Courses

ANTH 3880    African Archaeology

(LaViolette) Mon-Wed 3:30-4:45

Africa has the longest archaeological record in the world, some three million years of materials made by humans and our ancestors. Africa is also three times as large as the continental US. In this class we will thus grapple with a tiny selection of Africa’s archaeological record. While our coverage emphasizes the last 10,000 years, the class will span the emergence of modern humans in the Middle/Late Stone Age c. 200,000 BP (before present), the advent of farming and pastoralism, Bronze, Iron Age, and medieval states north and south of the Sahara, Arab and European colonization, and archaeology and heritage in the contemporary world. Throughout the course we’ll discuss ethical concerns of doing archaeology in Africa and a multidisciplinary approach to the African past. As with all archaeology, we’ll examine the relationship between theory—ideas, models, questions, debates—and specific objects and sites on which analysis takes place and theory is built. And we’ll try to keep people and what they were facing, doing, and thinking at the center of our discussion.

ARTH 1153-001     Space Out! 

(Ramirez-Weaver) MWF 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.

ARTH 2861    East Asian Art

(Wong) M/W 2-3:15 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.

ARTH 3591-001     Medieval Manuscript Illumination

(Ramirez-Weaver) T/TH 9-10:15 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. 

ARH/ARTH 4591    Vikings into Kings

(Reilly) Tues 930-1150 

How did Viking raiders become patrons of some of medieval Europe’s most remarkable works of art and architecture? Within a few generations, leaders who once arrived in longships along Europe’s coasts were commissioning monuments such as the Bayeux Tapestry, Durham Cathedral, and even the dazzling Cappella Palatina in Palermo. This seminar explores the Viking world through its art, architecture, and material culture. Tracing routes that linked Scandinavia with the British Isles, continental Europe, and the Mediterranean, we will examine ships, jewelry, churches, manuscripts, and royal monuments that reveal how Viking identities evolved through travel, settlement, and cultural exchange. Particular attention will be paid to the encounters and artistic interactions that shaped both Viking communities and the societies they entered. Through discussion, short writing assignments, and a final research project, students will practice interpreting visual evidence, developing original research questions, and presenting persuasive arguments in a clearly written research paper. This course fulfills the second writing requirement.

ENGL 3161     Chaucer I

(Watts) TuThu 11-12:15

Please contact instructor for details.

ENGL 4510     Medieval Romance 

(Clare Kinney) Tu/Th 2.00-3.15 

In this course we’ll address the literary practices and the cultural work of medieval romance. Our explorations will embrace 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 and looking at the politics and poetics of a putatively aristocratic 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 Man of Law’s Tale;  Sir Orfeo; excerpts from Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur . . . and, as a contemporary afterthought, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel (2021). Requirements: regular attendance and lively participation in class discussion; one 6-7 page paper; a series of short pre-class responses to our readings; a longer term paper.

FREN 5011    Old French

(Ogden) M 1-1:50 (1 credit)

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 paper exam.  Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin, or another romance language.  Taught in English. 

 

FREN 5510    About Suffering

(Ogden) MW 2-3:15

Taking Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” (1939) as its starting point, this course will explore how medieval French culture grappled with suffering and how modern thinkers grapple with medieval approaches to suffering.  We will study various sources of pain—injury, injustice, grief, and mortality—as they appear in some of the most influential works of the 12th and 13th centuries. In counterpoint, we will examine how modern literary critics, theorists, and historians have struggled to understand a world separated from us by centuries of changes to religious beliefs and to medical knowledge and technologies.  As a bridge between these perspectives, we will read foundational texts of modern palliative care that aim to offer hope and alleviate suffering in the face of inevitable pain.  Could Auden be right that “About suffering they were never wrong/ The Old Masters…”? Undergraduates who wish to enroll must have completed at least one 4000-level FREN course with a grade of B+ or better. Taught in French

HIEA 1501    Steppe Empires in Chinese History

(Cronan) W 5-7:30 pm  

Since the beginning of the imperial era in the third century BCE, steppe empires have loomed large for Chinese history. This first-year seminar introduces students to the discipline of history through the study of China’s northern frontier along the Eastern Eurasian steppe. This course will trace China’s interactions with successive steppe empires, including the Xiongnu Confederation, the Mongol Empire, and the Manchu Qing Empire. Topics will include the tension between nomadic and sedentary lifestyles, cross-border trade and migration, diplomacy and foreign relations, the relationship between religion and empire on the steppe, and beyond. Reading assignments will include first-hand sources as well as recent academic scholarship on the study of China’s northern frontier.

HIEA 2112    Late Imperial China

(Cronan) TR 12:30-1:45 pm

This course introduces the history of China from the 13th c. through the end of imperial rule in the early 20th c., tracing long-term political, social, and economic transformations that characterized the second millennium of imperial rule. Together we will seek to answer questions such as:

What was the intellectual basis for imperial rule? How did it change during the Late Imperial era?

• How did Chinese society, local identity, and family change across the second millennium?

• What impact did periods of foreign conquest and rule––the Mongol-Yuan (13th–14th c) and the Qing (17th–20th c)––have on Chinese civilization and politics, and what was their legacy?

• What changes did the Chinese economy undergo during the second millennium?

• What was China’s historical place in the interstate order? What did the rise of Western maritime empires mean for China?

HIEU 2016     The Birth of Europe

(Kershaw) MS 12-12:50 + discussion

Please contact instructor for description

HIEU 2350-001    Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 1100-1500

(Vise) TuTh 9:30-10:45

Famously dubbed 'the Dark Ages' by Petrarch, the European Middle Ages live on in popular imagination as an age of faith, a time of cultured knights and ladies, as well as a period of relentless violence. We will explore the period from 1100-1500 in what came to be called Europe as it experienced severe calamities like famine, plague, inquisition, and war but also saw significant advancements in the flowering of religious piety, economic prosperity, academic innovation of all kinds, the centralization of state power, and soaring feats of architecture. 

HIEU 4511    Viking Worlds

(Kershaw) M 3-5:30

Please contact instructor for details.

PETR 3232/7232: Persian Poetry Across Centuries

(Fayyaz) Tu|Th 12:30 PM - 01:45 PM

This class is an introductory survey course focused on major works and poets of classical and medieval Persianate literature, from the 9th century to the late 16th century. We will pay special attention to the themes and concerns of each century’s poetic style, the poetics of writing, and the evolving poetic tradition. This course involves reading Persian poetry in translation, and no prior background in Persian language or history is required.

 

PHIL 2110     History of Philosophy: Ancient and Medieval

MS 8-8:50 + discussion

Contact instructor for details

RELI 2070     Classical Islam

(Andruss) MW 12-12:50

The course explores Islamic history and thought from the classical period (seventh through thirteenth centuries) across the Islamic world. Historical studies include the biography of the prophet Muḥammad, the early conquests and expansion of Islam, the establishment of dynastic empires, and the communities of Sunnis, Shiʿis, and Sufis. The course also introduces the Qurʾān, Islamic law, ritual, philosophy and theology, and literature.

RELI/RELJ 2024     Jewish-Muslim Relations

(Andruss) TuTh 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.

SPAN 3400     Spain: From Kingdom to Empire (1200 - 1700)

(Riva) TuTh 9:30-10:45

This course will explore medieval and early modern works written in Castilian from El Cid to Calderón's theater. We will focus on the function of these literary texts in the European and Mediterranean context. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite: SPAN 3010 and 3300, or departmental placement.

PMCC  6000     Premodern Cultures

(Padrón) W 3:30-6

As implied in the name, the early modern period (ca. 1400 - 1750) is understood as a time of rupture with a past usually described as “medieval” (ca. 400 - 1400) but it is also possible to think of the relationship between the two eras in terms of continuity. In this class, we will examine what is at stake in thinking about this relationship in terms of either continuity or rupture.  We will also explore the problems inherent in applying this periodization to other global regions besides Europe and the Mediterranean.  Our readings will include both scholarly classics and recent work that think through the problem of the premodern, and will involve faculty from different departments of Arts and Sciences. This course is required for the PMCC Graduate Certificate

ARAH 9525     World Travel and Material Culture ca 1500

(Fiorani) Th, 3:30-6

In this seminar we explore what material culture reveals about the transfer of ideas, global trade, colonization, and cultural, religious, and economic exchange between Europe, the Islamic world, sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, Japan, and the Americas. Paintings, sculptures, buildings, maps, textiles, metal objects, ceramics, glassware, and prints are among the artifacts we consider.

ENGL 5559     Renaissance and Reformation

(Rush) MW 9:30-10:45

Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare inherited a double vision of human nature: was man noble in reason and admirable in form, or frail in flesh and swollen in pride? In order to understand how these sixteenth-century English authors wrestled with the tensions within humanism and the Reformation, we will read each work alongside an ancient or continental forerunner. Readings will include sonnets by Petrarch, Wyatt, and Sidney, Luther and Erasmus’s debate on free will, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Aristotle’s Poetics, Sidney’s Defense of Poesy, Calvin’s Institutes, Aristotle’s Ethics, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Machiavelli’s Prince, and Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1. The course is a permission-only course: please request permission on SIS and write to me at rebecca.rush@virginia.edu to persuade me of your interest in the core questions of the course and your willingness to read difficult books with care.

ENGL 8520-001     Ancient and Medieval Drama

(Parker) MW 2-3:15
The first portion of this course will cover the drama of classical antiquity in translation, beginning with Greek plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. We will move from there to the Latin plays of Terence and Seneca. The second portion of the course will consider the kinds of performance that displaced (and in some cases transformed) these ancient traditions after the Christianization of the Roman empire. We will likely read Tertullian and Augustine on pagan drama, Prudentius' Psychomachia and life of St. Hippolytus, some liturgical drama, morality plays, vernacular biblical drama, a saint play and a secular farce. One goal of the course will be to answer questions posed by historical period: what does it mean, in the context of this particular genre, to move from antiquity to the Middle Ages? What are the differences between classical and Christian drama? Are there shared points of contact?

FREN 5011    Old French

(Ogden) M 1-1:50 (1 credit)

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 paper exam.  Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin, or another romance language.  Taught in English. 

FREN 8510     About Suffering

(Ogden) MW 2-3:15

Taking Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” (1939) as its starting point, this course will explore how medieval French culture grappled with suffering and how modern thinkers grapple with medieval approaches to suffering.  We will study various sources of pain—injury, injustice, grief, and mortality—as they appear in some of the most influential works of the 12th and 13th centuries. In counterpoint, we will examine how modern literary critics, theorists, and historians have struggled to understand a world separated from us by centuries of changes to religious beliefs and to medical knowledge and technologies.  As a bridge between these perspectives, we will read foundational texts of modern palliative care that aim to offer hope and alleviate suffering in the face of inevitable pain.  Could Auden be right that “About suffering they were never wrong/ The Old Masters…”?

MUSC 7509    Songs at Sea: The Music of Global Conflict in the Revolutionary Era

(Gordon)

This research seminar investigates global and transnational conflict in the long eighteenth century through the archive of naval song. Students will work with materials from the Naval Documents of the American Revolution project (https://navydocs.org/) and from Special Collections. Songs about privateering, sea battles, impressment, captivity, and blockade circulated across oceans and empires. They open questions about oral transmission, the relationship between performance and power, and the preservation of memory and emotion. Our core documents cluster around the long eighteenth centuries. But the course examines long-standing traditions of textual transmission, manuscript culture, and the mobility of song across linguistic and political boundaries and is relevant to students working in premodern and medieval studies. Students interested in popular culture and modern history will find relevance in the political afterlives and modern reinterpretations of the songs. Students will produce original individual and collaborative projects shaped by their interests and disciplinary backgrounds. Projects may include research papers, digital exhibits, annotated archival editions, or performances in multiple genres. Creative and interpretive approaches are welcome: students may reimagine archival songs through historically informed performance, experimental adaptation, or contemporary musical forms, grounded in rigorous research. No prior musical training or language expertise is required, though students with backgrounds in music or languages other than English are encouraged to engage materials aligned with their skills and interests.