Courses

MW, 9-9:50 AM

Looking outward and upward at the starry sky, artists, philosophers, and scientists have throughout history consistently sought to situate themselves within the cosmos and to comprehend its heavenly machinery. Creative efforts at understanding or harnessing the significance of the planets and the stars have resulted in architectural wonders such as Stonehenge, zodiacal floor mosaics in late antique synagogues, star pictures in medieval manuscripts, Islamic celestial globes and astrolabes, illustrations for medical treatment, alchemical interventions, observation or imagination of the heavens, and more modern treatments ranging from Joseph Cornell to Star Wars. This course traces the development of scientific, political, spiritual, magical, and intellectual technologies of power that have tied individuals to their views and uses for astronomy. Topics include: stars and rule, astronomy, astrology, Ptolemy’s universe, Christian reinterpretation, Arabic or Islamic contributions, alchemy, magic, medicine, Galileo, science fiction, Chesley Bonestell, Remedios Varo, Kambui Olujimi, androids, Star Trek, and Star Wars.

Tues/Thurs 5-6:15 pm, Cam 160

This course is a general introduction to the artistic traditions of China, Korea, and Japan from the prehistoric period to the modern era. Major topics include funerary art, Buddhist art, and later court and secular art. The course seeks to understand artistic forms in relation to technology, political and religious beliefs, and social and historical contexts. It also introduces the major philosophic and religious traditions—Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto, and Buddhism—that have shaped cultural and aesthetic ideals of East Asia. The lectures survey major monuments and the fundamental concepts behind their creation.

TR, 9:30-10:45 AM

This course examines the development of manuscript illumination following the birth of the codex in ca. 300. Each manuscript studied exemplifies aspects of changing period styles, scientific beliefs, and spiritual identities. The myriad ways that books manifest crafted confessions of medieval ideas and reveal a sensual appreciation for beauty and value will be interrogated through a set of case studies ranging roughly 450-1450. Students in this course will learn the fundamental research skills required to undertake original study of medieval manuscripts.

Th, 3:30-6

This seminar will examine the changing dynamic of everyday religious practice with a focus on later medieval England through the material culture and architecture of the parish church. We will explore ordinary people’s experience of religion in the pre-Reformation period. Classes will be discussion based and each student will undertake a major research project on a topic developed in consultation with the instructor.

MW, 2:00-3:15

The first third of this course will cover the drama of classical antiquity in translation, beginning with Greek plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, then moving from there to the Latin plays of Plautus, Terence, and Seneca. The next third of the course will consider the kinds of performance that displaced (and in some cases transformed) these pagan traditions after the Christianization of the Roman empire; we will likely read a liturgical drama, a morality play, a saint play, some vernacular Biblical drama and a secular farce. The final third of the course will cover plays from the Renaissance, focusing particularly on the commercial London stage of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

MW (12-12:50) + discussion

Studies ways of life and thought in the formation of Western Europe from the 4th century a.d. to the 15th. Includes a survey of the development of society and culture in town and countryside, the growth of economic, political, and religious institutions, and the impact of Muslim and Byzantine civilizations.

MW (12-12:50) + discussion

TR 2-3:15 PM

This course provides an introduction to Japanese literature from earliest times through to the nineteenth century. We will read selections from representative texts and genres, including myth, poetry, prose fiction, memoir literature, drama, and works of criticism. No knowledge of Japanese culture or language is required.

Nizar F. Hermes, Mon 3:30-6:00pm, New Cabell 338

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the literary representation and cultural construction of Black Afro-Arabs and Africans in premodern Arabic sources ranging from boasting epistles (mufākharāt) and travel literature to poetry and—chiefly—popular sagas/folktales (siyar shaʿabiyyah) which turned into pseudo-historical literary and cultural epics/romances. We will sample the works of some of the most “Arab-washed,” literary and intellectual icons in the MENA (SWANA) history, featuring black heroes, poets, and knights. We will situate these texts in such contexts as the Zanj Rebellion (869–883) in Iraq; the reign of Abū al-Misk Kāfūr (946-968), the black slave turned into vizier then sultan of Ikshīdid Egypt and the Levant; the Saharab Afro-Amazigh dynasties of North Africa and al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and their eleventh- century invasion of the West African empire of Ghana; the sixteenth-century Moroccan imperial forays into the Songhai realms and the invasion of Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné, the elite African army of the Afro-Arab sultan Mulāy Ismāʿīl of Morocco (r.1672 to 1727), the great Swahili city-sultanates of East Africa (Mogadishu, Kilwa, and Mombasa), the rich symbiotic Afro-Arab Swahili language and culture, and the landmark abolition of slavery in the regency of Tunisia in 1485. (Also fulfills Africa requirement).

MW, 5-5:50

Western Political Theory from Plato to the Reformation. Among authors covered are Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther. For the medieval period, central themes are natural law, allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and the origins of modern liberal political theory.

Tu/Th, 9:30-10:45

This course traces the history of Jerusalem with a focus on its significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. How have these communities experienced and inhabited Jerusalem? How have they imagined the city and interpreted its meaning? How have Jews, Christians, and Muslims expressed their attachments to this contested space from antiquity to modern times? Our exploration will be rooted in primary texts and informed by historical and cultural context, as well as scholarly approaches to sacred space.

W 2:00-4:30pm

This course will examine how contemporary fiction writers explore religious problems and questions through the lens of the medieval world. We will have the opportunity to learn about religious thought and practice in the Middle Ages through our reading of historical fiction, but we will also ask how these works, set in very different worlds, help us better to understand our own. In this class, we will experiment with different kinds of reading and writing. In addition to the discussion and analysis of landmark recent novels, we will visit UVA’s Special Collections library to study medieval manuscripts first-hand; engage in silent reading as a group (through a “Silent Book Club” session); and participate in a creative writing workshop led by a published author. Students will have the opportunity to write their own short works of historical fiction in lieu of a standard essay, if they so choose.

M 1-1:50 PM

Introduction to reading Old French, with consideration of its main dialects (Ile-de-France, Picard, Anglo-Norman) and paleographical issues. May be taken in conjunction with FREN 5510/8510 or independently. Weekly reading exercises, a transcription and translation exercise, and a final open-book exam. Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin or another romance language. Taught in English.

MW 2-3:15 PM

African saints. Trans saints. Saints’ Lives as media. Saints in material culture and literature and history. Recent academic enthusiasm for medieval saints’ Lives has begun to uncover the usefulness of this genre for gaining deeper understanding of both medieval and modern attitudes toward a variety of topics, from sexuality and sentiments to materiality and foreign cultures. Reading Lives written between 880 and the late thirteenth century, together with the work of some of the most engaging scholars in the field of hagiography studies, we will investigate a variety of issues that resonate with current interests in the broader fields of medieval and French studies. Readings include the Lives of St. Mary the Egyptian (a courtesan turned hermit), St. Catherine of Alexandria (known for her wisdom), St. Alexis (who abandoned his family), St. Louis IX (king of France), St. Euphrosyne (a woman who became a male monk), and St. Moses the Ethiopian (a brigand turned abbot).

Nizar F. Hermes, Mon 3:30-6:00pm, New Cabell 338

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the literary representation and cultural construction of Black Afro-Arabs and Africans in premodern Arabic sources ranging from boasting epistles (mufākharāt) and travel literature to poetry and—chiefly—popular sagas/folktales (siyar shaʿabiyyah) which turned into pseudo-historical literary and cultural epics/romances. We will sample the works of some of the most “Arab-washed,” literary and intellectual icons in the MENA (SWANA) history, featuring black heroes, poets, and knights. We will situate these texts in such contexts as the Zanj Rebellion (869–883) in Iraq; the reign of Abū al-Misk Kāfūr (946-968), the black slave turned into vizier then sultan of Ikshīdid Egypt and the Levant; the Saharab Afro-Amazigh dynasties of North Africa and al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and their eleventh- century invasion of the West African empire of Ghana; the sixteenth-century Moroccan imperial forays into the Songhai realms and the invasion of Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné, the elite African army of the Afro-Arab sultan Mulāy Ismāʿīl of Morocco (r.1672 to 1727), the great Swahili city-sultanates of East Africa (Mogadishu, Kilwa, and Mombasa), the rich symbiotic Afro-Arab Swahili language and culture, and the landmark abolition of slavery in the regency of Tunisia in 1485. (Also fulfills Africa requirement).

Weds, 2-4:30

This course uses sound to explore dynamic and new approaches to the premodern period. It promises a dynamic and dynamic and fresh look at the premodern (loosely conceived as stretching from the 5th c. to 1700) that will privilege new avenues of scholarship focused on a global, transhistoric, and multidisciplinary approach to the past. Presented through a series of sonic case studies and team-taught modules by UVA faculty that will address the long history of slavery, cross-cultural exchange, gender and sexualities, and global religious practices with an eye to encouraging debate and dialogue between faculty and students. Students will be guided in producing a final seminar paper that works across disciplinary boundaries. Modules will include topics like “Travel, Trade Routes and the Sonic Passage” “Joan of Arc and the Voice then and now” The Invention of Race and the Slave Trade.” This seminar is a required course for the graduate certificate in Premodern Cultures & Communities.

T/Th,12:30-1:45

This course will (re)introduce you to the Middles Ages by decentering the common Eurocentric approach and prioritizing instead cross-cultural encounters that profoundly marked over a thousand years of shared history. Four units are planned for the semester: (1) early Iberia as an international center of  Muslim, Jewish, and Christian exchange; (2) crusading culture as portrayed in epic poetry, satire, the diary of a Byzantine princess and writings by Muslims living in occupied Jerusalem; (3) travel and discovery as recounted by the well-known Marco Polo as well as globetrotters from Africa and Asia; and (4) an early history of women, studied here through the Arabic epic tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman, writings by the first professional female writer – Christine de Pizan (d. 1431), and the lives of female spiritual visionaries. Our discussions will be enhanced by visits from numerous UVA professors who will discuss their research in relation to our topics. Course assignments include response papers, collaborative class activities, and a final research project that may take the form of a traditional paper, a podcast, or a creative work. This course can satisfy the Second Writing Requirement; fulfills the Artistic, Interpretative, and Philosophical Inquiry; and is required for the Medieval Studies major. No previous knowledge of the Middle Ages is needed.

TR 12:30-1:45

In this course, we will explore the historical and ideological frameworks in which medieval mystical practices joined the human body with nature, transcended the cosmic harmonies of divine proportion, and attempted to fashion the world according to desire and belief. We examine purifying practices such as the Eucharist or baptism, as well as, the manipulation of cosmic forces for personal or political reasons, using techniques ranging from horoscopic astrology to necromancy. We will examine the medieval foundations of modern racist ideologies and the legacy of eugenics at UVA specifically. This will enable us to deconstruct images of the Jew in medieval art and culture, as well as, explore Crusader ideals. Lastly, we will investigate the role of medievalism in the ideological presentation of histories about the medieval period, with a focus upon the “wizarding world” of Harry Potter. Topics covered include: celestial modeling, eschatology, apocalypses, astrological prediction, horoscopes, talismans and crystals, spells and incantations, medieval gynecology, Hildegard of Bingen, monstrous races, Crusader violence and ideology, military machinations, relics and reliquaries, late medieval mysticism, Margery Kempe, phenomena such as "holy anorexia," alchemical theory, Hieronymus Bosch, and the medievalism of Harry Potter.

M/W 5:00 - 6:15

This course introduces the principal concepts of nature and ecology in East Asian philosophical traditions—Daoism, Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism. These concepts have profound impacts on the relationship between human and their natural environment, and have inspired and informed art forms such as landscape paintings, religious temples and shrines, garden architecture, and tea houses. The course also explores how these ideas can contribute to the modern discourse on environmental ethics and sustainability.

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM

Yes, that Arthur! In this class, we explore Le Morte Darthur, the famous compendium of stories about King Arthur's round table, Lancelot’s vulnerable heroism, Guenevere’s diplomacy and passion, Tristram’s cluelessness, and the sorcery of Merlin, Lady Nynyve, and Morgan le Fay. It's the most influential early prose fiction in English, one that still produces imitations, sequels, and prequels in every medium known to art. Writing a century after Chaucer and a century before Shakespeare, Thomas Malory is spell-binding and curiously dry, full of terse, flat statements of shocking, magical, moving acts. We'll puzzle over what makes it tick: narrative patterns, imagery, style, characters. We’ll meet outside in camp chairs under a tree by Dawson’s Row whenever feasible. We’ll have quizzes and some flash writing sprees and two short (~5-page) creative projects or papers (creative writers, artists, and game developers: bring your skills!). Fulfills the major req for pre-1700, counts for the med/ren concentration and for Medieval Studies. Warning: may result in a compulsion to create.

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM

This course is an experiment in bringing together a green environmentalist impulse with medieval and renaissance English poetry about built space: gardens, meadows, wells, and houses.  We’ll dig into the history and politics of actual gardens, meadows, and buildings, too.  With the help of medieval lyricists, the Wakefield Master, Spenser, Lanyer, Milton, and others, we will cultivate Marvell's "green thought in a green shade." Some questions: what is “place” in fiction? How do we get there and move around in it? What is its relation to “place” in landscape architecture? How does the literary history of “pastoral” interact with the history of land use? How does poetry intervene in environmental longing and despair? We will meet outside under the Scholar’s Tree by Dawson’s Row, whenever feasible, in camp chairs. A series of short assignments and revisions will culminate in a seminar essay on a poem or a historical landscape and its environmental engagements. N.B.: this course satisfies both the English major requirements for a pre-17th c. course and a seminar; it can satisfy the 2nd writing requirement (arrange with the professor).

Tu/Th 2:00 - 3:15

Affection for family members, deep and casual friendships, maybe even passionate romance—everyone exists within a network of loving relationships.  We probably don’t often think about where our expectations for these relationships come from, and most people would be surprised that a lot of our ideas about love come from twelfth- and thirteenth-century France.  Marrying for love?  Soul mates?  Top Ten Tips for Attracting a Mate?  BFFs?  Parental devotion?  All have foundations in medieval French culture. Reading surprisingly modern stories of adventure and thoughtful (and sometimes funny) essays about emotions—all in modern French translation—and listening to soulful songs of the past, as well as to their modern counterparts, we will explore medieval ideas about love that continue to shape our modern understandings and assumptions about emotions and relationships. Students may choose between two tracks for assignments: one will involve shorter and more frequent assignments and revisions, while the other will involve a longer assignment, with proposal, bibliography, presentation, and a final submission that can take the form of a more traditional research paper or of a creative project. Readings will be a variety of lengths to allow students to work on different types of reading strategies. Course conducted in French.

Tu/Th 2-3:30

Fulfills the second  writing requirement. Course readings center on King Arthur and his court, as exemplified by the quests of Erec, Yvain, and Parzival. Readings include Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History and Gottfried’s Tristan. All readings in English. 

Tu/Th 2:00-3:15

This course explores the history of the Middle East and North Africa from late antiquity to the rise to superpower status of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Topics include the formation of Islam and the first Arab-Islamic conquests; slave societies; the fragmentation of the empire of the caliphate; the historical development of Islamic social, legal, and political institutions; science and philosophy; and the impact of invaders (Turks, Crusaders, and Mongols).

Wed/Fri, 5:00-6:15 PM

A seminar focusing on influential medieval and early modern narratives such as the Tale of Heike in which the notion of the samurai first developed. No prerequisites. Satisfies the non-Western and Second-Writing requirements. Hope you enjoy the remainder of your sabbatical.

T/Th 3:30-4:45

When Christopher Columbus arrived in what is now Trinidad in 1498, he attempted to communicate with indigenous people using tambourines. He thought this would be enticing. It didn’t work. “On observing the music and dancing…they dropped their oars, and picked up their bows, and strung them. Each one seized his shield, and they began to shoot arrows at us.”  This class uses sound to explore unexpected encounters in the premodern world. Course materials focus on a selection of exemplary pieces, listening to composition, improvisation, text-music relations, the representation of dramatic stories, the expression of religious ideas, and performance. This is a class about how to do history, how to listen, and how to imagine the sonic past. The class takes a global perspective and explores the role of sound in the deep histories of white supremacy that form the bricks and mortar of music performance and scholarship in the United States.  The chronological center is the 15th and 17th centuries, but we cover the ancient world and Middle Ages as well as the present. Course work will include reading, writing, listening, visits to special collections, and reflection. The course is taught at the music major level. Majors and non-majors are welcome. There are no prerequisites, and knowledge of Western music notation is not required.

T/R 11:00-12:15

Why were women excluded from the priestly hierarchy of the church? How did male clerics subsequently circumscribe women's roles in the church? And how did women respond? These are the questions that we will explore in this course on the intersection between gender and power in pre-modern Christianity.

M/W 4-4:50 + Discussion

Western Political Theory from Plato to the Reformation.  Among authors covered are Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther.  For the medieval period, central themes are natural law, allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and the origins of modern liberal political theory.   We pay special attention to conciliar interpretations of authority in the Church, and how these contributed to the development of modern constitutional theories. 

Tu/Th 12:30-1:45

Jewish and Muslim communities share a complex history of interaction, spanning from seventh-century Arabia to the present day, and including instances of collaboration as well as moments of violence. Our course examines this dynamic relationship through documentary and literary sources. We focus on points of contact between Muslims and Jews in contexts ranging from battlefields to universities, from religious discourse to international politics.

Tu/Th 9:30-10:45

Prophecy provides the theme for our comparative inquiry into two sacred scriptures (the Qur'an and the Hebrew Bible) alongside the rich traditions of Muslim and Jewish interpretive literature. We will consider narratives about specific prophets, medieval debates between and within Muslim and Jewish communities about the status and function of prophecy within their traditions, and modern theoretical approaches to prophecy.

M/W 1-1:50

Stretching some 8,000 kilometers, the Silk Road is a network of trade routes that provided a bridge between the east and the west between the first and fourteenth centuries CE. Despite periods of disruptions, the Silk Road flourished as a commercial and at times military highway. But more than that, it was a channel for the transmission of ideas, technologies, and artistic forms and styles, with far-reaching impact beyond China and the Mediterranean world. This course introduces the art forms, trade objects, and religions that flourished along the historical Silk Road.

M 10-12:30PM

A recent efflorescence of scholarship has problematized anew the ways medieval realms of knowledge were activated through ritual, computistical reckoning of the feast of Easter, technical drawing, robotics and automata, astrological prediction, magical performance, alchemical research, medicinal intervention, botanical observation, manipulation of gemstones, and conceptualized schemas such as maps and diagrams. This seminar takes a holistic approach to our topic exploring hegemonic, non-hegemonic, orthodox and heterodox western medieval perspectives. As a result, the semiotics of relics and reliquaries are considered alongside necromancy. Late medieval astronomical innovation supplies a pendant to astrological practice, and the performative aspects of thinking through schemas of visualized knowledge will be explored for both their experimental and historical value. This course takes as its premise that medieval manuscripts, magical experimenta, technical trials, medieval scientific discoveries, therapies, and arguments realized in rota or other diagrammatic forms, required the active engagement of readers, celebrants, sages or mages, and transformed their users as they at times also transformed their courtly worlds. 

Weds, 3:30-6 

The arts have always played a unique role in voicing dissent, challenging convention, and imagining new ways of being in the world. Late-medieval France proved an especially rich moment when writers used their voice to confront political leaders, to channel collective anger, to introduce new ways of thinking, and to call attention to injustices. Scholars consider the period, in fact, to have given rise to the first francophone "auteurs engagés." The seminar will address four intertwined topics that sparked intense late-medieval controversy: the trauma of war, the oppression of women, heresy and heroism, and the relevance of the chivalric ideal. Our corpus will include anti-war poetry, Christine de Pizan's defense of women, writings for and against Joan of Arc, and late-medieval romances that critically engage with crusading nostalgia. Our discovery of these premodern voices of rebellion will also serve to ask larger questions about the political potential of literature, the risks of creative dissent, and the responsibility of writers and intellectuals in shaping public discourse. The final third of the class will center on the research and writing process with the goal of helping each participant produce a first draft of original scholarship. Reading knowledge of French expected.

M/W/F, 9-9:50

During the medieval period, power and knowledge required the endorsement of clerics. Alongside secular courtiers they also cultivated creative expressions of their erudition, revealing the medieval interpenetration of art, science and religion.  The artworks surveyed in this course provide lasting records of critically creative confrontations between the scientific and spiritual traditions linked to medieval Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

Weds 2-4:30

Pilgimage is generally described as a journey of religious significance, often to a sacred site of great importance to the pilgrim’s religion. Many other types of journeys are also described as pilgrimages, such as those to the birthplace or house of famous writers or musicians or historical figures or the site of famous events. This seminar will discuss the art and architecture associated with such journeys. Many of the readings will focus on medieval pilgrimages using texts such as the Pilgrims’ Guide to Santiago and the Travel Diary of Ibn Jubayr. We will, however, also consider pilgrimages from a variety of traditions including Buddhism and classical sites such as Delphi. Students will be encouraged to choose topics related to any type of pilgrimage from any culture or time period for their research topics. The course will also emphasize the development of research and writing skills, as each member of the seminar will develop a major research topic throughout the semester.This course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement.

Tu/Th 11-12:15

We'll read the great medieval poem in both Modern and Middle English, encountering the young King Arthur's court and thrilling to Gawain's yuletide adventures. You'll learn to write about imagery, plot, and poetics; we'll savor some history of the language; and you'll be equipped to take any subsequent literature course in style.

Tu/Th, 3:30-4:45

Together, we’ll read Geoffrey Chaucer’s four dream poems and investigate how the virtual reality we call art can produce intense and immersive human experience. The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women are surreal, sweet, funny, philosophical, emotionally intense, and visually overstimulated poems which are even more interesting in our age of complex media tech; dreams and poetry seem to provide Chaucer with a way of thinking explicitly about what it is to have para-sensory, virtual experience. We'll be interested in how specific configurations of language (image, metaphor, tense, and so on) work to produce cognitive, emotional, and sensory effects. This is a “close reading” course that will sharpen your reading skills as well as provide an encounter with one of the most influential and beloved poets in world history. (We will also undoubtedly talk about Chaucer's other ambitions in these works — philosophical, political, theological, aesthetic, imagistic.)  

Tu/Th 11-12:15

This course studies the history and development of the English language, from the Old English period (550CE-1100CE) to Middle and Early Modern English, and concluding at present-day English.

T/Th 2-3:15 

The first third of this course will cover the drama of classical antiquity in translation, beginning with Greek plays by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, then moving from there to the Latin plays of Plautus, Terence, and Seneca. The next third will consider the kinds of performance that displaced (and in some cases transformed) these pagan traditions after the Christianization of the Roman empire; we will likely read a liturgical drama, a morality play, a saint play, a vernacular Biblical drama and a secular farce. The final third will cover plays from the Renaissance, focusing particularly on the commercial London stage of Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. 

 A major goal of the course will be to answer some of the questions posed by historical period: what does it mean, in the context of this particular genre, to move from antiquity to the Middle Ages to the Renaissance? How seriously should we take the differences between paganism and Christianity? What portion of early modern drama derives from classical antiquity, what portion from the Middle Ages, and what portion, if any, is new? What does it mean to say that drama by the time of Shakespeare had been secularized? 

M/W/F 11-11:50

Globalization.  Love and friendship.  Encounters with other cultures and peoples.  Separation of Church and State.  Bourgeois values.  Law and justice.  Where did these features of modern life come from and—more importantly—what other forms might they have taken or might they still evolve into?  And how might the way we tell the histoire of the Francophone world limit or expand our options now and in the future?   

Virtually visiting the Louvre Museum (our case study of one famous way of presenting Francophone history) and exploring a variety of readings that nuance and even challenge that history outright, we will seek to understand the prevailing story of the Francophone world’s origins, the reasons that story developed, and the alternative histories that have been set aside.  With evidence from historical readings—tales of quests for adventure and powerful women, bawdy ballads and soulful sonnets—we will then imagine new exhibits to tell a fuller picture of the Francophone past and its importance to the present. Course is taught in French; readings in the course will be in modern French translation. 

M/W 2-3:15

What is the good life, and what is a good life?  How should a person balance ethical responsibilities with comforts and pleasures?  Is sacrifice required for someone who wants to be good, and if so, how much and of what kind?  How do social expectations help and harm efforts to do the right thing?  We might think of saints as people who live perfectly good lives, but stories about them often grapple with all of these questions and don’t always provide clear answers, instead encouraging audiences to think deeply about their own lives in ways that go beyond any one religious or ethical system.  Above all, such stories can lay bare both how difficult it is to solve moral dilemmas (even for saints) and how closely extreme virtue can resemble appalling vice.  Looking at old and new stories of parent-child struggles, spectacular sinning and redemption, gender transformation, and daily moral predicaments, we will explore a variety of ways to understand what it means to live well.  Course is taught in French; readings in modern French.

Mon 3:30-6:00pm

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the literary representation and cultural construction of Black Afro-Arabs and Africans in premodern Arabic sources ranging from boasting epistles (mufākharāt) and travel literature to poetry and—chiefly—popular sagas/folktales (siyar shaʿabiyyah) which turned into pseudo-historical literary and cultural epics/romances. We will sample the works of some of the most “Arab-washed,” literary and intellectual icons in the history of MENA (SWANA), featuring Black heroes, poets, and knights. We will situate these texts in such contexts as the Zanj rebellion (869–883) in Iraq; the reign of Abū al-Misk Kāfūr (946-968), the black slave turned into vizier then sultan of Ikshīdid Egypt and the Levant; the Saharian Afro-Amazigh dynasties of North Africa and al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and their eleventh century invasion of the West African empire of Ghana; the sixteenth-century Moroccan imperial forays into the Songhai realms and the invasion of Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné, the elite African army of the Afro-Arab sultan Mulāy Ismāʿīl of Morocco (r.1672 to 1727), the great Swahili city-Sultanates of East Africa (Mogadishu, Kilwa, and Mombasa), the richly symbiotic Afro-Arab Swahili language and culture, and the pioneering 1846 abolition of slavery in the regency of Tunisia. (Also fulfills Africa requirement).

Tu/Th, 11:00-12:15pm

Description: If religious teachings so often focus on love and peace, why is so much violence committed in the name of religion? Are some religions essentially peaceful, while others are essentially violent? Can violent actions be dismissed as aberrations from the sacred scriptures or traditional teachings of a religious movement? Why is anti-Jewish violence such a constituent feature of Western cultures? And why are we so inclined to view certain violent acts or movements as inherently religious—the Crusades, the 9/11 attacks—but not others, such as the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Jim Crow laws in the American south, or the August 12th alt-right gathering in Charlottesville? In this course, we will consider the ways in which religion and violence have intersected in Western religions (particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) over the past two millennia, from the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire to the modern world.

9:30-10:45

This course traces the history of Jerusalem with a focus on its significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. How have these communities experienced and inhabited Jerusalem? How have they imagined the city and interpreted its meaning? How have Jews, Christians, and Muslims expressed their attachments to this contested space from antiquity to modern times? Our exploration will be rooted in primary texts and informed by historical and cultural context, as well as scholarly approaches to sacred space.

Tu/Th 11:00-12:15pm

If religious teachings so often focus on love and peace, why is so much violence committed in the name of religion? Are some religions essentially peaceful, while others are essentially violent? Can violent actions be dismissed as aberrations from the sacred scriptures or traditional teachings of a religious movement? Why is anti-Jewish violence such a constituent feature of Western cultures? And why are we so inclined to view certain violent acts or movements as inherently religious—the Crusades, the 9/11 attacks—but not others, such as the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Jim Crow laws in the American south, or the August 12th alt-right gathering in Charlottesville? In this course, we will consider the ways in which religion and violence have intersected in Western religions (particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) over the past two millennia, from the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire to the modern world.

9:30-10:45

This lecture course offers a general introduction to the writings and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), the pre-eminent Catholic theologian and one of the greatest thinkers of the middle ages. His influence is extensive; it embraces many Protestants as well as most Catholics. It’s simply impossible to understand many writers, from Dante to T. S. Eliot, without knowing Aquinas. Students will read a mixture of Aquinas’s treatises and his almost unknown popular writings. Among the popular writings will be Aquinas’s explanation of the Lord’s Prayer and his exposition of the Apostle’s Creed; and among the treatises will be readings in all three parts of the Summa theologiæ. Students will have the opportunity to compare Aquinas on the same topics (Trinity and sacraments) in the Summa theologiæ and in less well-known works. What did Aquinas say about aesthetics (especially his teachings about beauty, pleasure and play), about God, about the sacraments, and about love? How does he work rhetorically when preaching and commenting on Scripture? Are there ways in which Aquinas can help us be better readers of medieval literature? These are some of the questions we shall consider.

Tues 3:30-6 PM

This seminar explores current methods and issues in the study of the premodern world (ca. 500 ACE – 1700 AD), placing special emphasis on global Iberia, and spotlighting scholarship that bridges the divide between “then” and “now” by exploring the deep roots of gender, race, colonialism, and the environment. Guest lecturers from within and without UVA will guide us through their research and introduce us to the latest issues and approaches in their field of specialization. This seminar is required of graduate students pursuing the certificate in Premodern Cultures & Communities, but is open to all graduate students in the humanities and social sciences who are interested and curious, no matter what field or period they study.  All readings and course discussions will be carried out in English. .

Th 12.30-3pm

This course takes an art historical approach to categories of objects, monuments and human-made landscapes often referred to as material culture. We’ll be asking how to locate and describe the implications of what we see (or otherwise perceive) in these objects (or other things), both for our own research topics and in terms of broader methodological / historiographical questions in our fields. The real main questions will be, “What can stuff tell us that other kinds of sources cannot? And what can we learn from stuff?" Readings come from some well-known literature from the social sciences, as well as work by art historians, and especially those working on craft and the decorative arts. Some research questions and topics will remain empirical; in some conversations I will draw examples from the Ottoman and wider Mediterranean world, with some others from India, Europe, and China. Classes will combine discussion in several formats, short and longer student presentations, and brief lectures.

3:30-4:45 

This course provides an introduction to the Old English language and its literature, from (roughly) 550CE-1100CE. Students will learn Old English through grammatical exercises and translation, and will sample staples of Old English prose and poetry in the original language.  

Tu/Th 11:00-12:15  

This seminar will focus upon lyric, narrative and dramatic works from the medieval and Renaissance periods which explore the striking metamorphoses and the various (and on occasion very queer) trajectories of earthly—and not so earthly--love. We'll be examining the ways in which desire is represented as transforming the identity and consciousness of the lover; we will also be examining (and attempting to historicize) strategies employed by our authors to variously transform, redefine, enlarge and contain the erotic impulse. We'll start with some selections from the Metamorphoses of Ovid; we will finish with two of Shakespeare’s most striking reinventions of love. Along the way we’ll be looking at the gendering of erotic representation and erotic speech, the intermittent entanglement of secular and sacred love, the role of genre in refiguring eros, and some intersections between the discourses of sexuality and the discourses of power.  

Mon 3:30-6:00pm 

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the literary representation and cultural construction of Black Afro-Arabs and Africans in premodern Arabic sources ranging from boasting epistles (mufākharāt) and travel literature to poetry and—chiefly—popular sagas/folktales (siyar shaʿabiyyah) which turned into pseudo-historical literary and cultural epics/romances. We will sample the works of some of the most “Arab-washed,” literary and intellectual icons in the history of MENA (SWANA), featuring Black heroes, poets, and knights. We will situate these texts in such contexts as the Zanj rebellion (869–883) in Iraq; the reign of Abū al-Misk Kāfūr (946-968), the black slave turned into vizier then sultan of Ikshīdid Egypt and the Levant; the Saharian Afro-Amazigh dynasties of North Africa and al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and their eleventh century invasion of the West African empire of Ghana; the sixteenth-century Moroccan imperial forays into the Songhai realms and the invasion of Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné, the elite African army of the Afro-Arab sultan Mulāy Ismāʿīl of Morocco (r.1672 to 1727), the great Swahili city-Sultanates of East Africa (Mogadishu, Kilwa, and Mombasa), the richly symbiotic Afro-Arab Swahili language and culture, and the pioneering 1846 abolition of slavery in the regency of Tunisia. (Also fulfills Africa requirement). 

Tu/Th 9:30-19:45 plus Th 11-12 

This lecture course offers a general introduction to the writings and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), the pre-eminent Catholic theologian and one of the greatest thinkers of the middle ages. His influence is extensive; it embraces many Protestants as well as most Catholics. It’s simply impossible to understand many writers, from Dante to T. S. Eliot, without knowing Aquinas. Students will read a mixture of Aquinas’s treatises and his almost unknown popular writings. Among the popular writings will be Aquinas’s explanation of the Lord’s Prayer and his exposition of the Apostle’s Creed; and among the treatises will be readings in all three parts of the Summa theologiæ. Students will have the opportunity to compare Aquinas on the same topics (Trinity and sacraments) in the Summa theologiæ and in less well-known works. What did Aquinas say about aesthetics (especially his teachings about beauty, pleasure and play), about God, about the sacraments, and about love? How does he work rhetorically when preaching and commenting on Scripture? Are there ways in which Aquinas can help us be better readers of medieval literature? These are some of the questions we shall consider. 

MW, 9-9:50 AM This course traces the development of scientific, political, spiritual, magical, and intellectual technologies of power that have tied individuals to their views and uses for astronomy. Topics include: stars and rule, astronomy, astrology, Ptolemy’s universe, Christian reinterpretation, Arabic or Islamic contributions, alchemy, magic, medicine, Galileo, science fiction, Chesley Bonestell, Remedios Varo, Kambui Olujimi, androids, Star Trek, and Star Wars.

Tu/Th, 5-6:15 This course introduces the principal concepts of nature and ecology in East Asian philosophical traditions—Daoism, Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism. These concepts have profound impacts on the relationship between human and their natural environment and have inspired and informed art forms such as landscape paintings, religious temples and shrines, garden architecture, and tea houses. The course also explores how these ideas can contribute to the modern discourse on environmental ethics and sustainability.

W, 9:30am–12:00 The Crusades are just one aspect of the many interactions between Muslim, Latin & Byzantine Christian and Jewish culture during the Middle Ages. Trade, intellectual exchange and diplomatic missions also provide opportunities for cultural exchange and interaction among these

groups. This seminar will explore the architecture and art of the many cultures, which occupy the lands bordering the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. Readings and research projects will explore the nature of these interactions through an analysis of visual culture from the Mediterranean as well as readings, which will include on primary readings such as the travel diary of Muslim traveler Ibn Jubayr and the parallel account by Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. The course will also emphasize the development of research and writing skills, as each member of the seminar will work on major research project throughout the semester. Course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement

TuTh, 5-6:15

If "what's past is prologue"—where does that put the Middle Ages? As preface, prequel, to the main action? How do we situate or relegate the past, what does it mean to do so? What does “doing” history entail?

For us, the Middle Ages conjures up images of crumbling castles or rusty suits of armor. But for medieval Western Europeans, the past was Roman ruins, the fall of Troy, and Arthur's court. Using both medieval English literature (including, perhaps, Old English lyrics, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and prologues by John Gower and William Caxton) and contemporary memory studies, historical, and archival theory, this class will show how medieval conceptions of the past can help us understand temporality and periodization as modes of power brokering and history-shaping. In doing so, we will consider how the past functions in the present—perhaps it's not even so bygone after all.

Tu/Th, 12:30-1:45

We’ll read a handful of the famous Canterbury Tales, leading up to a month on the spectacular Knight’s Tale; the goal is to immerse you in medieval story-telling and introduce you to the study of the writer’s art. Amazon lady warriors under house arrest, live knights discovered in a heap of dead bodies, Queen Guinevere condemning a rapist to a year of finding out what women desire, a saint who threatens her new husband with murder by an invisible angel if he touches her, a tell-tale crow, sex in a tree: the middle ages are a strange otherworld. We’ll investigate how things as apparently universal as love, faith, and death are different before modernity. You'll learn to read Middle English and find out how to “unpack” short passages of text, describing how words and images work to produce the responses of readers. And we will talk about Chaucer’s ambitions — comic, philosophical, poetic. This course is designed for beginners, but it’s also fine to take if you’ve already had a medieval course at the 3000 or 4000 level.

MW 2:00pm - 3:15pm

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through much of the New Testament, from the Gospels to Revelation, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the New Testament; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible is needed or assumed. It can be taken before or after the Bible Part 2: The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, taught by Professor Stephen Cushman.

Tu/Th 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM

Why isn’t Jamie Foxx cast as Robin Hood, or Zoe Saldana as Lancelot, or Michelle Yeoh as Merlin? When we’re dealing in myths, why do some ideas of “historical realism” seem to matter... and how sure are we that we know what medieval European society really looked like? When we imagine the world of over a thousand years ago, why do 1950s (or even 21st-century) race and gender dynamics so often structure it? Why does it matter how we retell important myths in popular culture anyway? Writers and artists of the Middle Ages often didn’t share our worries about historical accuracy in representation and gave us the lasting legacies of a white Jesus and a pink-cheeked Virgin Mary—even if regional alternatives in fact existed with various degrees of cultural (in)sensitivity. What legacies are we passing down to future generations in our retellings of stories about Robin Hood, the Holy Grail, and Lancelot’s illicit love for Guenevere? Who benefits from perpetuating a singular image of the Middle Ages? Is there a future for different ways of using these stories, as in the work of French rapper Black M or American artist S. Ross Browne? This class will look at such stories as told in medieval French texts (in modern French translation) and modern stage and screen adaptations, such as the 2012 musical “Robin des Bois” and classics like Rohmer’s 1964 Perceval. For cultural contrast, we’ll also examine a few Anglo adaptations (like Monty Python and the Holy Grail / “Spamalot,” Black Knight, and the 2018 Robin Hood). No previous study of film required. Conducted in French.

TuTh 2-3:15 & 3:30pm - 4:45pm

This course traces the lineage and shapes of the Arthurian legend as witnessed in medieval literature and modern adaptations, including film and television ("Games of Thrones," "Star Wars," etc.) The aim is familiarity with the story of King Arthur and his court, as well as an ability to appreciate the permutations of the legend in all forms of media.

Date and time TBD

For many historians Johannes Gutenberg's c. 1455 invention of the printing press generally marks the end of the European Middle Ages and the onset of early modernity. Until recently, such a transformative invention and historical has overshadowed the long premodern history of global printing. We’ll learn about printing in ancient Mayan and East Asian societies; in medieval Central Asia, Middle East, and Africa; and in medieval and early modern Europe. We will also learn how technologies moved across continents, connecting different cultures. Ultimately, students should come to see the pre-Gutenberg period as a vibrant and innovative stage in print history. Finally, we will ask what exactly Gutenberg invented and how earlier print cultures may have influenced his work.

T/Th, 11-12:15

In the mid-seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire stretched from Austria and Hungary in the west to Iran in the east, from Ukraine and the Crimea in the north, to Arabia and Sudan in the south. Its territory encompassed most of the contemporary Middle East and North Africa, Central and Southeast Europe, and the Caucasus. Its population was a polyglot mix of religions and cultures. The impact of Ottoman rule continues to be felt today from the Balkans through the Arab world, and its story is an essential and inseparable part of world history. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire continues to be caricatured in popular histories, forced uncomfortably into Orientalist stereotypes and presented as the ultimately defeated antagonist in a Eurocentric triumphalist narrative. At the same time, nationalist historians in the former Ottoman lands (including Turkey) and, more recently, hugely successful television dramas have played a key role in (mis-)shaping popular understandings of Ottoman history. We will confront the myths and misrepresentations of Ottoman history head-on, tracing the history of the Ottoman Empire from its obscure origins in the thirteenth century through the middle of the eighteenth century. Besides introducing major political and military developments, we will explore the social, economic, and cultural life of the empire.

Tu/Th 9:30-10:45

Jewish and Muslim communities share a complex history of interaction, spanning from seventh-century Arabia to the present day, and including instances of collaboration as well as moments of violence. Our course examines this dynamic relationship through documentary and literary sources. We focus on points of contact between Muslims and Jews in contexts ranging from battlefields to universities, from religious discourse to international politics.

Tu/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Prophecy provides the theme for our comparative inquiry into two sacred scriptures (the Qurʾān and the Hebrew Bible) alongside the traditions of Jewish and Muslim interpretive literature. We will consider narratives about specific prophets, medieval debates between and within Muslim and Jewish communities about the status and function of prophecy within their traditions, and modern theoretical approaches to prophecy.

Tu/Th 11:00-12:15

Why were women excluded from the priestly hierarchy of the church? How did male clerics subsequently circumscribe women's roles in the church? And how did women respond? These are the questions that we will explore in this course on the intersection between gender and power in pre-modern Christianity.

Thurs 5-7:30 PM

This course promises a dynamic and fresh look at the premodern (loosely conceived as stretching from the 5th c. to 1700) that will privilege new avenues of scholarship focused on a global, transhistoric, and multidisciplinary approach to the past. Presented through a series of team-taught modules by UVA faculty that will address the long history of slavery, cross-cultural exchange, gender and sexualities, and global religious practices with an eye to encouraging debate and dialogue between faculty and students. The class will be further enhanced by a semester-long speaker series, “Premodern Encounters,” showcasing outside guest speakers on “Race in the Premodern,” “Premodern Ecocriticism” and “Premodern Global Book Culture.” Students will be guided in producing a final seminar paper that works across disciplinary boundaries. This seminar is part of the new graduate certificate in Premodern Cultures & Communities.

MW 3:30pm - 4:45pm

This course will begin by examining the place of magic in scripture and the ancient world, focusing especially on its overlap with religion, philosophy (particularly natural philosophy or science), and medicine. We will then move to medieval demonology, (particularly the writings of Augustine, Aquinas, and Caesarius of Heisterbach) in order to better understand the overlap in representations of witches, saints, and heretics after 1100. We will look specifically at the earliest version of the demonic pact in the legend of St. Theophilus, as depicted in a thirteenth-century French play by Rutebeuf, and at the trial of Jesus for witchcraft in the York cycle. The last half of the semester will be devoted to Renaissance demonology, English witchcraft trials, and the depiction of magic on the commercial London stage. Plays may include Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare's 1 & 2 Henry VI, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, The Tempest, Jonson's Masque of Queens and The Devil is an Ass, Middleton's The Witch, Dekker, Ford, and Rowley's The Witch of Edmunton and Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome's The Witches of Lancashire. Throughout the course we will be particularly attuned to the so-called Entzauberungsprozeß or "process of disenchantment" that, Max Weber argued, begins with the Hebrew Bible and ancient Greek philosophy. To what extent is the relationship between witchcraft and theater clarified by the history of

magic as Weber, Lynn Thorndike, Henry Charles Lea, Keith Thomas, and Stuart Clark (among others) envision it?

Instructor: Deborah McGrady, Professor of French and Director of Medieval Studies Times: Tues/Thurs, 12:30 - 1:45

If you think the medieval period was a backwards and barbaric time, think again! This course will challenge your preconceptions about the past by introducing you anew to a period marked by cross-cultural encounters, scientific discovery, religious and philosophical revolutions, and exploration of identity through culture, gender, and race. To experience the full richness of the world cultures from roughly 300 to 1500, a number of guest lectures from UVA faculty will enrich our readings drawn from the francophone tradition, which will range from crusading literature, love poetry, Marco Polo’s Travels, works of the first professional female writer – Christine de Pizan, and the trial of Joan of Arc. Most importantly, guest lectures will model the important work of interdisciplinary studies and put into practice the decentering of “national” literatures that is necessary to move away from a Eurocentric view of the past and toward a global approach to the medieval period. Course assignments will include response papers, collaborative class presentations, and a final research project that will take the form of a traditional paper, a podcast, or a creative work. This course can be taken to fulfill the Second Writing Requirement and it fulfills the Historical Discipline Requirement.

Instructor: Fotini Kondyli

Times: T-TH 3:30-4:45

“Monumental churches, mosaics with golden background, miraculous icons and religious figures with long noses that never move or smile”. This is often people’s perception of Byzantine art.

While all these are elements of Byzantine art, alone, they do little justice to the marvels of Byzantine art and its diversity in terms of its themes, techniques, materials, multiple meanings and intended audiences.

From the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia and the Imperial palaces of Constantinople to mosaics, icons, and items of personal adornment, this course will trace developments in the arts and architecture of the Byzantine Empire in the course of eleven centuries (4th - 15th c. AD). We will explore the role of early Christian and Byzantine art between Greco-Roman aesthetics and the artistic production of the Renaissance. We will focus on the iconography of selected artworks to better understand Christian and Byzantine belief systems and investigate the multiplicity of function and meaning in Early Christian and Byzantine architecture and art. We will also consider how Byzantium negotiated its political and cultural identity among allies and enemies through its artistic production and visual language. Finally, we will meet different social groups involved in the production of Byzantine art and architecture, such as craftsmen and architects, as well as the Imperial family, monks and nuns, elites, and ordinary people.

Instructor: Eric Ramírez-Weaver

Times: Monday/Wednesday, 11AM-12:15 PM

In this course, we will explore the historical and ideological frameworks in which medieval mystical practices joined the human body with nature, transcended the cosmic harmonies of divine proportion, and attempted to fashion the world according to desire and belief. We examine purifying practices such as the Eucharist or baptism, as well as, the manipulation of cosmic forces for personal or political reasons, using techniques ranging from horoscopic astrology to necromancy. Rather than focus exclusively upon hegemonic, orthodox Christian artistic celebrations of piety, the visual culture of heterodox and banned social or spiritual practices will be highlighted. In addition, we will examine the medieval foundations of modern racist ideologies and the legacy of eugenics at UVA specifically. This will enable us to deconstruct images of the Jew in medieval art and culture, as well as, explore Crusader ideals. Lastly, we will explore the role of medievalism in the ideological presentation of histories about the medieval period, with a focus upon the “wizarding world” of Harry Potter.

Topics covered include: celestial modeling, eschatology, millenarianism, astrological prediction, horoscopes, talismans and crystals, spells and incantations, medieval gynecology, Hildegard of Bingen, monstrous races, Crusader violence and ideology, military machinations, relics and reliquaries, late medieval mysticism, alchemical theory, Hieronymus Bosch, and the medievalism of Harry Potter.

Instructor: Lisa Reilly Times: Tuesdays 1-3:30 pm

The marauding Vikings are familiar from popular culture including the well-known tv series. Somehow they become kings who commission such extraordinary works as the Bayeux Tapestry, Durham Cathedral and the Cappella Palatina. This course will trace their transformation from raiders and traders across Europe and beyond into rulers of the wealthiest kingdoms in Europe through an exploration of their material culture. This fascinating transformation will be grappled with through discussions and a series of short writing assignments culminating in a research project. Seminar participants will learn how to organize, prepare and write a research paper.

This course will fulfill the second writing requirement.

Times: Tu Th 11.00-12.15

In this course we’ll explore medieval narratives of questing and testing, of magic and wonder, of courtly love and chivalric violence. We’ll be paying attention to the gendering of romance and to the space it finds for female desire and female voices; we’ll also be considering romance’s representations of otherness and alienation. Towards the end of the semester, our syllabus will glance at two modern cinematic reinventions of the genre.

Tentative reading list (the French works will be read in translation): the Lais of Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot and Yvain; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and The Book of the Duchess; Sir Orfeo; The King of Tars; excerpts from Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur; John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981); Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel (2021).

Requirements: regular attendance and lively participation in class discussion, two 6-7 page papers, a series of pre-class responses to our readings, comprehensive final examination.

Instructor: Elizabeth Fowler

Times: TU TH 12:30PM-01:45PM

In this class, we explore Le Morte Darthur, the famous compendium of stories about King Arthur's round table, Gawain’s and Morgan le Fay’s passions, Lancelot’s heroism, and Guenevere’s challenges. It's the most influential early prose fiction in English, one that still produces imitations, sequels, and prequels in every medium known to art. Writing a century after Chaucer and a century before Shakespeare, Malory is spell-binding and curiously dry, full of terse, flat statements of shocking, magical, moving acts. We'll read the entire work in the original language and puzzle over what makes it tick: narrative, imagery, style. We’ll probably have five quizzes, some flash writing sprees, one short creative research project (writers, artists, and game developers: feel welcome to develop your skills!), and a longer seminar paper (~15 pages) that involves developing your research skills.

Instructor: Deborah McGrady

Times: Tu Thu 2:30-3:45

From King Arthur and Joan of Arc to giants, monstrous women, and devils masquerading as humans, the medieval period gave birth to some of the best known and most (in)famous heroes and villains of world culture. We will study romances of “knights in shining armor” and their daring damsels, villains-turned-heroes and vice versa, and the exploits of fairies, transfigures, and wily part beast/part human creatures. What ideals and fears do these characters embody? Does gender play a role in constructing archetypes of good and bad? What do they say about society and the individual, community and the outsider? What can these archetypes teach us about modern definitions of good and bad, constructions of the “Other,” and our own societal fears? Readings in modern French from the past will be combined with modern French films and comics that revive medieval hero(in)es. Course conducted in French.

Instructor: Amy Ogden
Times: Mondays, 1:00pm - 1:50pm
Introduction to reading Old French, with consideration of its main dialects (Ile-de-France, Picard, Anglo-Norman) and paleographical issues. May be taken in conjunction with FREN 5100/8510 or independently. Weekly reading exercises, a transcription and translation exercise, and a final open-book exam. Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin or another romance language. Taught in English.

Medieval French Literature Now

Instructor: Amy Ogden
Times: Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Based on topics and works of both current and enduring interest to scholars, this course will allow participants to gain general knowledge of literature composed in French from 880 until

about 1250 as well as to explore the most recent developments in the field. Students are encouraged to contact the professor with suggestions for subjects. In the course of discussing secondary readings and of preparing the assignments, we will consider matters of professional development. Reading knowledge of modern French required. Undergraduates who wish to enroll must have completed at least one 4000-level FREN course with a grade of B+ or better.

Instructor: Gregory Hays, Associate Professor of Classics
Times: Mon/Wed/Fri, 2:00 - 2:50
In this course we will read (in the original Latin) the Romance of Apollonius of Tyre, an early medieval novel involving incest, murder, piracy, riddles, shipwrecks, ball-games, prostitution, virtuous fishermen, wicked step-parents, and more riddles. Time permitting, we will also look at the novel's later influence, notably on Shakespeare's Pericles.

Instructor: Nizar Hermes

Times: M 3:30-6

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the literary representation and cultural construction of Black Afro-Arabs and Africans in premodern Arabic sources ranging from boasting epistles (mufākharāt) and travel literature to poetry and –-chiefly—popular sagas/folktales (siyar shaʿabiyyah) which turned into pseudo-historical literary and cultural epics/romances... Toward this end, we will sample the works of some of the most “Arab-washed,” literary and intellectual icons in the history of MENA (SWANA); Al-Jāḥiẓ (d.868/9), the encyclopedic wizard of classical Arabic literature, author among tens of others, of the Risālat Fakhr al-Sūdān ʿalā al-Bīdān (The Epistle of Boasting of Blacks over Whites); ʿAntar(ah) ibn Shaddād (d. 608), the Black Afro-Arab knight- poet who physically and verbally jousted with sword and word to free himself from slavery (riqq/ʿubūdiyyah), the princess-warrior Dhātu al-Himmah (The Lady of High Resolve) and her Black son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as well as Abū Zayd al-Hilālī, the Black hero of Taghrībat Banī Hilāl (The Great Western Migration), who led an alliance of Arab Bedouin tribes to conquer and settle in large swathe of Ifriqiyyah (modern day Tunisia) and some western parts of Libya and eastern parts of Algeria…We will situate the texts studied in such contexts as the Zanj rebellion (869–883) in Iraq; the reign of Abū al-Misk Kāfūr (defacto and de jure ruler from 946-968), the black slave turned into vizier then sultan of Ikshīdid Egypt and the Levant; the Saharian Afro-Amazigh dynasties of North Africa and al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and their eleventh century invasion of the West African empire of Ghana; the sixteenth-century Moroccan imperial forays into the Songhai realms and the invasion of Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné, the elite African army of the Afro-Arab sultan Mulāy Ismāʿīl of Morocco (r.672 to 1727), the great Swahili city-Sultanates of East Africa (Mogadishu, Kilwa, and Mombasa), the richly symbiotic Afro-Arab Swahili language and culture, and the pioneering 1846 abolition of slavery in the regency of Tunisia.

Instructor: Karl Shuve

Times:

T/R 12:30-1:45

Why were women excluded from the priestly hierarchy of the church? How did male clerics

subsequently circumscribe women's roles in the church? And how did women respond? These

are the questions that we will explore in this course on the intersection between gender and

power in pre-modern Christianity.

Instructor: Omar Velázquez-Mendoza 

Times: Tuesdays/Thursdays 3:30-4:45

Drawing on a comparative approach to language change, this course traces the primitive origins and historical development of the major linguistic changes taking place in the passage from Latin to Spanish and other Romance (i.e., Latin-derived) languages, mainly Portuguese, Italian, and French. Topics to be explored include: Expected and unexpected phonological changes in the neo-Latin language continuum; the role of analogy and ‘contamination’ in language change; etymological and non-etymological nasalization; the object + verb to verb + object shift; the prepositional direct object; pronominal replacement and duplication of direct and indirect objects.

Instructor: Dorothy Wong

Wed: 12:30-3 pm

This seminar examines the cults of relics and images in the Buddhist tradition. Topics include the ontology of cults of relics and images, formats and materials, architectural and ritual settings, as well as symbolic meanings and patrons’ intentions. The seminar reviews the writings on Buddhist worship of relics and images from a variety of sources: liturgies, historical texts, inscriptions, and contemporary writing, and includes comparisons with western medieval traditions. 

Eric Ramírez-Weaver

M/W 9-9:50 + Discussion 

Looking outward and upward at the starry sky, artists, philosophers, and scientists have throughout history consistently sought to situate themselves within the cosmos and to comprehend its heavenly machinery.  Creative efforts at understanding or harnessing the significance of the planets and the stars have resulted in architectural wonders such as Stonehenge, zodiacal floor mosaics in late antique synagogues, star pictures in medieval manuscripts, Islamic celestial globes and astrolabes, illustrations for medical treatment, alchemical intervention, observation or imagination of the heavens, and more modern treatments ranging from Star Trek to Sigmar Polke.  This course traces the development of scientific, political, spiritual, magical, and intellectual technologies of power that have tied individuals to their views and uses for astronomy. Topics include: stars and rule, astronomy, astrology, Ptolemy’s universe, Christian reinterpretation, Arabic or Islamic contributions, alchemy, magic, medicine, Galileo, science fiction, Chesley Bonestell, Remedios Varo, Kambui Olujimi, and Sigmar Polke.  

D. Wong

Mon/Wed 1-1:50 pm; Cam 160 

Stretching some 8,000 kilometers, the Silk Road is a network of trade routes that provided a bridge between the east and the west between the first and fourteenth centuries CE. Despite periods of disruptions, the Silk Road flourished as a commercial and at times military highway. But more than that, it was a channel for the transmission of ideas, technologies, and artistic forms and styles, with far-reaching impact beyond China and the Mediterranean world. This course introduces the art forms, trade objects, and religions that flourished along the historical Silk Road.  

Amanda Phillips

TuTr 12.30-1.45, Campbell Hall 160

What’s Islamic about Islamic art? What makes a mosque in Indonesia different from one in Iberia? Where are all the pictures? What’s with all that ornament? Do materials matter, and can fine art be mass-produced? To answer some of these questions, we’ll be exploring big themes, such as the requirements of worship and imperial building campaigns, daily life and its objects, conventions of representation (or picture-making), the absolute triumph of calligraphy as an art form, the way Mediterranean and Oceanic trade connected different cultures, and how looting, plunder, and finally colonialism and nationalism also impact on the way we see and understand art and architecture in the twenty-first century.

D. Wong

Mon/Wed 5-6:15, CAM 160

This course introduces the principal concepts of nature and ecology in East Asian philosophical traditions—Daoism, Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism. These concepts have profound impacts on the relationship between human and their natural environment, and have inspired and informed art forms such as landscape paintings, religious temples and shrines, garden architecture, and tea houses. The course also explores how these ideas can contribute to the modern discourse on environmental ethics and sustainability.  

Eric Ramírez-Weaver

Tu/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

This course examines the development of manuscript illumination following the birth of the codex in ca. 300.  Each manuscript studied exemplifies aspects of changing period styles, scientific beliefs, and spiritual identities. The myriad ways that books manifest crafted confessions of medieval ideas and reveal a sensual appreciation for beauty and value will be interrogated through a set of case studies ranging roughly 450-1450. Students in this course will learn the fundamental research skills required to undertake original study of medieval manuscripts.  

Elizabeth Fowler

M, W 2-3:15 

An Introduction to Literary Studies through stories about King Arthur’s knights, ladies, and lady-knights. We’ll range from Marie de France’s twelfth-century poems to the 2021 film The Green Knight, and from lyric to narrative to cartoons. We’ll develop your ways of seeing, thinking, talking, and writing about literary art in conversation with the questing denizens of the Round Table--and their beasts.

Peter Baker

TuTh 2:00–3:15. Bryan Hall 235.

In this course we'll read a selection of works from the European Middle Ages, concentrating especially on those in which themes of love and death intersect. Readings may include such works as Beroul's Tristan and The Saga of Kormak the Skald as well as selections from such longer works and collections as The Mabinogion, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and The Nibelungenlied.

Elizabeth Fowler

M, W 3:30-4:45

This seminar will venture into the great, anonymous poem in Middle English, as well as, in romance fashion, getting lost in some intriguing asides—other medieval versions of Gawain, a film or two, some investigations of the imagery (what’s a medieval castle? shield? map? subtlety? horse? chapel? landscape?). Our conversations will emphasize medieval material culture and its ability to support and generate the virtual reality of the poem. Some experience in reading Middle English probably essential.

John Parker

TuTh 3:30pm - 4:45pm

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. Moving through much of the New Testament, from the Gospels to Revelation, this course focuses on deepening biblical literacy and sharpening awareness of biblical connections to whatever members of the class are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the New Testament; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 5th ed. All are welcome. No previous knowledge of the Bible is needed or assumed. It can be taken before or after the Bible Part 2: The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, taught by Professor Stephen Cushman. 

Peter Baker

TuTh 11-12:15

In this course we will read Beowulf—as poem, as representative of several important aspects of early medieval culture, as linguistic artifact, and more. Because we will be reading in Old English, which cannot be read without training, a prerequisite for the course is ENGL 5100, Old English, or an equivalent course at another college or university. Work for the course will include a short mid-term paper (ten pages or less) and a final paper.

Paul Kershaw 

Europe and the wider Mediterranean and western Eurasian world were home to multiple cultures, communities and polities in the period from c. 700 to 1000 CE. Some of these polities were ‘empires of faith’ in the fullest sense: the Carolingian and Ottonian empires in western Europe, Byzantium, the eastern Roman empire in the eastern Mediterranean, the Caliphate. Others, however, possessed distinctive forms of their own: the hydrarchies of Viking and Islamic sea raiders, the nomadic confederations of the Avars and Magyars, the oligarchic rule of effectively independent cities and trading centers such as Rome or Venice. This class explores their distinctive histories and the ways in which those histories were interconnected through warfare, multiple forms of cultural exchange, and an increasingly complex and dynamic set of interlinked economic and environmental systems as well as the ways they connected with a wider world: North Africa, Central Asia, and the Arctic.  

We’ll also look at the evidence for how these distinctive societies were impacted by common phenomena, including climatic changes, the so-called ‘Dark Ages Cold Period’ and the subsequent Medieval Climate Anomaly. Other subjects to be addressed are forms of historical writing; early medieval slavery; the ideals and realities of political power; gender and identity; belief; travel and trade; forms of warfare; technological change; the reception of antiquity, and changing scholarly approaches to this eriod.  

The course will blend the chronological with a strongly comparative thematic component, as we explore particular issues in cross-cultural perspective.  

Format: two lectures and one discussion section each week. Requirements include: regular attendance, active discussion participation, two essays.  

Paul Kershaw

Representations of the medieval past are a pervasive – and often problematic - presence in the twenty first century. This class explores the nature of that exploitation: the ways in which the Middle Ages have been used and abused from the nineteenth century to the present day. We'll explore how this formative phase of the post-Roman past has been drawn upon at different times and in different places to offer critiques of the present and to serve as models for the future, placed in the service of political agendas ranging from the nineteenth-century nation building to the extremism of today. Among the topics to be addressed, we'll look at Jefferson's vision of an 'Anglo-Saxon' past and its place in the University's own history, the ways in which scholarship and nationalism interacted at particular moments in the C19 and C20, and also look at the central place of the premodern past in the ideology of ISIS/Daesh and the alt-Right. 

Why do the Middle Ages continue to haunt the twenty-first century, why do they remain a focus of contention, a resource for so many, and how has academic scholarship interacted with these other currents? 

 This course has two components. We will meet for a number of weeks synchronously to discuss a number of set works and major topics. Thereafter, the focus will shift to a program of individual student research conducted in dialogue with me. The ultimate goal of this class, as for all 4500-level history seminars, will be the production of a 25-30 page research paper (approximately 7,500 – 8,000 words). Digital projects  – rather than traditional written work – of comparable substance can also be pursued in this class, should students possess the necessary skills and training. 

Among others, readings will be drawn from:   

Ian Wood, The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2017) 

Patrick Geary, The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002)  

Nicolas Meylan and Lukas Rosli, Old Norse Myths as Political Ideologies: Critical Studies in the Appropriation of Medieval Narratives, ACTA Scandinavica, 9 (Brepols, 2020) 

Gustav Heldt

Tuesdays 3:30-6:00

A seminar exploring Japan's earliest myths describing the origins of its islands, their gods, and rulers through close readings in English of eighth-century chronicles and poems. 

Gregory Hays

TR 2:00–3:15

This course will be an introduction to palaeography and manuscript studies, centering on Latin but with some excursions into the vernacular as well. We will look at the physical basis of manuscript culture, the major scripts in use from ca. 400 to 1500 AD, the cultural contexts in which medieval manuscripts were produced and consumed, and their preservation and reception in the modern era. Part of our focus will be on manuscripts and fragments from Special Collections at UVA, and the course will culminate in a final project based on these materials. Graduate students from other departments are welcome; participants should ideally have at least a couple of years of college-level Latin.
 

Bonnie Gordon

Tu/Th 2:00-3:15 

When Christopher Columbus arrived in modern day Trinidad in 1498, he attempted to communicate with indigenous people using tambourines. He thought this would be enticing. It didn’t work. “On observing the music and dancing, however, they dropped their oars, and picked up their bows, and strung them. Each one seized his shield, and they began to shoot arrows at us.”  This class uses sound to explore unexpected encounters in the premodern world. Course materials focus on a selection of exemplary pieces, listening to composition, improvisation, text-music relations, the representation of dramatic stories, the expression of religious ideas, and performance. This is a class about how to do history, how to listen, and how to imagine the sonic past. What was it like to listen to music in a world before car alarms and amplified sound? What were the technological equivalents of headphones and MP3s? Geographically, the class centers on Western Europe and Jamestown, Virginia. It takes a global perspective and explores the role of sound in the deep histories of white supremacy in forming the bricks and mortar of music performance and scholarship in the United States.  Chronologically, we will pivot around the turn of the seventeenth centaury, a moment of overwhelming uncertainty, fantastic creative energy, and sometimes violent debates about truth. Course work will include reading, writing, listening, visits to special collections, and reflection. The course is taught at the music major level. Majors and non-majors are welcome. There are no prerequisites, and knowledge of Western music notation is not required. 

Karl Shuve

MW 9:00-9:50

How did a movement that began as a Jewish sect become the official religion of the Roman Empire and forever change the world? In this course, we will trace Christianity’s improbable rise to religious and cultural dominance in the Mediterranean world during the first millennium of the Common Era. We will examine archaeological remains, artistic creations and many different kinds of writings—including personal letters, stories of martyrs and saints, works of philosophy and theology, and even gospels that were rejected for their allegedly heretical content—as we reimagine and reconstruct the lives and struggles of early and medieval Christians. Our goal will be to understand the development of Christian thought, the evolution of the Church as an institution, and how Christianity was lived out and practiced by its adherents. 

Deborah McGrady

T/R – 12:30-1:45

If you think the medieval period was a backwards and barbaric time, think again! This course will challenge your preconceptions about the past by introducing you anew to a period marked by cross-cultural encounters, scientific discovery, religious and philosophical revolutions, and exploration of identity through culture, gender, and race. To experience the full richness of the world cultures from roughly 300 to 1500, a number of guest lectures from UVA faculty will enrich our readings drawn from the francophone tradition, which will range from crusading literature, love poetry, Marco Polo’s Travels, works of the first professional female writer – Christine de Pizan, and the trial of Joan of Arc. Most importantly, guest lectures will model the important work of interdisciplinary studies and put into practice the decentering of “national” literatures that is necessary to move away from a Eurocentric view of the past and toward a global approach to the medieval period. Course assignments will include regular response papers, collaborative class presentations, and a final research project that will take the form of a traditional paper, a podcast, or a creative work.

This course is a requirement of the Medieval Studies major that can be taken at any time. It requires no previous knowledge of the Middle Ages, is taught in English, is a welcoming space for first years interested in receiving a thoughtful introduction into upper-level courses, and for second through fourth years, a space to challenge your thinking and hone your speaking and writing skills. Course fulfills the Historical Perspectives requirement of the A&S Curriculum and can be used to fulfill the Second Writing Requirement with permission from the instructor.

T/TH 12:30-1:45

Eric Ramírez-Weaver

The medieval monk, Raoul Glaber, described Europe in the year 1000 as a place of Christian renewal in which the continent “…[was] clothing herself everywhere in a white garment of churches.” From the Romanesque churches along the Pilgrimage Routes to the new Gothic architecture at St. Denis outside Paris and on to late medieval artistic production in Prague, this course examines profound and visually arresting expressions of medieval piety, devotion, and power made by artists from roughly 1000-1500. In this class, both sacred and secular artworks supply important records of the philosophical, theological, political, and scientific beliefs espoused by their different patrons from disparate time periods and the artists they commissioned to translate their visions into churches, castles, liturgical objects, sculptures, stained glass, tapestries, household items, and illuminated manuscripts. Throughout our investigations, particular attention will be paid to the contributions of important medieval women, who rose above social inequalities, and demonstrated their power and prestige through cultivated programs of patronage.

M/W – 5-6:15

Dorothy Wong

This course is a general introduction to the artistic traditions of China, Korea, and Japan from the prehistoric period to the modern era. Major topics include funerary art, Buddhist art, and later court and secular art. The course seeks to understand artistic forms in relation to technology, political and religious beliefs, and social and historical contexts. It also introduces the major philosophic and religious traditions—Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto, and Buddhism—that have shaped cultural and aesthetic ideals of East Asia. The lectures survey major monuments and the fundamental concepts behind their creation.

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Jack Chen

This course examines stories about romance with courtesans, ghosts, foxes, and other socially or ontologically marginal beings across a variety of literary and visual genres.  Students will reflect on questions of gender and sexuality, traditional religious practice, and social identity/hierarchy as they learn to analyze literary narrative, paintings, and film/video.

M/W 4:00-4:50 PM + discussion

Jack Chen

An introduction to conceptions of self, society, and the universe as they have been expressed in canonical literary, philosophical, and religious texts in East Asia from earliest times up through modern times. Readings will be in English translation, supplemented by reference.
 

M/W 12:00PM-12:50PM
Clare Kinney

The past is another country: they do things differently there.  Or do they? Be prepared for the shock of the old—and for its pleasures—as we explore examples of epic and romance, lyric poetry and drama, prose fiction and satire in a course whose range stretches from the Anglo-Saxon heroic poem Beowulf to some variously revolutionary 17th and 18th century works of the imagination. The one sure thing connecting this huge variety of “makings,” these shapings of other people's experiences and beliefs and fantasies, is that someone (somewhere, sometime) felt them important enough to put down in writing and therefore created the possibility for their persistence beyond their own historical moment.  Come and meet some heroic survivors!

Course requirements: attentive engagement with lectures; regular attendance at/lively participation in discussion sections; two 6 page papers, midterm examination; comprehensive final examination.

T/R 02:00PM-03:15PM
Elizabeth Fowler

Several works by Chaucer, the revelations of Julian of Norwich, Pearl (a dream poem by the Gawain poet), and other surreal medieval experiments in language together with architecture, illumination, sculpture—we’ll think about poetry and the senses and how to compose virtual experiences.  Probably 5 quizzes, worksheets, a short paper or creative project.

T/R 09:30AM-10:45am
Kevin Hart

This seminar focuses on the contemplative or “mystical” tradition that flourished in Western Europe, especially from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. After a brief introduction, in which we touch on foundational texts by Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux, we begin with Richard of St. Victor’s long overlooked The Mystical Ark, which teaches how to contemplate God in nature as well as in ecstasy; we examine Aquinas’s objections to Richard in the Summa theologiæ and evaluate his notion of “intellective contemplation” proposed there. In contrast to Aquinas, we turn to affective mysticism, especially the ecstasy that comes from meditating on the suffering Jesus. We shall read The Cloud of Unknowing, most likely by an unknown Carthusian, and also Julian of Norwich’s Showings of Divine Love. What is contemplation? Is it always prayer or can it also be reading and study? How does it differ from meditation and thought? Must contemplation have only God as its object? Or can it have natural objects? What is the contemplative life, and how does it differ from the active life? Is contemplation a matter of the mind or of the heart or both? These are some of the questions we shall consider.

T/R 12:30PM-01:45PM
John Parker

The first third of this course will cover the drama of classical antiquity in translation, beginning with Greek plays by Sophocles and Euripides, then moving from there to the Latin plays of Plautus and Seneca.  The next third of the course will consider the kinds of performance that displaced (and in some cases transformed) this pagan tradition after the Christianization of the Roman empire.  We'll likely read a gospel in order to better understand Christianity's relationship to Greco-Roman culture before looking at several dramatizations of scripture, a morality play and perhaps a saint play.  The final third of the course will cover plays from the Renaissance, focusing particularly on the commercial London stage.  Playwrights will include people like Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton.

One goal of the course will be to answer some of the questions posed by historical period: what does it mean, in the context of this particular genre, to move from antiquity to the Middle Ages to the Renaissance?  How seriously should we take the differences between paganism and Christianity?  What portion of early modern drama derives from classical antiquity, what portion from the Middle Ages, and what portion, if any, is new?  What does it mean to say that drama by the time of Shakespeare had been secularized?

TR 02:00PM-03:15PM
Peter Baker

In this course, open to both undergraduates and graduates, you will learn to read the language of Beowulf—that is, the English language as preserved in sources from around 700 to 1100. After a brief introduction to the language (which is alarming at first glance but much easier to learn than any foreign language), readings will include prose excerpts from historical and religious sources and several verse classics, including The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Dream of the Rood, and The Wife’s Lament. Work for the course includes bi-weekly quizzes, a brief final exam, and a term paper. This course is a prerequisite for Beowulf, offered in the spring term.

TR 12:30PM-01:45PM
Elizabeth Fowler

This course meets with the graduate course ENGL 8110, but students enrolled in 5830 will have slightly different (and slightly fewer) assignments, in line with its role in introducing cross-disciplinary work in religion and literature. The course will focus on devotional practices and their instruments and supports: texts, objects, body techniques. The English Reformation provides a fascinating laboratory in which we can see a rapid transformation of devotional culture and see how it matters whether, for instance, a prayer or a poem concerns an altar or a table. Research and writing about the relation between words and other instruments (beads and badges, books, relics, candles, icons, furniture, architecture, and so forth).  WRWL students: either 5830 or 8110 can count towards your requirement; choose according to your interests.

T/R 3:30 – 4:45

William McDonald

An interactive course, involving reading, discussion, music, and art, that seeks, through selected stories of the medieval period, to shed light on institutions, themes, and customs. At the center is the Heroic Circle, a cycle with connections to folklore, the fairy tale, and Jungian psychology—all of which illuminate the human experience. Discover here the genesis of Arthurian film, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and more. All texts on Collab.

Second Writing Requirement

Cultures and Societies of the World

Deborah McGrady

Thurs 3:30 – 6:00

This course will challenge the contemporary perception that premodern Europe was an all-white privileged masculine space by turning to creative works of the late medieval francophone world in which racialized, gendered and classed bodies take shape. This course will draw on exile and war poetry, popular theatre, romances of conquest, history writing and travel literature to investigate the role of power and privilege in the formation of premodern identity, the politics of othering, and the question of subaltern agency in late medieval society. Contemporary critical identity studies will be used to deepen our understanding of medieval culture at the same time that our medieval material will be mined for the new insights it brings to this criticism. Course taught in English, reading knowledge of modern French strongly recommended.

T/R 11-12:15 + discussion

J. D. La Fleur

HIAF 2001 is a lecture and discussion course that explores why? where? when? how? people living over the entirety of the African continent – from Cairo to Cape Town, from Dakar to Dar es Salaam – changed what they did from the so-called Stone Age (many tens of thousands of years ago) when they created food security and developed diverse ways of making their lives meaningful, to the years of ancient and medieval civilizations facing nascent globalization, and through the years of ruinous slaving and the export of people as slaves (roughly 200 years ago).  Over the course’s sixteen weeks, we will develop interpretive themes to help us make sense of experiences so diverse that they resist reduction into a single, unifying, continent-wide narrative. The course perspective emphasizes that Africans have always been engaged with their regional and continental neighbors in the making of world history, and that African history has significance and intellectual importance of its own, rather than deriving relevance only in its relationship to dynamism in Europe or the Americas. Course materials include a textbook, specialized scholarly readings, and other media rich with sights and sounds. 

Experience studying Africa and/or any of the course themes is welcomed, but there are no pre-requisites.

Paul Kershaw

M/W 11-11:50 with discussion

This class covers the history of Europe from the third to the beginning of the thirteenth century. It moves from a Mediterranean world dominated by a Roman empire undergoing internal problems and external pressures to one characterized by complex interactions – military, economic, cultural, scientific – between multiple kingdoms and communities, faiths and systems of belief. As we move through these centuries of radical change and state formation we’ll explore political, social and institutional developments; literature, art, philosophy, and religion will also receive attention.

Paul Kershaw

M, 2-4:30

This course explores the diverse polities and cultures of the early medieval Mediterranean, and the forms on interaction in both war and peace between the Latin, Byzantine and Islamic world in the eighth through to the late tenth centuries. Warfare, travel, trade and belief will all be explored, as we look comparatively at the distinctive societies of the early medieval Mediterranean.

Nizar Hermes

M 5pm-7:30pm

This course offers an in-depth historical, philological, and socio-cultural exploration into the representation of the Afro-Arab and the African as depicted across a wide range of Arabic and Islamicate chronicles, saints' lives, and folktales, among sundry other genres. In the course of the semester, special attention will be given to significant moments in the history of Afro-Arab and Arab-African encounters.

Ahmed al-Rahim

M 3:30pm - 6:00pm

This seminar provides a comprehensive survey of the medieval religious and literary sources, research tools, and techniques and approaches of the field of Islamic Studies. The topics addressed weekly include koranic and hadith studies, biography, history of Arabic grammar and lexicography, belles-lettres, poetry, and poetics, history and historiography, philosophy and the Graeco-Arabic rational sciences, mysticism, theology, and the traditional Muslim religious sciences, and the legacy of Orientalism and questions facing post-Orientalist scholarship. The seminar thusly provides advanced undergraduate and graduate students with the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge to pursue their own research agenda within the discipline of Arabic and Islamic Studies. 

T/R 11-12:15

Charles Mathewes

The City of God is a foundational book for Latin and post-Latin Christianity; but while many talk about it, hardly anyone reads it, and fewer still understand it.  As Stefon from SNL would say, this book has everything: from creation to eschaton, the character of non-Christian moral action, Christology and the nature of the church, to just-war reasoning, Jewish-Christian relations, the phenomenology of sex, the reality of zombies, and fart jokes.

Graduate students are welcome to take the course as a tutorial, or for grads outside the department we can create a “directed reading”. Graduate students will be expected to attend at least the one lecture a week (most likely the Tuesday class), they would be welcome to audit the Thursday session (more of a discussion w/ undergrads), and then we would also schedule another session, exclusively for grad students, probably two hours, to talk through the readings from the City and also discuss some secondary literature that I would direct their way.  Students interested in discussing the Latin text in those sessions would be welcome, though competence in Latin is by no means necessary (as will be repeatedly evidenced by me).  Work for the class could be accomplished either by a paper, weekly small pieces, or something else to be determined in consultation with me.

T/Th 5:00-5:50 pm + discussion section (online synchronous)

Instructor: D. Wong

Stretching some 8,000 kilometers, the Silk Road is a network of trade routes that provided a bridge between the east and the west between the first and fourteenth centuries CE. Despite periods of disruptions, the Silk Road flourished as a commercial and at times military highway. But more than that, it was a channel for the transmission of ideas, technologies, and artistic forms and styles, with far-reaching impact beyond China and the Mediterranean world. This course introduces the art forms, trade objects, and religions that flourished along the historical Silk Road.

T/Th 12.30-1.45 (hybrid)

Instructor:  A. Phillips

This course introduces students to the vitality and diversity of Islamic art and architecture, with a careful examination of how the faith of Islam and its interpretations shape the material world. We will explore iconoclasm, calligraphy, funerary practices and monuments, courtly culture, Mediterranean and Oceanic trade, and the urge to ornament, among other major themes.

T/Th 9:30-10:45 am (online synchronous)

Instructor: D. Wong

This course introduces the principal concepts of nature and ecology in East Asian philosophical traditions—Daoism, Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism. These concepts have profound impacts on the relationship between human and their natural environment, and have inspired and informed art forms such as landscape paintings, religious temples and shrines, garden architecture, and tea houses. The course also explores how these ideas can contribute to the modern discourse on environmental ethics and sustainability.

Th 1-3:30 (online synchronous)

Instructor: L. Reilly

The marauding Vikings are familiar from popular culture including the wellknown tv series. Somehow they become kings who commission such extraordinary works as the Bayeux Tapestry, Durham Cathedral and the Cappella Palatina. This course will trace their transformation from raiders and traders across Europe and beyond into rulers of the wealthiest kingdoms in Europe through an exploration of their material culture. This fascinating transformation will be grappled with through discussions and a series of short writing assignments culminating in a research project. Seminar participants will learn how to organize, prepare and write a research paper.

This course will fulfill the second writing requirement.

TR 5-6.15 (In-person w/ remote option)

Instructor: D. Ard

Forget about quaint images of the shire and “Little England”: medieval British people moved busily around the globe. On pilgrimage, crusade, or quest, the literary characters we will meet in this course reflect the expansive geographical scope of Anglophone writing in the later Middle Ages. Through readings of major works of literature (in the original Middle English!) we will learn and practice the basics of literary analysis. We will also look at medieval mappae mundi (maps of the world) and visual representations of the globe. Finally, we will consider the ways that these texts put new pressure on contemporary discussions of race, migration, and nationhood.

Texts will include selected Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and its later adaptation, The Turke and Sir Gawain, Mandeville’s Travels, and The Book of Margery Kempe, a first-person account of the life of a fifteenth-century woman mystic.

T/Th 9:30-19:45(online synchronous)

Instructor: E. Fowler

We’ll read a handful of the unforgettable Tales, leading up to a month on the spectacular Knight’s Tale; the goal is to immerse you in medieval story-telling and help you see behind the curtain into the writer’s workshop. Some ingredients: Amazons under house arrest, fairies dancing in rings, living knights discovered under a heap of dead corpses, Queen Guinevere sentencing a rapist to find out what women actually desire, a girl who threatens her new husband with murder by an invisible angel if he so much as touches her, a tattle-tale crow, sex in a tree, very well educated chickens, the most infamous fart in literature.  The Middle Ages are a strange otherworld; we’ll investigate how things as apparently universal as love, faith, and death are different before the modern era. You’ll learn to read Middle English and get skilled at “unpacking” short passages of text and describing how words and images work to produce the responses of readers.  Along the way, we will find out what you think about Chaucer’s ambitions — comic, philosophical, poetic. Commitment to real conversation, two short papers, and two exams required.  This transparent course is designed for beginners, but it’s also a lot of fun if you’re experienced.

T/Th 2-3:15 (online synchronous)

Instructor: E. Fowler

We’ll explore Le Morte Darthur, the spell-binding compendium of stories about King Arthur’s round table, Sir Lancelot’s heroism, and Lady Guenevere’s passion. It’s the most influential early prose fiction in English, one that still produces imitations, sequels, and prequels in every medium known to art. Writing a century after Chaucer and a century before Shakespeare, the addictive Malory is curiously dry, full of terse, flat statements of shocking, magical, moving acts. We’ll puzzle over what makes the book tick: narrative, imagery, style. We’ll have five quizzes and some flash writing sprees and two short (~5-page) creative projects or papers (writers, artists, architects, and game developers: feel welcome to develop your skills!).

(online synchronous – Time TBD)

Instructor: E. Fowler

Pass/fail workshop open to graduate students in any department whose work brings religion and literature together.  We often have a healthy component of medievalists. Members have been specialists in French, English, Spanish, Arabic, and other literatures and art, as well as scholars of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and more—it’s a chance to think comparatively.  Facilitated by Peter Ochs (Religious Studies), Elizabeth Fowler (English), and frequent invited guests.

TR 12:30-1:45 (online synchronous)

Instructor: A. Ogden

Why isn’t Jamie Foxx cast as Robin Hood, or Zoe Saldana as Lancelot, or Michelle Yeoh as Merlin? When we’re dealing in myths, why do some ideas of “historical realism” seem to matter… and how sure are we that we know what medieval European society really looked like?  When we imagine the world of over a thousand years ago, why do 1950s (or even 21st-century) race and gender dynamics so often structure it?  Why does it matter how we retell important myths in popular culture anyway?

Writers and artists of the Middle Ages often didn’t share our worries about historical accuracy in representation and gave us the lasting legacies of a white Jesus and a pink-cheeked Virgin Mary—even if regional alternatives in fact existed with various degrees of cultural (in)sensitivity. What legacies are we passing down to future generations in our retellings of stories about Robin Hood, the Holy Grail, and Lancelot’s illicit love for Guenevere?  Who benefits from perpetuating a singular image of the Middle Ages?  Is there a future for different ways of using these stories, as in the work of French rapper Black M or American artist S. Ross Browne?

This class will look at such stories as told in medieval French texts (in modern French translation) and modern stage and screen adaptations, such as the 2012 musical “Robin des Bois” and classics like Rohmer’s 1964 Perceval.  For cultural contrast, we’ll also examine a few Anglo adaptations (like Monty Python and the Holy Grail / “Spamalot,” Black Knight, and the 2018 Robin Hood). No previous study of film required. Taught in French.

M/W 2-3:15 (online synchronous)

Instructor: D. McGrady

Joan of Arc looms large in French cultural memory, but her status changes (often dramatically) according to place and time. According to who is telling her story, she can appear as warrior or victim, saint or heretic, trailblazer or follower, feminist or traditionalist, spiritually inspired or mentally unstable. No two accounts of Joan are alike. How are we to understand this diversity of opinion and the continued debate surrounding Joan’s story that places her among the top ten historical figures in world history most often treated by writers and artists? This course will examine Joan’s legendary status as it is developed in legal, artistic, historical, and religious works from medieval to modern times. Instead of seeking out the historical “truth” or artistic “faithfulness” of these accounts, we will examine how these works speak to their own cultural moment. To explore this issue, the first half of the semester will focus on contemporary writings that range from letters of Italian merchants, opinions of theologians, and poems of praise about Joan to multiple legal inquiries into her case, including the trial that culminated with her 1431 execution. Thereafter, we will explore key cultural moments when Joan’s story re-emerges in French society, beginning with the “epic failure” of early modern writers to make of her a heroic figure. We will then examine her troubled “life” as a national hero in post-Revolution France before closing with a study of her conflicting modern status as a saint (she was canonized in 1920), as a political mascot, and as an international feminist icon outside of France. Student work will include short essays, presentations on assigned topics, and for the most ambitious students, research projects that match their interests (possible research topics include legal history, medicine or theology; Joan’s depiction in painting, sculpture, cinema, theatre; her use in modern French politics or her role on the international stage). Taught in French.

M/W 3:30-4:45 (online synchronous)

Instructor: D. McGrady

If you imagine the Middle Ages as a far-off land occupied by only “knights in shining armor and damsels in distress,” think again. This course will open your eyes to a far more complex conversation about sexuality and gender that resonates in surprising ways with contemporary views. We will read in tandem medieval religious writings, medical works, and conduct manuals that set the stage for distinguishing between men and women based on their biological and behavioral “predispositions” alongside works of fiction that challenged these official stances. Among our readings will be letters exchanged between one-time lovers, a church leader and abbess, that recount in real time their efforts to think through the different expectations placed on them as church figures. Poetry, romance, and travel narratives that treat the Christian West’s encounter with other religions, races, and ethnicities will further reveal the fault lines that destabilize rigid binary treatment of the sexes. The thirteenth-century romance of a young girl raised to adulthood as a boy will provide ample treatment of how our medieval counterparts struggled with the notion that “biology is destiny.” Finally, the work of the first feminist and professional writer of Europe, Christine de Pizan, who composed the first manifesto written by women in their defense, will help us fully appreciate the challenges faced then and now when breaking down gendered expectations. Through our reading of these fascinating works, it is hoped that students will acquire a thicker and more nuanced appreciation of the long history of gender, sexuality, and identity. No pre-requisites – class discussions will introduce students both to medieval culture and to the basic tenets of gender theory. Graded work will include short critical engagement and creative responses to readings, class discussions and presentations, and written exams. The second-writing requirement can be fulfilled with this course (requires instructor permission). Lectures and readings are in English.

T/Th 3:30-4:45 (online synchronous)

Instructor: W.  McDonald

On the basis of a close reading of the History of the Kings of Britain (Geoffrey of Monmouth), Poor Henry (Hartmann von Aue), Erec (Chrétien de Troyes), Yvain (Chrétien de Troyes), Perceval (Chrétien de Troyes), Parzival (Wolfram von Eschenbach), and Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg), this course aims to extract and trace the lineaments of the Arthurian legend, circa 1135 to circa 1215, as represented in literature.  Students also explore the permutations of Arthuriana in film, music, and modern media. Topics include the Monomyth of Joseph Campbell, the operas of Richard Wagner, Moorish Spain, and the trickster-figure. Drawing on an extensive repository of Resources on Collab that embraces medieval customs, realia, and intellectual life, Harry Potter, and much more, students submit weekly reports and evaluations. Two content quizzes and two term papers on a topic of choice are required. This course completes the Second Writing Requirement. No knowledge of the medieval period or the works in question is assumed.

MW 4-5:15 (In-person w/ remote option)

Instructor: D. Parker

T.S. Eliot wrote that “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.” We’ll pursue this bold statement through a close reading of the Inferno, the most intricate account of the afterlife ever written. This course will examine what makes this brilliant poem one of the acclaimed classics of western culture. We will explore the organization of Hell, its inhabitants, the nature of evil, Dante’s exile, and the rich tradition of visual material the poem has inspired from manuscript illustrations to Botticelli to more recent artists such as Gustave Doré and William Blake. Lectures will draw on The World of Dante (www.worldofdante.org) a multimedia site, that offers a wide range of digital materials related to the Divine Comedy.

Wed 9:30am–12:00pm (online/synchronous)

Instructor: Bonnie Gordon

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar plays with the vibrations between pre-modern sounds and current theoretical and political issues. We will approach history and stories not as a way to restore the past but as a way to create a hybrid present. What does Virgil’s portrayal of the goddess Rumor personified in a seventeenth-century opera have to do with a tweetstorm? What is the historical relationship between fiction and dis-information? How do scholars and artists create and transform originary myths? How do emotional and sensory responses affect the doing of history? How do we sound the past in our lives and work? The seminar will begin with two case studies. We will examine the Italian castrato as a premodern cyborg voice from the Global South and as a figure that asks questions about the limits of the human. We will also look at ancient and medieval roots of the settler colonialism of Jamestown as a way to hear the acoustemology of race and the governing of sound in early America and as a precursor to the entanglement of music and race that plays out today. Reading, writing, and creative projects will work not to restore the past but rather to create a hybrid present. Coursework centers on reading and writing. The class will also provide a space to do history through creative work or digital humanities. Theoretical readings include Kara Keeling’s Queer Times, Black Futures; Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever; Amitov Ghosh’s, In an Antique Land, and Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Students will also work with digital archives and contemporary creative projections that engage archives and the past. Students need not be in the music department or read music for this class. There will be ample time for students to pursue their own interests. Projects will be tailored to fit the precarity of the Zoom semester and of the humanities and arts in general.

W 6:00PM – 8:30PM (online synchronous)

Instructor: A. al-Rahim

This seminar provides a comprehensive survey of the medieval religious and literary sources, research tools, and techniques and approaches of the field of Islamic Studies. The topics addressed weekly include koranic and hadith studies, biography, history of Arabic grammar and lexicography, belles-lettres, poetry, and poetics, history and historiography, philosophy and the Graeco-Arabic rational sciences, mysticism, theology, and the traditional Muslim religious sciences, and the legacy of Orientalism and questions facing post-Orientalist scholarship. The seminar thusly provides advanced undergraduate and graduate students with the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge to pursue their own research agenda within the discipline of Arabic and Islamic Studies.

T/Th 12:30-1:45 pm (online synchronous)

Instructor: M. Gerli

The course offers an introduction to Islam and a cultural history of al Andalus (Islamic Iberia) from 711 until the expulsion of the Morsicos from early modern Spain (1609-1614). It will concentrate on several major moments: The Emirate/Caliphate of Córdoba and Islamic hegemony in the peninsula; the fragmentation of the Caliphate and the cultural splendor of the taifa kingdoms in the eleventh century; the advent of Moslem fundamentalism from the Maghreb in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; the phenomenon of mudejarismo (Islamic subjects that live under Christian rule) after the Christian conquest of Seville and Córdoba in the thirteenth century; the contradictions posed by Islam in Granada, a client state of Castile during most of its history, after the decline of Islam in the rest of the peninsula (1250-1492); and the political and social problems created by the presence of Muslim culture in a Christian state during the sixteenth-century.  Taught in Spanish

T 3:30-6:00 pm (online synchronous)

Instructor Gerli

The course deals with the “canonical” works of the Iberian Middle Ages and the early, early modern period. It seeks to provide an overview of current thinking regarding their nature and origin, while at the same time seeking to interrogate many of the prevailing assumptions and received ideas of Spanish literary historiography and, indeed, literary history itself. Works and topics to be addressed are: literacy and orality; manuscript culture, paleography, and textual transmission; the medieval Iberian lyric in its Pan-European context plus its problematic connection to Arabic muwashshaat (i.e., the kharjas); the Castilian epic, especially the Poema de Mio Cid, in relation to the Romance epic in general; clerical poetry and the rise of literacy (Berceo, the so-called mester de clerecía, and the Libro de buen amor); the institutional rise and uses of vernacular prose (Alfonso X and the discourses of cultural authority: historiography, law, and science); the advent of imaginative prose and the class interests of the aristocracy (Don Juan Manuel and El conde Lucanor); medieval quest, sentimental, and etiological romance (Libro del cavallero Zifar, Cárcel de Amor); humanistic comedy (Celestina) and courtly culture; and finally canonization itself.  All texts are in OSp. History of the Romance Languages recommended.

Nizar Hermes

T 3:30pm-6:00 PM

Nau 242

In this course, we will provide students with a foundational knowledge of classical and post-classical (i.e., premodern) Arabic-Islamic literature, culture, and thought. Students will gain insight and learn to appreciate some of the most influential ‘Arab’ literary figures and some of the most celebrated classical Arabic prose masterpieces. While the general approach is thematic, students will ultimately be able to grasp the chronology /geography of the rich Arabic-Islamic literary heritage and examine its wide range of humanistic subjects. Students will also broaden their critical and comparative perspectives with regard to some of the most important literary and cultural issues related to the overall poetics and politics of the Arabic-Islamic heritage. This is a high advanced/graduate READING class and discussions are exclusively conducted in LITERARY ARABIC.

Lisa Reilly

W 1-3:30 PM

Fayerweather 208

Description: This seminar will examine the changing dynamic of lay piety in later medieval England through the material culture and architecture of the parish church. An overview of English medieval architecture will be provided at the beginning of the semester. We will look at issues such as purgatory, liturgy and female patronage in relation to parish life as we explore lay people’s experience of religion in the pre-Reformation period. Classes will be discussion based and each student will undertake a major research project on a topic developed in consultation with the instructor.

Requirements: Class meetings will center on the discussion of related texts, short lectures and student presentations. Each student will be asked to give one major presentation (30 minutes) on a topic developed in conjunction with the instructor and submit a final paper (15-20 pages) on the same topic. Several short assignments will also be given throughout the semester. Attendance is mandatory. Grades will be based on the quality of participation in class discussions, the class presentation, and the final paper.

Dorothy Wong

T 3:30-6 PM

Fayerweather 208

Examines the cults of images and relics in Buddhist tradition. Topics include formats and materials of images and relics, architectural and ritual settings in which these objects were venerated, and how they served the patron’s intentions. The class studies writings about Buddhist icons and relic worship from various sources: liturgies, historical texts, inscriptions, and contemporary writing, including comparisons with western medieval tradition.

Eric Ramirez Weaver

M/W/F 9–9:50 AM

Campbell 153

Course Description: This course examines art created in the era from 300 to 1100, when early medieval artists, motivated by devotion to their faiths and scientific beliefs, crafted beautiful and refined visual expressions of their values. These crafted confessions in stone, paint, parchment, and metal provide the living historical records of a vibrant period, during which medieval artists asserted their various cultural identities.

Eric Ramirez-Weaver

M/W 11-12:15 PM

Fayerweather 215

This course examines the development of manuscript illumination following the birth of the codex in ca. 300.  Each manuscript studied exemplifies aspects of changing period styles, scientific beliefs, and spiritual identities. The myriad ways that books manifest crafted confessions of medieval ideas and reveal a sensual appreciation for beauty and value will be interrogated through a set of case studies ranging roughly 450-1450. Students in this course will learn the fundamental research skills required to undertake original study of medieval manuscripts.  Consultation of local resources will be complemented by work with manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD.

Francesca Fiorani

M/W 3:30-4:45 PM

Campbell 160

Studies painting, architecture, and sculpture in Italy from the close of the Middle Ages through the sixteenth century. Focuses on the work of major artists such as Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. Detailed discussion of the social, political, and cultural background of the arts.

Larry Goedde

T/TH 2-3:15 PM

Campbell 160

Surveys major developments in painting and graphics in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the Netherlands and Germany. Includes the rise of Netherlandish naturalism and the origins of woodcut and engraving. Explores the effects of humanist taste on sixteenth-century painting and the iconographic consequences of the Reformation. Emphasizes the work of major artists, such as Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Dürer, Bosch, and Bruegel.

Dorothy Wong

M/W 5-6:15 PM

Monroe 124

The course is a survey of the major epochs of Chinese art from pre-historic to the modern period. The course intends to familiarize students with the important artistic traditions developed in China: ceramics, bronzes, funerary art and ritual, Buddhist art, painting, and garden architecture. It seeks to understand artistic form in relation to technology, political and religious beliefs, and social and historical contexts, with focus on the role of the state or individuals as patrons of the arts. It also introduces the major philosophic and religious traditions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) that have shaped cultural and aesthetic ideals, Chinese art theories, and the writings of leading scholars.

Francesca Fiorani

T 3:30-6 PM

Fayerweather 215

This Interdisciplinary seminar addresses the work of past artists, architects, scientists, craftsmen, and polymaths. Pertinent case studies include machines built by architect Filippo Brunelleschi, optical diagrams by artist Leonardo da Vinci, anatomical studies by doctor Andreas Vesalius, drawings of the moon by astronomer Galileo Galileo, maps by various polymaths, diagram of planetary motions by astronomer Kepler, and images based on the microscope by polymath Robert Hooks. Every week students will read a scholarly article and pertinent primary sources. This seminar expands beyond the classroom offering students extensive hands-on experience taking advantage of various university collections and resources.

Larry Goedde

T 10-12:30 PM

Fayerweather 208

Working with original works of art in the collections of the Fralin Art Museum, this seminar explores the fundamental issues of the history, connoisseurship, evaluation, and care of prints and drawings from about 1450 to 1850. Each student presents in class four reports on individual drawings or prints. These reports are also revised and submitted as five-to-seven-page research catalogue entries for the Museum curatorial files.

Anne Kinney

T/TH 12:30-1:45 PM

Nau 141

Introductory survey of Chinese literature from earliest times (first millennium BCE) to the Qing Dynasty (ended 1911) in English translation, including major works from the genres of poetry, essays, drama, and fiction. In addition to familiarizing students with the Chinese literary canon, the course will focus on literary analysis and interpretation, cross-cultural reading, and philosophical, political, and social issues in Chinese literary culture.

Clare Kinney

M/W 12-12:50

Wilson 402

The past is another country: they do things differently there.  Or do they? Be prepared for the shock of the old–and for its pleasures—as we explore examples of epic and romance, lyric poetry and drama (and some experiments in prose fiction) in  a course whose range stretches from the Anglo-Saxon heroic poem Beowulf to 18th century Gothic tales.  The one sure thing connecting this huge variety of “makings,” these shapings of other people’s experiences and beliefs and fantasies, is that someone (somewhere, sometime) felt them important enough to put down in writing and therefore created the possibility for their persistence beyond their own historical moment.  Come and meet some heroic survivors!

John Parker

M/W 1-1:50 PM

Clark 107

Discussion sections to be determined.

Shakespeare arrived in London and started work as an actor and playwright sometime in his late twenties, around the year 1590.  We’ll cover the first half of his career, when he was mainly writing comedies (The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, The Merry Wives of Windsor) and English histories (Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V), though we’ll also look at an early tragedy (Romeo and Juliet) and a somewhat later “problem play” (Measure for Measure), as well as his sonnets.  We’ll read one play per week, for the most part letting its particular concerns dictate the course of our conversation.  There will be two papers (around 6pp. each), a midterm and final.

Bruce Holsinger

T/TH 11-12:15 PM

Maury 104

This lecture course explores the wondrous and magical world of modern fantasy literature, from JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth to the Arthurian realm of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Mists of Avalon” to George RR Martin’s Seven Kingdoms in “Game of Thrones.” The course will include a fair amount of background reading in the medieval works (epics, Arthurian romances, etc.) that inspire modern fantasy. We may pay some attention to fantasy gaming as well as film adaptation. Requirements will include a midterm, a final, and several short writing assignments.

Paul Cantor

T/TH 3:30-4:45 PM

New Cabell 168

This course will study ancient Rome in Shakespeare’s representation of it. We will read some Roman history as background and then ask whether Shakespeare portrays the ancient city accurately in his Roman plays: Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. We will also consider the place of Rome in Shakespeare’s imaginative universe as a whole. By reading Cymbeline, Henry V, and Hamlet, we will explore Shakespeare’s understanding of the influence of Rome on later history. In short, we will study how the greatest author of the Renaissance reacted to and recreated the greatest power in the ancient world. One seminar report and one seminar paper.

John Parker

M/W 2-3:15 PM

Shannon 111

This course examines some of Shakespeare’s greatest contemporaries and rivals, in particular Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, with special attention to the London theater’s sub-genres: revenge tragedy, city comedy and tragi-comedy.  Other authors may include Thomas Kyd, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, George Chapman, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, John Ford and Philip Massinger.  We will try to get a sense of what it means to speak of a “Renaissance” at this moment in English history and to understand how the London commercial stage relates to earlier forms of theater.

Stephen Cushman

M/W 2-3:15 PM

Bryan 328

The stories, rhythms, and rhetoric of the Bible have been imprinting readers and writers of English since the seventh century. The goal of this course is to sample stories and poems from Genesis to Revelation in order to deepen biblical literacy and sharpen awareness of biblical connections to whatever the members of the course are reading in other contexts. Along the way we will discuss English translations of the Bible; the process of canonization; textual history; and the long trail of interpretive approaches, ancient to contemporary. By the end of the semester we should have a richer sense of the Bible as source of much that we hear and read. Our text will be the New Oxford Annotated Bible, in either the 4th or 5th ed. All are welcome, critical and creative. No previous knowledge of the Bible needed or assumed.

David Van der Meulen

M/W 11-12:15 PM

Bryan 233

We know the past chiefly through artifacts that survive, and books are among the most common of these objects. Besides conveying a text, each book also contains evidence of the circumstances of its manufacture, how its producers viewed it, and how its readers might have received it.  In considering what questions to ask of these mute objects, this course might be considered the “archaeology of printing”—that is, the identification, description, and interpretation of printed artifacts surviving from the past five centuries, as well as exploration of the critical theory that lies behind such an approach to texts. With attention to production processes, including the operation of the hand press, it will investigate ways of analyzing elements such as paper, typography, illustrations, binding, and organization of the constituent sections of a book.  The course will explore how a text is inevitably affected by the material conditions of its production and how an understanding of the physical processes by which it was formed can aid historical research in a variety of disciplines, not only those that treat verbal texts but also those that deal with printed music and works of visual art.  The class will draw extensively on the holdings of the University Library’s Special Collections Department, as well as on its Hinman Collator (an early version of the one at the CIA).  Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

Rebecca Rush

T/TH 11-12:15 PM

Bryan 233

In this broad-ranging study of medieval and Renaissance religious writing, we will reflect on ideas of form and devotion in their broadest possible senses. We will focus in particular on the correspondences and conflicts between devotion to earthly and divine loves. Readings include selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Katherine Group (MS Bodley 34), Pearl, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Donne’s devotional poetry, and Herbert’s Temple.

Peter Baker

T/TH 2-3:15 PM

Maury 113

Amy Ogden

M 1:00 – 1:50 PM

New Cabell 287

Introduction to reading Old French, with consideration of its main dialects (Ile-de-France, Picard, Anglo-Norman) and paleographical issues.  May be taken in conjunction with FREN 5510/8510 or independently.  Weekly reading exercises, a transcription and translation exercise, and a final open-book exam.  Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin or another romance language.  Taught in English.

Amy Ogden

M/W/F 11-11:50 AM

New Cabell 323

Globalization.  Love and friendship.  Encounters with other cultures and peoples.  Separation of Church and State.  Bourgeois values.  Law and justice.  Where did these features of modern life come from and—more importantly—what other forms might they have taken or might they still evolve into?  It is said that history is written by the victors, but historical documents—literature, histories, prayer books, etc.—retain the evidence of alternate values as well as hints of (temporarily?) abandoned futures.  Can we escape our preconceptions of the past and uncover, in the documents, different histories?  Histories that offer alternative ways of thinking about modern institutions, assumptions, and inequities and about the stories that give them authority?

Readings in the course will be in modern French translation, with occasional discussions of the original medieval and middle French if students are interested in the history of the language.  We’ll begin with the earliest narrative in French (ca. 880 C.E.) and continue up to about 1600, looking both at classic texts and little-known treasures.  Reading and writing assignments will be appropriate both for students coming directly from FREN 3032 and for more advanced students who want to hone their close reading and analytical/persuasive writing skills in French.

Amy Ogden

M/W 2:00PM – 3:15PM

New Cabell 111

African saints.  Trans saints.  Saints’ Lives as media.  Saints in material culture and literature and history.

Recent academic enthusiasm for medieval saints’ Lives has begun to uncover the usefulness of this genre for gaining deeper understanding of both medieval and modern attitudes toward a variety of topics, from sexuality and sentiments to materiality and foreign cultures.  Reading Lives written between 880 and the late thirteenth century, together with the work of some of the most engaging scholars in the field of hagiography studies, we will investigate a variety of issues that resonate with current interests in the broader fields of medieval and French studies.  Readings include the Lives of St. Mary the Egyptian (a courtesan turned hermit), St. Catherine of Alexandria (known for her wisdom), St. Alexis (who abandoned his family), St. Louis IX (king of France), St. Euphrosyne (a woman who became a male monk), and St. Moses the Ethiopian (a brigand turned abbot).

William McDonald

T/TH 3:30-4:45 PM

New Cabell 209

Joseph Campbell––and more! Trace the origin of The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Game of Thrones: Encounter the stories that inspired Richard Wagner. Follow the hero and heroines of medieval fiction through the steps of the heroic quest: the call to adventure, meeting the mentor, tests and trials, symbolic death and rebirth, the road back, and return with a societal boon. Among the stories read are Parzival and Tristan and Isolde. Grade is based on classroom discussion, oral reports, and a final paper. No final examination. No textbook required.

Marcel Schmid

T/TH 9:30-10:45 AM

New Cabell 485

Paul Kershaw

M/W 11:00-11:50 AM

Claude Moore Nursing Education G10

This class covers the period from the third to the thirteenth centuries, moving from a Mediterranean world dominated by the Roman empire to one characterized by complex interactions (military, economic, cultural, scientific) between multiple kingdoms, communities, faiths and systems of belief.  Political, social and institutional developments will be addressed; literature, art, philosophy, and religion will also receive attention.

We begin with the terminal phases of the ancient world. We end at a time when many of the formative elements of the world we live in today have come into existence. How can we understand the historical processes that led from one to the other? How did life, thought and belief change in these centuries? ‘The Birth of Europe’ is not simply a chance to study the foundational phase of European history it also affords students the opportunity to investigate a crucial phase of world history, the legacies of which continue to shape the world today.

Intended as an introduction to the medieval period, no prior knowledge is expected.

Work undertaken in HIEU 2061: Students will write two 1600-1800 word essays over the course of the semester, take a mid-term and a final exam, attend lecture and participate actively in section discussion. All students receive a letter grade; C/NC is not an option.

Erin Lambert

M/W 1-1:50 PM

Maury 115

What do we mean when we say that we live in the modern world? Historians have long told us that modernity arose between 1500 and 1800, during what we call the early modern period, and that the history of its development is a European one. But what if there is more to the story? How might we tell it differently if we approached this period not simply from a European perspective, but also from a global one?

This semester, we will consider these questions through an exploration of the history of Europe and its global connections from c. 1450 to c. 1800. Over the course of these tumultuous centuries, Europeans experienced changes in virtually every aspect of life, from what they ate to their modes of government, and from what they believed about God and the cosmos to the trade routes they traveled. By working closely with primary source documents and considering the contributions of scholars who are crafting new, more inclusive histories, we will ask how such traditional narratives in European history were, in fact, global stories. How, for example, was the development of Protestantism related to European encounters with indigenous religions? What did the Dutch tulip trade and the trade in human beings have to do with one another? Asking such questions about the past will help us to define new ways of thinking about our present, because in ways both large and small, as we engage in debates about human rights or put sugar in our coffee, we continue to live with the legacies of global early modernity every day.

Erin Lambert

M 3:30-6 PM

New Cabell 207

As the popularity of The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead suggests, contemporary American readers and viewers are fascinated by the imagination of other worlds. While these recent bestsellers feature dystopian narratives of worlds falling apart, readers five centuries ago were similarly captivated by the idea of utopia, a non-existent perfect world. In this seminar, we will explore the worlds they imagined—worlds that, while unreal, reflected and often critiqued the society in which readers and writers actually lived. We begin by reading Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), the text that introduced the utopian ideal to early modern European readers. In the wake of the initial European voyages to the New World, More’s rendering of a perfect island society that was yet to be discovered captured the imaginations of his readers and provided a model for other writers’ own utopian imaginings. Against the background of More’s text, we will discuss other early modern examples of utopian literature, and through them, we will consider how these texts reflected questions and problems in society at the time.

M/W/F 12-12:50 PM

New Cabell 323

Deborah Parker

T/TH 9:30-10:45 AM

Fayerweather 215

As the plague swept through Italy in the mid-1300s, three young men and seven young women from Florence escaped the city to the countryside, where they spent 10 days telling stories. So begins Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, one of many masterpieces that you will sample in this course. ITAL 3110 focuses on foundational works of Italian literature, art, architec-ture, and music in their historical and cultural context to relate them to con-temporary issues. We will examine some of the most extraordinary person-alities of an age of luminaries, among them, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Giotto, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Coming this fall! Prerequisite: ITAL 2010.

Gregory Hays

M/W/F 2-2:50 PM

Ruffner 125

In this course we will read the Romance of Apollonius of Tyre, an early medieval novel involving incest, murder, piracy, riddles, shipwrecks, ball-games, prostitution, virtuous fishermen, wicked step-parents, and more riddles. Time permitting, we will also look at the novel’s later influence, notably on Shakespeare’s Pericles.

Bonnie Gordon

Tu/Thurs 11-12:15 PM

When UVa shut down last spring, Bocaccio’s Decameron was trending on Twitter and made it to the top of Amazon’s best seller list. Written in 1348 just after the Black Death attacked Florence, the book chronicles ten young people who isolate themselves in a villa outside the city. They spend their two-week quarantine telling stories, making music, playing, games, and strolling. The plague quickly turned into a pandemic and recurred almost every year until 1700. But the plague did not lead to four hundred years of devastation. It prompted 400 years of resilience in which, across the globe, people learned to cope with a new normal. This class takes the sounds of plague as a point of departure for hearing music of the Early Modern World. Unlike Bocaccio’s characters, we will not tune around the world around us; instead, we will use sounds of the past to think about contemporary resonances of a very different time and space,  and we will think together about lessons from the past and hopes for the future.

We will study a selection of exemplary pieces, listening to composition, improvisation, text-music relations, the representation of dramatic stories, the expression of religious ideas, and performance. The goal is to help you both understand better the context and implications for this music and to form your own opinions and interpretations of early music—not just the examples on the syllabus, but the many others you may encounter as a performer, composer or listener.

Geographically, the class centers on Western Europe and Jamestown, Virginia. It also accounts for a Global perspective and the role of sound in the deep histories of White Supremacy in forming the bricks and mortar of music performance and scholarship in the United States.  Chronologically, we will spend the most time in the years around 1600, a moment of overwhelming uncertainty, fantastic creative energy, and sometimes violent debates about truth.

Deborah McGrady

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

French House 100

This course addresses world cultures from roughly 300 to 1500 through a series of topics that bring into dialogue medieval and modern worlds. Topics are selected with the goal of introducing students to the impact of medieval culture in our world today. Possible subjects include the role of medieval romance in modern love, early reflections on identity politics, Arthurian literature and modern fantasy literature and film, and the medieval origins of modern cultural practices– from poetry “slams” and the introduction of fashion to the revival of Valentine’s day. Students will study medieval inventions that continue to shape our world, from the mechanical clock and eyeglasses to the astrolabe, the material book, and the printing press. Students will also investigate premodern responses to pandemics and medieval encounters with others as recounted in memoires, crusade narratives, medical and legal records as well as in maps, architecture, and food. Topics will be supplemented by guests visits from the affiliated faculty of Medieval Studies who will introduce students to the major subfields of inquiry that reflect the rich interdisciplinarity of the program. Course assignments will include regular response papers on readings and guest lectures, and the option of a final research paper that pursues a topic introduced in class. The course fulfills the second-writing requirement and the Historical Discipline requirement of the New Curriculum.

Jorge Secada

M/W 10-10:50 AM

Monroe 124

This course is an introduction to the history of philosophy from its beginnings in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor to the Renaissance and the end of the Middle Ages. The lectures do not aim to offer a comprehensive summary; you will find that in any of several histories of philosophy, one of which is required reading for the course. In the lectures we will instead discuss a few selected major philosophers and we will concentrate on some of their doctrines and arguments. We will, however, look at cultural developments which took place during this period and we will study philosophical works in their more general social and historical setting. The course seeks to provide historical as much as philosophical knowledge and understanding. Requirements include several short quizzes and a term paper.

Andrew Taylor

M/W 2-2:50 PM

Wilson 402

Provides a systematic introduction to Tibetan Buddhism with a strong emphasis on tantric traditions of Buddhism – philosophy, contemplation, ritual, monastic life, pilgrimage, deities & demons, ethics, society, history, and art. The course aims to understand how these various aspects of Tibetan religious life mutually shape each other to form the unique religious traditions that have pertained on the Tibetan plateau for over a thousand years.

Sonam Kachru

T/TH 11-12:15 PM

Nau 142

Provides a systematic introduction to Tibetan Buddhism with a strong emphasis on tantric traditions of Buddhism – philosophy, contemplation, ritual, monastic life, pilgrimage, deities & demons, ethics, society, history, and art. The course aims to understand how these various aspects of Tibetan religious life mutually shape each other to form the unique religious traditions that have pertained on the Tibetan plateau for over a thousand years.

M/W 3-3:50 PM

McLeod 1004

This course traces the rise of Christianity in the first millennium of the Common Era, covering the development of doctrine, the evolution of its institutional structures, and its impact on the cultures in which it flourished. Students will become acquainted with the key figures, issues, and events from this formative period, when Christianity evolved from marginal Jewish sect to the dominant religion in the Roman Empire.

John Nemec

T/TH 12:30-1:45 PM

Nau 101

This course serves as a general introduction to Hinduism in its classical, medieval and colonial forms. By reading primary texts in translation (along with key secondary sources), and by taking note of the cultural, historical, political and material contexts in which they were composed, we will explore Hinduism from its earliest forms to the period of the “Hindu Renaissance” in the nineteenth century. In other words, we will take a sweeping look at the religious and cultural life of the Indian sub-continent from the second millennium B.C. (B.C.E.) to the nineteenth century.

Shankar Nair

M/W 11-11:50 AM

Wilson 301

A general introduction to the origins, development, teachings, and practices of the Islamic tradition. Studies the Irano-Semitic background, Arabia, Muhammad and the Qur’an, the Hadith, law and theology, duties and devotional practices, sectarian developments (Sunnism and Shi’ism), and Sufism or “Islamic mysticism.”

Peter Ochs

W 6-8:30 PM

New Cabell 183

T/TH 9:30-10:45 AM

New Cabell 303

Michael Gerli

T/TH 3:30-4:45 PM

New Cabell 303

A detailed reading of Don Quijote from a theoretical and historical perspective in order to explore its pivotal role in the development of the modern novel. Special consideration is given to the history of ideas, especially Early Modern literary theory, particularly the commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics and the humanistic polemics on mimesis (imitation and the problem of the emulation of reality and truth in artifice), plus the history and reception of romance in Europe from the Middle Ages through the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Ricardo Padron

M 3:30-6 PM

New Cabell 411

Amanda Phillips

M/W 2-3:15 PM

Fayerweather 206

This seminar introduces students to the art and architecture of the mightiest three Islamic empires, which ruled a continuum from Sarajevo to Bangladesh. It looks at palaces, mosques, gardens, the arts of the book, jewelry, and ceramics as expressions of power and responses to global trends, from 1300 to the 20th century. It looks, too, at how their cities, styles, and histories impact on art and architecture in the year 2020.

Fotini Kondyli

Tu/Th 12:30pm – 1:45pm

Campbell 160

“Monumental churches, mosaics with golden background, miraculous icons and religious figures with long noses that never move or smile”. This is often people’s perception of Byzantine art.

While all these are elements of Byzantine art, alone, they do little justice to the marvels of Byzantine art and its diversity in terms of its themes, techniques, materials, multiple meanings and intended audiences.

From the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia and the Imperial palaces of Constantinople to mosaics, icons, and items of personal adornment, this course will trace developments in the arts and architecture of the Byzantine Empire in the course of eleven centuries (4th – 15th c. AD). We will explore the role of early Christian and Byzantine art between Greco-Roman aesthetics and the artistic production of the Renaissance. We will focus on the iconography of selected artworks to better understand Christian and Byzantine belief systems and look into the multiplicity of function and meaning in Early Christian and Byzantine architecture and art. We will also consider how Byzantium negotiated its political and cultural identity among allies and enemies through its artistic production and visual language. Finally we will meet different social groups involved in the production of Byzantine art and architecture, such as craftsmen and architects, as well as the Imperial family, monks and nuns, elites and ordinary people.

Betsy Purvis

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Campbell 160

Amanda Phillips

Tu/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Fayerweather 208

This course looks in-depth at one of most sophisticated and cosmopolitan cities of all time– the Istanbul of Sultan Suleyman, c 1500-1600. Using the protagonists depicted in the popular soap-opera Muhteşem Yüzyil as a jumping-off point, it looks at how royal patronage shaped the city even until today—markets, parade-routes, shrines, palaces, mosques, workshops and houses both grand and humble hosted people from around the world, buying, selling, enjoying, or complaining about goods from China, India, Italy, and even the West Indies.

Amanda Phillips

Tu/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Ruffner 179

This course introduces students to the vitality and diversity of Islamic art and architecture, with a careful examination of how the faith of Islam and its interpretations shape the material as well as the spiritual world.  This course ranges from the late antique Mediterranean to China and Indonesia and back to the Middle East at the dawn of the 20th century. We will explore iconoclasm, calligraphy, funerary practices and monuments, courtly culture, Mediterranean and Oceanic trade, and the urge to ornament, among other major themes.

Francesca Fiorani

M/W 5-6:15 PM

Campbell 160

John Casteen

T/TH 3:30-4:45 PM

Bryan Hall 328

Gretchen York

T/TH 9:30-10:45 AM

Bryan Hall 328

Clare Kinney

T/TH 2-3:15 PM

Maury 113

A large part of this course will be dedicated to a careful exploration of John Milton’s enormous and embattled epic of origins, Paradise Lost, but we’ll also be examining several of his earlier poetic experiments and glancing at his political writings on censorship and divorce. Among the issues the course will address: Milton the revolutionary (the politics and poetics of rebellion); Milton the rewriter of Scripture (inspired re-creation or Satanic supplementation?); Milton and gender (is Edenic bliss really conditional upon female secondariness?); Milton and literary history (how can we digest the poetry that tries to swallow all its predecessors?).

Requirements: enthusiasm, stamina, regular attendance and lively participation in class discussions; a short paper on the earlier poetry; midterm examination; series of e-mail response postings on Paradise Lost; either (each student may choose) a  longer paper on Paradise Lost or a very comprehensive final examination on Paradise Lost.

Katherine Maus

M/W 12-12:50 PM

Gilmer 190

This course deals with the second half of Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, in which he was mainly writing tragedies and romances.  ENRN 3210, the fall semester course, deals with the first half of Shakespeare’s career, in which he was mainly writing histories and comedies.  You may take either or both courses; neither is a prerequisite for the other.
2 50-minute lectures and 1 50-minute discussion section per week.

Requirements: 3 five-page papers, a final exam emphasizing material covered in lectures and section meetings, and regular short assignments made by section leaders.

This course does not automatically fulfill the Second Writing Requirement, but it may be tweaked to do so.  See me in the first few weeks of the semester if you are interested in this option.

Discussion sections under revision.

Amy Ogden

T/TH 2-3:15 PM

NCH 115

Why isn’t Jamie Foxx cast as Robin Hood, or Zoe Saldana as Lancelot, or Michelle Yeoh as Merlin? When we’re dealing in myths, why do some ideas of “historical realism” seem to matter… and how sure are we that we know what medieval European society really looked like?  When we imagine the world of over a thousand years ago, why do 1950s (or even 21st-century) race and gender dynamics so often structure it?  Why does it matter how we retell important myths in popular culture anyway?

Writers and artists of the Middle Ages often didn’t share our worries about historical accuracy in representation and gave us the lasting legacies of a white Jesus and a pink-cheeked Virgin Mary—even if regional alternatives in fact existed with various degrees of cultural (in)sensitivity. What legacies are we passing down to future generations in our retellings of stories about Robin Hood, the Holy Grail, and Lancelot’s illicit love for Guenevere?  Who benefits from perpetuating a singular image of the Middle Ages?  Is there a future for different ways of using these stories, as in the work of French rapper Black M or American artist S. Ross Browne?

This class will look at such stories as told in medieval French texts (in modern French translation) and modern stage and screen adaptations, such as the 2012 musical Robin des Bois and classics like Rohmer’s 1964 Perceval.  For cultural contrast, we’ll also examine a few Anglo adaptations (like Monty Python and the Holy Grail / Spamalot, Black Knight, and the 2018 Robin Hood). There will be an optional field trip to see the 2020 release of the live-action Mulan in March.

As a final project, students will make a short film based on a medieval legend. 

No previous study of film required. This course satisfies the Arts requirement for the Medieval Studies major.

Deborah McGrady

MW 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm

If you imagine the Middle Ages as a far-off land occupied by only “knights in shining armor and damsels in distress,” think again. This course will open your eyes to controversial figures of early society, including werewolves and monstrous women, knights in distress and women in shining armor, all of whom openly challenged social norms. Their adventures – recorded in fiction, scientific works, legal cases, sermons, and conduct books –became the testing ground to explore questions that continue to preoccupy us today: What is the relationship between nature and nurture in shaping identity? What role should gender play in defining social and intimate roles? Can the law regulate sexuality and desire?

William McDonald

T/TH 3:30-4:45 PM

NCH 364

Cong Zhang

Tu/Th 2-3:15 PM

Gibson 141

Paul Kershaw

M/W 12:00-12:50 PM

Maury 115

Paul Kershaw

M 3:30-6 PM

Nau 141

Deborah Parker

W 4-6:30 PM

NCH 303

Gustav Heldt

Tu 3:30-6 PM

NCH 183

Medieval Identities: Cultures and Conflicts

Eric Ramirez-Weaver

Tu/Th 2 – 3:15 PM

Bryan 235

In this course, we will survey the major fields housed within Medieval Studies while focusing our inquiries upon the creative and cataclysmic repercussions of medieval clashes, exchanges, envoys, combats, Crusades, collaborations, and various forms of contact. Special weekly topics will be supplemented by guest visits from participating faculty in Medieval Studies. Weekly topics will include but are not limited to  syncretism, cultural hybrids, monstrous races, Crusader art, troubadour verse, medieval mapping, diagrams, cosmology, Jewish-Christian interaction, romances, private devotion, Convivencia, al-Sufi and celestial globes, pilgrim narratives, astrolabes, gendered literary analysis, the cult of relics, and the cultural creation of histories.

Zita Toth

Tu/Th 9:30 – 10:45 PM

NCH 309

In this course, we will look at philosophy from around the 4th to the 14th centuries. Although this is a long time-period that resists general claims about its philosophical tendencies, most authors we will consider were primarily concerned with the question of how to fit religion (whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian) into a broadly speaking Aristotelian, scientific world-view — or on the converse, how to fit a scientific world-view into a broadly speaking theological framework. Topics of discussion will include, among others, questions concerning faith and reason, knowledge and skepticism, causation, and human nature. Representative figures include Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William Ockham, Nicholas of Autrecourt, and John Buridan.

Petra Turner

T/Th 11-12:15 PM

317 Kerchof

Have you ever wanted to learn more about the Medieval Christian Mystical tradition? This course offers the opportunity to read some of the greatest medieval mystical writers, as well as the sources in which they are rooted.  In this course, you will learn about how various authors experienced visions of God, how they thought about prayer, and about the life and disciplines that often accompany these experiences and practices. The class will read such authors as Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Clare of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Julian of Norwich, in addition to several others. Be prepared to read some strange and wondrous things, and to write a few thoughtful papers.

Trevor Dadson

M 3:30-6 PM

209 NCH

The fate of the Moriscos (Iberian Islamic subjects forcibly converted to Christianity after 1502) and the conversos (converts to Christianity from Judaism) represents the most fraught civic issue debated in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. More intense than the debates regarding the colonization of the Indies (with which the Morisco question has many salient ties), the destiny of the Moriscos and conversos in in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spain presented an on-going preoccupation which culminated in their cultural suppression, their internal diaspora, and the Moriscos’ final expulsion to North Africa between 1609-1614. The debate, and the actions taken by the Monarchy, regarding these minorities comprise one of the most important antecedents of ethnic and religious cleansing in the early modern period.

Eric Ramirez-Weaver

F 9-11:30 AM

FHL 208

Throughout the medieval period multiple strategies for accessing and invoking supernatural power were codified as orthodoxy, castigated as heretical, and cultivated according to various ritual traditions. From the cult of relics to hermetic practice multiple methods were honed and exercised in order to perfect the natural realm, heal the sick, touch the dead, tap their power, and ultimately in western Christian Europe to bring about the salvation of humankind and the renewal of the earth. Taking a broad approach to our topic, using a series of case studies we will interrogate an array of artistic and cultural historical documents attesting to the development of specific strategies for engaging the sacred. Topics include but are not limited to the following: early medieval astronomy, cult of relics, saints and hagiographic traditions, eschatology and the apocalypse, medieval mystics and the female body, Herrad of Hohenburg, Hildegard of Bingen, Margery Kempe, saintly mutilation and martyrdom, astrological prediction, kabbalah, horoscopes, astrolabes, talismans and crystals, necromancy, spells and incantations, technology and magical practice, military machinations, alchemical theory, and Hieronymus Bosch.

Amanda Phillips

Tu/Th, 12.30-1.45

FHL 206

Spend a semester with the Sultans, merchants, artists, and architects of Ottoman Istanbul, the capital of Islam’s largest and most enduring empire. Learn about conquests and rebuilding, pleasure gardens and palaces, workshops and markets, and trade with India and Italy. Consider how geographies, materials, the movement of populations and technology, and imperial might worked together to create a distinct visual culture, some of the greatest works of art in the world.

Amanda Phillips

W, 1-3.30pm

FHL 206

Calligraphy is the most important of all the arts in the Islamic world.  In this class, we’ll look at writing across media, from architecture to the books arts to ceramics and textiles and to popular souvenirs and street art – and at how it works among highly literate and less literate populations alike. We’ll be working with objects at the Fralin, the VMFA at Richmond, and other collections to see how calligraphy and other art works together, historically and in 2019.

Elizabeth Fowler

M/W 1100-1150

McLeod Hall 102

In this course, you’ll explore the first twelve centuries of English by looking at beautiful objects with writing on them.  We’ll start with heroic poems and prayers written by hand on animal skins and end up with the granite obelisk chiseled with T. J.’s epitaph.  The UVa archives will open its vaults for a special visit, and you’ll see priceless treasures you’ll never forget up close. Our writers will include many of the most famous authors in world history, those every educated person should encounter: the Beowulf-poet, Marie de France, Chaucer, Malory, Shakespeare, Wroth, Milton, Behn, Pope, Locke, Equiano, Wheatley, Jefferson. We’ll read epic battles, dirty jokes, odes to spring and dark beauty; we’ll meet Satan and cross the river of death; we’ll dip into the memories of free African and Mohegan preachers, follow a woman who becomes a knight errant and another who becomes a visionary theologian, and wrestle with Enlightenment thinkers and their notions of art, race, and liberty.

This is a course meant for majors and non-majors. First-year students will be comfortable in it and are encouraged to view it as a good place to begin their education; English majors are urged to seek it out early as a tasting menu; non-majors are invited to see it as a way to cultivate their life-long reading; for all it will be a treasure hunt in the fabulous English “word hoard.” We’ll focus on encountering and enjoying great writing. There will be pass/fail writing experiments and sections that will help you develop yourself as a reader, a couple of tests, and competitions and prizes from Professor Fowler (the annual sonnet games!!), but there will be no “papers”: this is a reading course.

Katharine Maus

This course deals with the first half of Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, in which he was mainly writing histories and comedies. ENGL 3272, in the Spring, deals with the second half of Shakespeare’s career, in which he was mainly writing tragedies and romances.  You may take either or both courses; neither is a prerequisite for the other.

Dan Kinney

T/R 330-445

New Cabell 058

In this course, reading non-English texts in translation and Middle English texts in the original, we’ll explore how medieval Christianity bedevils traditional heroics and how medieval authors recast the heroic in and outside the genre of epic. Texts explored include epics like Beowulf and The Songs of Roland and the Cid, Dante’s underworld reckonings with Virgil and Virgil’s heroics, and the Matters of Troy and of Britain in epic as well as romance.

Rebecca Rush

In this wide-ranging survey of Renaissance literature, we will grapple with the entanglements of love and power in poetry, prose, and drama from the reign of Henry VIII to the English Civil War. Readings include Queen Elizabeth’s love poems and speeches, lamentations of betrayed lovers by Isabella Whitney and Thomas Wyatt, the tale of Britomart from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, William Shakespeare’s dark comedy Much Ado About Nothing, the ecstatic love poems of John Donne and Katherine Philips, Thomas Middleton’s haunting tragedy The Changeling, and a raucous debate between male and female pamphleteers about whether Adam or Eve was more culpable for eating the apple and bringing about the fall. No prior knowledge of Renaissance literature is required or assumed, and majors and non-majors at all levels are welcome.

Clare Kinney

TuTh 2.00-3.15

Bryan 334

This seminar will focus upon lyric, narrative and dramatic works from the medieval and Renaissance periods which explore the striking metamorphoses and the various trajectories of earthly (and occasionally not so earthly) love. We’ll be examining the ways in which desire is represented as transforming the identity and consciousness of the lover; we will also be examining (and attempting to historicize) strategies employed by our authors to variously transform, redefine, enlarge and contain the erotic impulse. We’ll start with some selections from the Metamorphoses of Ovid (read in translation); we will finish with some astonishing seventeenth-century love poems to God. Along the way we’ll be looking at the gendering of erotic representation and erotic speech, the intermittent entanglement of secular and sacred love, the role of genre in refiguring eros, and some intersections between the discourses of sexuality and the discourses of power.

Tentative reading list: selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses; the Lais (short romances) of Marie de France; Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde; sonnets by Petrarch, Philip Sidney and Lady Mary Wroth; lyrics by John Donne and George Herbert; Shakespeare’s As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale. (All non-English works will be read in translation.)  Requirements: regular attendance, lively participation in discussion, a series of reflective e-mail responses to our readings, a short paper (6-7 pages); a long term paper (14+ pages).

Dan Kinney

T/R 1230-145

New Cabell 207

Taking Renaissance comparisons of arts as a principal point of departure, we will survey the verbal and visual preoccupations of Early Modern Europe and the often tense dialogues between them in the realms of instruction, invention, demonstration, and credal debate. We will study a range of text-image encounters from Petrarch to Spenser to Shakespeare to Herbert and Milton, reckoning with emblematics and other symbolic conventions as they inform reckonings with texts.

Peter Baker

In this course you will learn to read the language of Beowulf—that is, the English language as preserved in sources from around 700 to 1100. After a brief introduction to the language (which is alarming at first glance but much easier to learn than any foreign language), readings will include prose excerpts from historical and religious sources and several verse classics, including The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Dream of the Rood, and The Wife’s Lament. Work for the course includes bi-weekly quizzes, a brief final exam, and a short paper.

John Parker

M 330-600 (Dawson’s Row 1)

We’ll begin with various theories of secularization and modernization — probably drawn from the likes of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Adorno and Horkheimer, Charles Taylor, Talal Asad and Bruno Latour — paying special attention to the way they handle the question of period, in particular what they have to say about the Middle Ages and the process of Christianization.  Then we’ll test those theories against some of the texts that are most central to medieval drama, in particular The Gospel according to Mark, polemical writings from the Fathers, Visitatio plays, the plays of the Carmina Burana, episodes from the vernacular cycles, morality and saint plays.  We’ll finish with a couple of early modern plays that seem especially preoccupied with the post-Reformation suppression of sacred drama, in particular Doctor Faustus and Arden of Faversham.

Amy Ogden

MW 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM

Gibson Hall 142

Murderers, prostitutes, transvestites, kings, rebellious children… all saints?  Modern depictions of holy people often marvel at their subjects’ virtues and gloss over their complexities, but the long history of stories about saints does not only highlight heroic courage in the face of impossible odds: the stories (hagiography) also focus on sin and redemption and on staunch resistance to contemporary norms. Gender bending, marvelous journeys to heaven and hell, spectacular sins and helpful animals are just a few of the exciting elements authors have used to draw their audiences in.  For more sophisticated readers and listeners, they frequently offer edgy commentaries on the hot topics of their day (e.g.,virginity vs. marriage) and on eternal issues (e.g., the conflicting goals of parents and children).  Focusing on one of the highpoints of hagiographic writing—Christian France in the Middle Ages—but drawing on a range of Lives, from the earliest times to the modern era and from different religious traditions, we will investigate what saints’ Lives can tell us about their culture’s theological concerns, secular interests, conceptions of history and fiction, and the quest of both ecclesiastics and lay people to fulfill their spiritual and their terrestrial responsibilities. All readings will be in English translation and discussion will be in English.  This course may not be taken as part of the requirements for the major or minor in French.

Amy Ogden

M/W/F 10:00AM – 10:50AM

New Cabell Hall 485

Prerequisite: FREN 3032 Globalization.  Love and friendship.  Encounters with other cultures and peoples.  Separation of Church and State.  Bourgeois values.  Law and justice.  Where did these features of modern life come from and—more importantly—what other forms might they have taken or might they still evolve into?  It is said that history is written by the victors, but historical documents—literature, histories, prayer books, etc.—retain the evidence of alternate values as well as hints of (temporarily?) abandoned futures.  Can we escape our preconceptions of the past and uncover, in the documents, different histories?  Histories that offer alternative ways of thinking about modern institutions, assumptions, and inequities and about the stories that give them authority?            Readings in the course will be in modern French translation, with occasional discussions of the original medieval and middle French if students are interested in the history of the language.  We’ll begin with the earliest narrative in French (ca. 880 C.E.) and continue up to about 1600, looking both at classic texts and little-known treasures.  Reading and writing assignments will be appropriate both for students coming directly from FREN 3032 and for more advanced students who want to hone their close reading and analytical/persuasive writing skills in French.

Deborah McGrady

Thursday, 3:30-6:00

Founded on the notion that art is neither produced in a vacuum nor received by passive participants, this course will consider the ways in which the circulation of writings transforms their form, function, and meaning. Key topics to be addressed include 1) multi-authorship (both collaborative and competitive), 2) multi-modal compositions that combine text/image/music, 3) delivery and messaging (whether as performed works or material artifacts), 4) textual appropriation through rewriting and translation. Primary works will be from the “long fourteenth century” and will include the poetry and music of Guillaume de Machaut, Christine de Pizan’s Cent ballades d’amant et de dame, and Charles d’Orléans’ French and English poetry.

Reading knowledge of modern French advisable. Seminar will be conducted in English.

Paul Kershaw

M 2:00  – 4:30 PM

New Cabell Hall 485

Paul Kershaw

M/W 11:00AM  – 11:50 AM

Gilmer 190

Erin Lambert

M/W 11:00AM  – 11:50 AM

McLeod 2007

James Loeffler

M/W 10:00AM  – 10:50 AM

Gilmer 141

Paul Halliday

M/W 9:00AM  – 9:50 AM

Minor 125

TBA

M/W/F 1:00 PM  – 1:50 PM

New Cabell 132

TBA

M/W/F 10:00 AM  – 1o:50 AM

New Cabell 232

Gregory Hays

M/W/F 2:00-2:50

Readings from the Latin Bible, beginning with selections from narrative books (e.g., Genesis, Acts) and progressing to more elaborate and poetic portions (e.g. Psalms, Job, Song of Songs). Readings will be taken mainly from the Vulgate, but we will look briefly at the Old Latin version and at modern English translations. We will also consider some medieval Bible manuscripts, including several in Special Collections at UVA.

Lisa Reilly

Th 1-3:30 PM

Amanda Phillips

W 1-3:30 PM

Fayerweather 208

Amanda Phillips

Tu/Th, 3:30-4:45 PM

Ruffner  G004

Deborah Parker

M/W 2-3:15 PM

NCH 485

Michelangelo’s name conjures genius and a nearly superhuman achievement in the arts. Contemporaries elevated him as the supreme sculptor, painter and architect of the age. His work offers a window on a deeply personal vision and rich artistic culture. Michelangelo’s creativity extends to many media—sculpture, painting, architecture, and writing in poetry and prose. This course focuses on all these pursuits. The course is not only about the extraordinary achievements of this Renaissance luminary but the ways in which we can analyze and compare visual and written works. To this end we will examine closely the artist’s poems and letters, contemporary assessments of his artistic achievements, and critical articles on his work. This course is intended to enhance students’ skills in analyzing visual and literary artefacts. This skill is crucial in our media age which relies increasingly on visual messages and the interplay of text and image.

Throughout the course, we shall address topics such as how to represent the human figure, how to convey a story, how to show emotion, and how to represent space—still topics of contemporary interest and relevance. Additional subjects include the social and cultural worlds of Renaissance Florence and Rome, the effects of patronage on artistic production, Michelangelo’s use of classical models, and his relationships with fellow artists, friends, and rivals.

Fotini Kondyli

Tu/Th 2-3:15 PM

Fayerweather 215

This seminar explores the interaction between pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire (2nd- 7th c AD). We will study both pagan and Christian monuments and examine their role in the transformation of Late Roman cities, and in shifting sacred topographies. We will also focus on Christian attitudes towards pagan monuments to explore the impact of pagan art and architecture in the making of Christian masterpieces.

Fotini Kondyli

W 3:30-6 PM

Fayerweather 215

This seminar explores the people behind iconic Byzantine masterpieces. What did the Byzantines hope to achieve with acts of patronage and gift-giving? Were these acts of piety or of self-promotion? We look at different types of patrons, from the Imperial family and elites to ordinary people, and consider how their personalities and social aspirations influenced some of the greatest Byzantine artworks. We also study acts of patronage in relation to issues of gender, social history, diplomacy and politics in the Byzantine Empire.

Jordan Love

W 10-12:30 PM

Fayerweather 206

Anne Kinney

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

NCH 183

Anne Kinney

T/Th 2-3:15 PM

NCH 183

John Casteen

T/Th 3:30-4:45PM

Cocke Hall 115

Course Description: A survey of the major works written in Iceland from around 1100 to the end of the Middle Ages. Works studied include several of the family and legendary sagas and selections from the Poetic Edda and the Edda of Snorri Sturluson. All readings are in translation.

Sara Torres

M/W 2-3:15 PM

Cocke Hall 115

From stories of virgin martyrs to courtly damsels, from loathly ladies to biblical heroines, medieval audiences encountered countless female figures of desire, deviance, and devotion. Some of the women who emerge from the imaginative landscape of medieval texts inspire chivalric prowess and spiritual growth; others serve as allegorical figures for philosophical and theological ideas. Still others are vilified for their inconstancy and written off as gossip girls or “belles-dames sans merci.” Together we will explore representations of female vocality and cultural constructions of gender in several genres of medieval literature written by and about women. We will hear the voices of women “authors” themselves—both those who wrote lyrics, lais, and prose treatises and those who narrated devotional meditations or autobiographical accounts to amanuenses—and consider themes of courtly love, female exemplarity, domestic conduct, and sanctity. Readings will include works by Marie de France, Christine de Pisan, Margery Kempe, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Sherif Abdelkarim

Tu/Th 2-3:15 PM

Cocke 115

Peter Baker

Tu/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Bryan 235

Elizabeth Fowler

Tu/Th 2-3:15 PM

Gibson 241

Zachary Stone

Tu/Th 11:00-12:15 PM

NCH 489

John Parker

Tu/Th 2-3:15 PM

NCH 211

This course will begin with the drama of the Latin liturgy (in translation), then move to the English morality and saint play, as well as the cycle drama that staged scenes from the Bible, before concluding with a play or two from the Renaissance that looks back to these earlier traditions.  No knowledge of Christianity is expected but you should be prepared to learn something about the Bible, the history of Christian doctrine and the sacraments, plus the long complicated relation between belief and performance.  We’ll ask, among other questions, what it means for drama to be medieval as opposed to classical or early modern; whether it is possible to stage the divine without blasphemy; and to what extent entertainment is compatible with religious or moral edification.  A midterm and final, plus writing assignments.

Elizabeth Fowler

W 10-12:30 PM

Dawson’s Row 1

Katharine Maus

M/W 1-1:50PM

Physics 204

This course deals with the second half of Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, in which he was mainly writing tragedies and romances. English 3210, the fall semester course, deals with the first half of Shakespeare’s career, in which he was mainly writing histories and comedies. You may take either or both courses; neither is a prerequisite for the other. We will read seven plays over the course of the semester: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. Writing requirements: 3 five-page papers, a final exam emphasizing material covered in lectures and section meetings, and regular short assignments made by section leaders.

Rebecca Rush

Tu/Th 11-12:15 PM

NCH 332

Deborah McGrady

M/W 3:30-4:45 PM

NCH 211

Does the past matter in modern France? To what extent does history shape contemporary culture? This course will turn to the medieval heroine Joan of Arc and her role in French society to tease out these questions. Students by the end of the semester will have not only mastered the historical facts of Joan’s life but will also be able to discern Joan’s use over time to achieve different artistic and political ends in French society. We will begin with contemporary writings of Joan and then her full trial record before turning to her reception in modern society, where we will discover multiple versions of Joan – as harlot, saint, warmonger, nationalist, and feminist icon. Course taught in French.

Eleni Karalexis

Tu/Th 3:30-4:45 PM

Nau Hall 211

This course will examine literature which engages with war in Medieval France (1100s-1450s). In covering a turbulent but crucial period of French history, we will read medieval texts treating the Norman Conquest of England, the Crusades, the persecution of the ‘heretical’ Cathars, and the Hundred Years’ War. Readings will include epics, chronicles, romances, satire, and troubadour songs. No prerequisites: Students of all academic disciplines are welcome to enroll.

Deborah McGrady

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

NCH 323

If you imagine the Middle Ages as a far-off land occupied by only “knights in shining armor and damsels in distress,” think again. This course will open your eyes to controversial figures of early society, including werewolves and monstrous women, knights in distress and women in shining armor, who openly challenged social norms. Their adventures – recorded in fiction, scientific works, legal cases, sermons, and conduct books –became the testing ground to explore questions that continue to preoccupy us today: What is the relationship between nature and nurture in shaping identity? What role should gender play in defining social and intimate roles? Can the law regulate sexuality and desire? Course taught in English.

William McDonald

Tu/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

NCH 411

Joseph Campbell––and more! Trace the origin of The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Game of Thrones: Encounter the stories that inspired Richard Wagner. Follow the hero and heroines of medieval fiction through the steps of the heroic quest: the call to adventure, meeting the mentor, tests and trials, symbolic death and rebirth, the road back, and return with a societal boon. Among the stories read are Parzival and Tristan and Isolde. Grade is based on classroom discussion, oral reports, and a final paper. No final examination. No textbook required.

Cong Zhang

Tu/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

NCH 058

Bradley Reed

M/W/F 10-10:50 AM

Nau 211

Paul Kershaw

T 2-4:30 PM

NCH 042

Erin Lambert

M/W 11-11:50 AM

Gibson 211

Course Description: Surveys the development of religious reform movements in continental Europe from c. 1450 to c. 1650 and their impact on politics, social life, science, and conceptions of the self. Cross-listed as RELC 3231.

Paul Kershaw

Tu/Th 11-12:15 PM

NAU 141

This course examines the political, social and cultural history of continental western Europe in the period c. AD 730 to 850, with its central focus on the reign of Charlemagne (AD 769-814). Moving chronologically from the rise to the dominance of the Carolingian dynasty through the formation of the Carolingian empire to Charlemagne’s imperial coronation of 800 and beyond we will explore in depth the political, religious, intellectual and economic history of the period through a mix of textual and archaeological evidence, and much current scholarship. Sources will be in English translation. The thought and works of a number of Carolingian authors, including Alcuin and Einhard, the two scholars closest to Charlemagne, will come under particular scrutiny. Over the semester we’ll seek to set the Carolingian achievement in its wider contemporary context as we examine both neighbouring polities and peoples (Christian Spain, the Saxons, Lombards) as well as the Byzantine Empire in the period of Iconoclasm under the Empress Eirene (797-802) and Emperor Nikephoros I (802-811) as well as the early Abbasid Caliphate in both its ‘Golden Age’ under Harun al-Rashid (AH 170-193/AD 786-809) and the darker years of civil war that followed. It is, however, the Carolingian world that will engage us above all. Classes will be a hybrid of lecture and discussion. Typically, the Monday class will be predominantly lecture; the Wednesday class will place the emphasis upon the discussion of texts and the participation of class members. Readings (c. 150-220 pages per week) will be assigned for each week and for each meeting. Students will write two 2,000 word essays, make presentations (singly or in groups), contribute comments to a collective class blog that will serve at times to set the frame for class discussion, take a mid-term and a final exam. It is strongly recommended that those who opt to take this course have some prior experience of European history in the earlier Middle Ages.

Paul Halliday

M/W 2-3:15 PM

Gilmer 141

Ted Lendon

M 3:30-6PM

Gilmer 225

Deborah Parker

M/W 3:30-4:45 PM

NCH 485

T.S. Eliot wrote that “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.” We’ll pursue this bold statement through a close reading of the Inferno, the most intricate account of the afterlife ever written. This course will examine what makes this brilliant poem one of the acclaimed classics of western culture. We will explore the organization of Hell, its inhabitants, the nature of evil, Dante’s exile, and the rich tradition of visual material the poem has inspired from manuscript illustrations to Botticelli to more recent artists such as Gustave Doré and William Blake. Lectures will draw on The World of Dante (www.worldofdante.org) a multimedia site, that offers a wide range of digital materials related to the Comedy.

Gus Heldt

T 3:30-6 PM

NCH 407

Gregory Hays

Tu/Th 3:30-4:45PM

NCH 389

This course will offer introductory readings in the Latin prose literature of late antiquity, with a focus on the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Likely readings include selections from Ammianus’s histories and Augustine’s autobiographical Confessions, the Itinerarium of the female pilgrim Egeria, and Jerome’s Life of Paul the Hermit, along with late antique epistles, both pagan and Christian. We will try to understand these texts in their cultural and historical context, with attention also to questions of style, genre, and literary tradition.

Eric Ramirez-Weaver

Tu/Th 3:30 – 4:45PM

NCH 115

In this course, we will survey the major fields housed within Medieval Studies while focusing our inquiries upon the creative and cataclysmic repercussions of medieval clashes, exchanges, envoys, combats, Crusades, and various forms of contact. Special weekly topics will be supplemented by guest visits from participating faculty in Medieval Studies. Weekly topics will include but are not limited to  syncretism, cultural hybrids, monstrous races, Crusader art, troubadour verse, medieval mapping, cosmology, Jewish-Christian interaction, Convivencia, al-Sufi and celestial globes, astrolabes, gendered literary analysis, and the cultural creation of histories.

Janet Spittler

M/W 2-2:50 PM

Nau 101

James Henry

M 3:30-6 PM

Nau 242

Jane Mikkelson

M 3:30-6 PM

Gilmer 141

Tu/Th 2-3:15 PM

NCH 489

Ahmed al-Rahim

Tu 6-8:30 PM

NCH 066

Crystal Chemris

M/W/F 1:00-1:50 PM

NCH 338

Fotini Kondyli

Wednesday 1-3:30 PM

Fayerweather 206

Dorothy Wong

Tuesday 3:30 -6 PM

Fayerweather 206

Fotini Kondyli

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Ruffner 179

Eric Ramirez-Weaver

T/Th 2-3:15 PM

Fayerweather 206

This course examines the development of manuscript illumination following the birth of the codex in ca. 300.  Each manuscript studied exemplifies aspects of changing period styles, scientific beliefs, and spiritual identities. The myriad ways that books manifest crafted confessions of medieval ideas and reveal a sensual appreciation for beauty and value will be interrogated through a set of case studies ranging roughly 450-1450. Students in this course will learn the fundamental research skills required to undertake original study of medieval manuscripts.

Nizar Hermes

Tuesdays, 5:00-7:30 PM

New Cabell Hall 107

This course explores the literary masterworks of some of the most celebrated authors of the classical Islamicate world (500-1500). It gives students the chance to intensely and comparatively engage notable global texts from “the medieval Islamic republic of letters,” to quote M. J. al-Musawi’s groundbreaking The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (2015). Students will cultivate an appreciation for the development of the intellectual history of the “medieval” Middle East (including North Africa and al-Andalus) alongside their engagement with such masterpieces as Aesopica, Ars Amatoria, Confessiones, The Panchatantra, Tales of Genji, Tahkemoni, The Sundiata, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Lazarillo de Tormes, Othello, Don Quixote, and Robinson Crusoe. Drawing on both classical Arabic-Islamic and modern Western theories, we will
further form comparative insights into the poetics and politics of the humanist topics encountered across our literary journeys into the rich corpus of Arabic-Islamic adab (belles-lettres).

Sarah Torres

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Bryan 330

A medieval reader nods off in a garden, slumped over a desk, or lying in bed…and the adventure begins. Dream-visions abound in medieval literature: they provide a conceptual frame for literary explorations of the nature of textual authority, of the epistemology of dreams, and of the relationship between Reason and spiritual revelation. In this course we will read a wide selection of Middle English and French (in translation) dream-visions and discuss how these texts use imaginative landscapes to represent and debate the major social and philosophical issues gripping the late medieval world. Readings will include Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy; the alliterative poem Pearl; Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, and Legend of Good Women; Christine de Pisan’s Book of the City of Ladies; and John Lydgate’s Temple of Glass. Short contextual readings from Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Heroides, Virgil’s Aeneid, Guillaume de Mauchaut’s Fountain of Love, and Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose will complement these texts and expand our understanding of the literary traditions major authors such as Chaucer and Christine de Pizan engage with in their own writing. In the final weeks of the course we will also encounter selections from Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote to view how heroic ascents are parodied in the Renaissance epic; the class will culminate in a Renaissance “coda” as we consider the thematic (and erotic) significance of dreams and imagination in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Critical readings will focus on the development of medieval allegory, the arts of memory, the history of emotions, and the genre of debate literature.

Peter Baker

T/Th 3:30-4:45 PM

Bryan 330

Amy Ogden

M/W 2:00 pm – 3:15 PM

French House 100

Based on topics and works of both current and enduring interest to scholars, this course will allow participants to gain general knowledge of literature composed in French from 880 until about 1250 as well as to explore the most recent developments in the field. Students are encouraged to contact the professor with suggestions for texts and/or subjects.  In the course of discussing secondary readings and of preparing the assignments, we will consider matters of professional development. Reading knowledge of modern French required.  ***This is a graduate course: students must have earned a B+ (or higher) in at least one 4000-level course prior to enrolling.

Amy Ogden

Monday 1:00 – 1:50 PM

French House 100

Introduction to reading Old French, with consideration of its main dialects (Ile-de-France, Picard, Anglo-Norman) and paleographical issues.  May be taken in conjunction with FREN 5100/8510 or independently.  Weekly reading exercises, a transcription and translation exercise, and a final open-book exam.  Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin or another romance language.  Taught in English.

Mr. McDonald

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

NCH 415

Joseph Campbell––and more! Trace the origin of The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Game of Thrones: Encounter the stories that inspired Richard Wagner. Follow the hero and heroines of medieval fiction through the steps of the heroic quest: the call to adventure, meeting the mentor, tests and trials, symbolic death and rebirth, the road back, and return with a societal boon. Among the stories read are Parzival and Tristan and Isolde. Grade is based on classroom discussion, oral reports, and a final paper. No final examination. No textbook required.

Paul Kershaw

M/W 11:00-11:50 AM

Wilson 301

This class covers the period from the third to the thirteenth centuries, moving from a Mediterranean world dominated by the Roman empire to one characterized by complex interactions (military, economic, cultural, scientific) between multiple kingdoms, communities, faiths and systems of belief.  Political, social and institutional developments will be addressed; literature, art, philosophy, and religion will also receive attention.

We begin with the terminal phases of the ancient world. We end at a time when many of the formative elements of the world we live in today have come into existence. How can we understand the historical processes that led from one to the other? How did life, thought and belief change in these centuries? ‘The Birth of Europe’ is not simply a chance to study the foundational phase of European history it also affords students the opportunity to investigate a crucial phase of world history, the legacies of which continue to shape the world today.

Intended as an introduction to the medieval period, no prior knowledge is expected.

Work undertaken in HIEU 2061: Students will write two 1600-1800 word essays over the course of the semester, take a mid-term and a final exam, attend lecture and participate actively in section discussion. All students receive a letter grade; C/NC is not an option.

Paul Halliday

M/W 12:00-12:50 PM

Wilson 301

Paul Kershaw

Monday 1-3:30 PM

Fayerweather 208

This class explores the nature of warfare, its place in, and effects upon, the societies of the post-Roman Mediterranean from c. 600 to 1000 CE. These centuries witnessed the terminal phase of the great struggle of Antiquity between Rome and Persia, the emergence of Islam and its profound reshaping of the post-classical world, as well as the formation of numerous ‘barbarian’ successor kingdoms in the west. Topics to be addressed include: military organization, the ideals and realities of battle, the imagery and literature of warfare and martial values, changing technology.

The major work of the course will be a 25-30 page research paper (approximately 7,500 – 8,000 words) using primary sources (in translation) and drawing upon secondary scholarship. Students will also deliver two oral reports (one on their research paper),  and be consistently engaged participants in class discussion.

Entry is by Instructor Permission. Students are expected to possess previous class experience in the study of late antique, post-Roman and/or early medieval history (i.e., classes such as HIEU 2061; HIEU 3141; HIEU 5559 (‘Early Medieval Mediterranean’); HIME 2001, or equivalent.

Joshua White

T/Th 11:00-12:15 PM

Nau 211

Richard Barnett

T/Th 3:30-4:45 PM

New Cabell Hall 309

Gustav Heldt

Wednesday 3:30-6:00 PM

Nau 141

Gregory Hays

M/W/F 1:00-1:50 PM

Cooke Hall 101

In this course we will read the Romance of Apollonius of Tyre, an early medieval novel involving incest, murder, piracy, riddles, shipwrecks, ball-games, prostitution, virtuous fishermen, wicked step-parents, and more riddles. Time permitting, we will also look at the novel’s later influence, notably on Shakespeare’s Pericles. This is an undergraduate course, but graduate students from other departments are welcome as auditors.

Jorge Secada

M/W 9:00-9:50 AM

Monroe 124

Karl Shuve

M/W 9:00-9:50 AM

Ruffner G008

Peter Morris

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Gibson 242

Samuel Stafford

M/W 1:00-1:50 PM

Physics 204

Samuel Stafford

T/Th 3:30-6:00 PM

Maury 104

Edmondo Gerli

M/W 12:00-1:15 PM

New Cabell Hall 395

Ricardo Padron

T/Th 11:00-12:15 PM

New Cabell Hall 207

Dorothy Wong

M/W 2:00PM -3:15PM

The Art History colloquium combines lecture and discussion.

John Casteen

T/Th 3:30PM – 4:45PM

Cocke Hall 115

Course Description: A survey of the major works written in Iceland from around 1100 to the end of the Middle Ages. Works studied include several of the family and legendary sagas and selections from the Poetic Edda and the Edda of Snorri Sturluson. All readings are in translation.

Section 001 – Women’s Voices in Medieval Texts

Sara Torres

M/W 200-315 (Cocke Hall 115)

From stories of virgin martyrs to courtly damsels, from loathly ladies to biblical heroines, medieval audiences encountered countless female figures of desire, deviance, and devotion. Some of the women who emerge from the imaginative landscape of medieval texts inspire chivalric prowess and spiritual growth; others serve as allegorical figures for philosophical and theological ideas. Still others are vilified for their inconstancy and written off as gossip girls or “belles-dames sans merci.” Together we will explore representations of female vocality and cultural constructions of gender in several genres of medieval literature written by and about women. We will hear the voices of women “authors” themselves—both those who wrote lyrics, lais, and prose treatises and those who narrated devotional meditations or autobiographical accounts to amanuenses—and consider themes of courtly love, female exemplarity, domestic conduct, and sanctity. Readings will include works by Marie de France, Christine de Pisan, Margery Kempe, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Elizabeth Fowler

TuTh 9:30AM-10:45AM

Bryan Hall 328

The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women, Chaucer’s four poems about dreams, are surreal, sweet, funny, philosophical, emotionally intense, and visually overstimulated.  They are even more interesting in our age of complex VR tech, because dreams provoke Chaucer to think about the experience of art in a way that’s directly relevant to the sensory and artistic issues that confront virtual reality game developers. We’ll explore the strategies that written language has for producing experiences in virtual reality: effects like immersion, presence, and para-sensory experience. How is it that we “see” and “feel” things when we read? How do we “go” places in stories? I’ve designed this course for curious beginners who will enjoy thinking and talking about what happens in art; no prior experience is necessary. Middle English is just different enough from ours to make its conjuring tricks more visible; we read slowly and catch it in the act. Probably two short written projects and two exams will be required, plus a little side-reading about VR and the history of visual art.

Peter Baker

TR 330-445 (Bryan Hall 334)

Peter Baker

TR 1100-1215 (Bryan 334)

MoWe 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Shannon House 107

Instructor: John Parker

This course surveys a wide range of medieval and Renaissance drama prior to the closing of the London theaters in 1642.  We’ll begin reading (in translation) some Latin plays staged as part of the Mass on Easter and Christmas, before moving into the vernacular drama of the later Middle Ages — mainly cycle plays drawn from scripture and the apocrypha, but we’ll also look at a saint’s play and a morality.  The latter part of the course will cover the commercial drama staged in London during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Playwrights may include Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson, Middleton, Shakespeare, Webster and Ford.  The relation between our two periods will make up a major thematic preoccupation of the course: what happens during “the Renaissance”?  How different is it from “the Middle Ages”?  In what ways?

Deborah McGrady

 Pre-modern society was as concerned about questions of identity as we are today: What is the relationship between nature and nurture in shaping identity? What role should gender play in fixing social and intimate roles? Can the law regulate sexuality? This course will explore religious, social, scientific and legal views on gender, sexuality and identity in medieval France. Readings include literary texts (plays, short stories, romance) and cultural documents (philosophical and political tracts, trial records, conduct books and memoirs). Through these readings, students will discover how werewolves, mermaids, castrated men, women warriors, and submissive knights challenged society to rethink identity. These medieval cases will be examined in light of recent approaches in sexuality and gender studies, and thus a second aim of the course is to explore how placing in dialogue current theoretical questions and past socio-historical realities can lead to fruitful insights.

***This course fulfills the second writing requirement and the History Area Studies requirement.***

***Course taught in English***

Deborah McGrady

Does the past matter in modern France? This course will turn to the medieval heroine Joan of Arc and her role in French society to explore this question. Consider the following: Joan is the subject of well over 2000 creative works, ranging from poetry and painting to cinema and drama; she was tried a heretic in 1431 but made a saint in 1920; she has served as the mascot for two of the most controversial political movements in modern France, including the Front national, while being recently revived as a wicca figure in a French comic series. To begin to unravel Joan’s complicated role in the French imagination, we will first read her 1431 legal trial before then exploring her roller-coaster reception up until the present day.

** Course taught in French. Prerequisite:  FREN 3032***

Joshua White

TuTh 11:00AM-12:15PM

Claude Moore Nursing 1110

A survey of the history of the Ottoman Empire from its obscure origins around 1300 to 1700, this course explores the political, military, social, and cultural history of this massive, multi-confessional, multi-ethnic, intercontinental empire which, at its height, encompassed Central and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Gregory Hays

TR 2:00-3:15
An introduction to one of the most important and influential Roman poets after Vergil. We will focus primarily on the Thebaid, but with some attention also to the Silvae and Achilleid. In addition to the text itself we will look at the tradition of scholia and commentary on Statius, and on his reception in Dante and others.

Medieval Identities: Cultures and Conflicts

Eric Ramirez-Weaver

TuTh 3:30 PM – 4:45PM

Nau 141

In this course, we will survey the major fields housed within Medieval Studies while focusing our inquiries upon the creative and cataclysmic repercussions of medieval clashes, exchanges, envoys, combats, Crusades, and various forms of contact. Special weekly topics will be supplemented by guest visits from participating faculty in Medieval Studies. Weekly topics will include but are not limited to syncretism, cultural hybrids, monstrous races, Crusader art, troubadour verse, medieval mapping, cosmology, Jewish-Christian interaction, Convivencia, al-Sufi and celestial globes, astrolabes, gendered literary analysis, and the cultural creation of histories.

Eric Ramirez-Weaver

Meets by appointment