt with the heritage of antiquity, interacted with each other, and shaped the visual traditions of the later Middle Ages.
4460/7460 Roman Sculpture (Classical Foundations)
Marcello Mogetta T/Th 12:30-1:45 McReynolds 82
Classics
4590/7590 Medieval Latin
Dennis Trout. Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30-1:45
English
4166/7166 Shakespeares on Film (also Film Studies 4166/7166)
William Kerwin. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11:00, Tate 110
This course will consider how Shakespeare has figured within the history of film. What happens when Shakespeare’s work moves from the dramatic theater to the movie theater? How does the meaning of the text change depending on the medium of expression? What are the opportunities and limitations of Shakespeare on film? What has film made possible for modern audiences of Shakespeare, and how has that evolved over recent decades? In this class we will work through those questions as we look at five plays by Shakespeare and thirteen or fourteen film versions of Shakespeare plays. We will study films representing the paradigms of ‘theatrical, realist, and filmic’ Shakespeare productions, we will consider Shakespeare translated to genres like the western and the musical, and we will look at the recent explosion of “internet Shakespeares.” We will engage in both close readings of the written texts and various strategies for considering the shift to film. Early in the course we will explore formal tools of film study, and students will learn and apply basic methods for shot analysis, using specific film terminology, and make an argument as to how a director’s choices in filming reflect her relationship to the meaning of the text. Later in the course we will attend to culturally-based adaptations of Shakespeare that move further from the point of origin in numerous ways, in general becoming less concerned with “fidelity” and more with creative adaptation. We will look at ‘global Shakespeare,’ and we will ask how contemporary films of Shakespeare explore issues of gender, sexuality, religion and ethnicity. Students will write a shot analysis, two short response papers, and a final long paper. There will be a midterm exam.
4210/7210 Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Emma Lipton. Mondays and Wednesdays 2:00-3:15
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales provide an introduction to a broad range of medieval literature, revealing the surprising variety of genres and forms in the period, from the bawdy fabliaux, to the courtly romances, to the theological lessons of saints' lives. With each of the tales told from the perspective of a person from a distinctly different social position within society, Chaucer's tales allow us to study competing notions of community in the Middle Ages and the ways that social class shaped individuals' values. We will study the tales in relation to both social and religious politics, and investigate such topics as governance and authority, the construction of individuality, chivalry, fin amor ("courtly love"), gender and sexuality, and forms of spirituality. The course will focus both on close analysis and on the ways that major historical and cultural issues shaped literary texts.
4167/7167 Major Authors 1603-1789, John Milton. Selections include Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and Paradise Regained.
David Read.
8210 Seminar in Middle English Literature: Crusading in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
Lee Manion. Mon. 1-3:30 p.m., Middlebush 206
When Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, he told Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile “to spend all the profits of…my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem,” calling for a religious war directed not to the West but to the East: a crusade. This disconcertingly “medieval” notion of holy warfare would continue to shape the seemingly enlightened Renaissance to an enormous extent. In this course we will explore the conceptual challenge of the crusade across its various registers—theological, social, economic, penitential, and personal—by focusing on literary representations of crusading in English texts both during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Throughout the semester we will consider the implications of the continued ideal and vocabulary of holy violence on other religious groups, particularly Jews and Muslims, across the medieval-Renaissance divide.
Readings may include: selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the romances Richard Cœur de Lion, Guy of Warwick, and The Siege of Jerusalem, crusade sermons and treatises, Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Shakespeare’s Othello, and selections from Elizabeth I, James I, and Francis Bacon. Supplementary and secondary readings will give us insight into related topics such as travel, pilgrimage, and the religious vow, while others will reveal how images of the Jew, Saracen, and Turk played a significant role in the religious and political discourse of Catholic and Reformation England.
History
1570 Survey of Early Modern Europe
John Frymire. 1350-1650 MWF 10-10:50
2530 Ukrainian History from Medieval to Modern Times
R. Zguta. T/Th 11-12:15
2004 Topics: Pirates and Piracy
K. Bowers. MWF 12:00-12:50
Pirates have long captured the popular imagination and remain a romanticized staple of Hollywood. Beyond these legends, piracy was a real and continual threat to all sea trading nations. This class will examine piracy from the ancient to the modern world, with a particular focus on the early modern Mediterranean and Caribbean during the “Golden Age” of piracy. Spain’s rise to imperial power in the sixteenth century encouraged waves of corsairs, pirates, privateers and freebooters who sought profit and freedom from state law on the high seas. We’ll look at a variety of firsthand accounts of piracy as well as historical interpretations of the motivations for and impact of piracy.
3510 The Ancient Greek World (Classical Foundations)
Ian Worthington. T/Th 11-12:15
3600 Later Middle Ages
A. Mark Smith. T/Th 9:30-10:45
4004/7004 Topics: Plagues and Contagion in Pre-modern Europe
Kristy Wilson Bowers. MWF 9-9:50
This course is an examination of both the medical and social contexts of disease and contagion from the ancient through the early modern eras. Diseases studied include leprosy, plague, smallpox and syphilis. The focus is on some of the most noted diseases afflicting Europeans (and others around the world) so that we may situate the concepts of health, disease, contagion and medicine within a broader context of shifting social norms and attitudes in the pre-modern era. Course will include analysis of primary sources and discussion secondary works, including interdisciplinary efforts to incorporate recent bio-archeology and microbiology (aDNA) studies.
4640/7640 Age of the Reformation
John Frymire. Tuesday 6-8:20
8541 Studies in Medieval History
Lois Huneycutt. Monday 6-8:20 pm
This course is designed to acquaint students with ongoing historical discussion and dialogue and current issues in medieval history. This semester we will be focusing on the Norman peoples and their expansion, primarily from the founding of the duchy in 911 until the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. In addition to examining debates about the Normans in the Duchy, we will look at the role of Normans in England, Southern Italy and Sicily, and the Latin East. We will also look at literary and artistic developments, and read primary sources including chronicles, saints' lives, and panegyric poetry. Students will be responsible for weekly readings, reviews, and will write one longer (12-15 page) historiographical papers examining a question of their own choosing.
Honors College
2112H The Honors Humanities Sequence.
Medieval and Renaissance. MWF 11:00 Ellis Auditorium
Religious Studies
2005 Topics: Heretics, Inquisitors & Sects
Jill Raitt. Tuesdays 2-4:30 A&S 233
2510 Introduction to the New Testament (Classical Foundations)
Daniel Tallent. MWF 9:00-9:50 A&S 236
3200 Hinduism (classical foundations)
Signe Cohen. MWF 12:00-12:50 Strickland 213
8005 The Historiography of Women’s Religious Communities.
Rabia Gregory. Thursdays 2-4:30 A&S 312A
Romance Languages
French 4420/7420 French Renaissance (Taught in French)
Megan Moore.
French 8080 Old French Language (Taught in English)
Tuesdays 3-6
Spanish 4420/7420
Charles Presberg, Spring 2016 Classes
Devoted to poetry of the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque Periods, from the traditional Castilian lyric and Spain’s refashioning of the Petrarchan sonnet to humorous verse (jácaras) and the epic. Readings and instruction in Spanish.