Medieval Studies Graduate Courses

Spring 2026 | Upcoming Courses | Past Courses

MVST 5500 R01 (4) Writing Christian History in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages | Bruce and McGowan
W 2:30 - 5:30 | 52365
This graduate seminar introduces students to Christian historiography between the fourth and ninth centuries with a survey of authors writing both providential history (Josephus, Eusebius, Orosius, etc.) and the history of newly converted barbarian peoples (Gregory of Tours, Jordanes, Bede, etc.). Seminar meetings will involve reading samples of these histories in Latin and discussing current scholarship on their meaning and reception. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

THEO 6046 R00 (3) Hebrew Bible and the Lives of Others | Jang
T 9:00 - 11:30 |  52388
What is the Other? Is it something that operates by different rules of life than myself? A being that exists beyond my beliefs? Or something discovered through the disturbance of an encounter? Is there such a thing as an “absolute Other”? Why does the Other often become an object of fear and avoidance? And what does it mean to engage with the Other beyond merely recognizing and identifying somebody or something as the Other? This course explores the Hebrew Bible through the lens of the Other, examining how biblical ideas of the Other are manifested in the lives of marginalized figures and groups—such as foreigners, women, other nations, refugees, and internal others—while interrogating the dynamics of exclusion and visibility. Drawing on close textual analysis, we will investigate how biblical interpretations have been shaped by discourses of the Other, with a focus on minoritized biblical hermeneutics. The course also considers the role of philosophical thinkers such as Appiah, Derrida, Foucault, and Lévinas, as well as historical narratives that have emerged from critical ethnic studies, in shaping our understanding of the Other. We will conclude by reflecting on the futuristic possibilities of engaging with the lives of others in biblical studies.

THEO 6465 R00 (3) Asceticism and Monasticism | Demacopoulous
T 1:00 - 3:30 |  52389
Early Christianity was an ascetic religion, but the practice of asceticism varied greatly. This course explores the ideas, practitioners, and controversies surrounding early Christian asceticism from the New Testament, through the introduction of organized monasticism in the fourth century, up to the advent of Islam. The course will also introduce students to the scholarly debates concerning various dimensions of early Christian asceticism and monasticism, including the impact of Jewish and Greco-Roman ascetic practices and how ascetic practices relate to questions of gender and sexuality in Early Christianity.

HIST 8056 R01 (4) Seminar: Medieval Political Cultures | Paul
T 2:30 - 5:00 |  52364
In the Spring semester, students will spend the semester working on research papers based on the topics identified in the Fall. At class meetings, students will have the opportunity to present their research and to read and critique each others' writing. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

HIST 6133 R01 (4) Medieval Religious Institutions| Mueller
M 5:30 - 8:00 |  52362
Today, the Catholic Church appears to as a hierarchical entity united under the supreme leadership of the pope. This is in contrast with the situation in the Middle Ages, when people made careful distintions between monks, nuns, canons, secular priests, minor and major orders, cardinals, lay brothers and sisters, and a multitude of other clerics. Committed to their respective ranks and vocations, churchmen and churchwomen often found themselves competing with one another. In so doing, they were less likely to submit to papal authority than to enlist it for their own purposes. The seminar will examine these groups, their institutional identities, and typical conflicts of interest. The institutions of the medieval church-male and femal monasteries, cathedral chapters, parishes, religious orders, dioceses, the papacy and other bodies-maintianed their own two identities and pursued their own ends. The church they formed was not monolithic: medieval religious institutions were often in competition with one another for reasons both secular and religious; and, unlike modern church, religious institutions played a role in government and were the sole providers of many social services. Through consideration of medieval sources and modern sutdies, the course will examine the institutions that formed the medieval church, their histories, identities and members, their conflicts, and their relations to society. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

PHIL 5010 R01 (3) Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas | Davies
R 4:00 - 6:00 |  47796
This course will be a general introduction to Aquinas's philosophical thinking.We shall pay special attention to his philosophy of God. We shall also turn to what he says about questions such as the scope of human knowledge, the nature of the human being, and the nature and significance of human action. As well as being expository, the course will consider the cogency of Aquinas's position on various topics. It will also try to relate what Aquinas says to what other philosophers, especially modern philosophers, have had to say. The course will not presuppose any previous detailed knowledge of Aquinas on the part of students.

PHIL 6116 R01 (3) After Form: Recovering the Lost Scholastic Notion of Form for Contemporary Use | Klima
F 1:00 - 3:00 |  52369
Scholastic thought is often compared to the architecture of Gothic cathedrals with good reason. The wonderful structural unity of interlocking arches running down on all sides in a Gothic vault are magnificent representations of the structural unity of interlocking concepts pervading all fields of scholastic inquiry. But remove the keystones, and the vault collapses. Remove some central notions, and the cathedral of thought falls into ruin. Such a conceptual keystone, which held in place (and was held in place by) the interlocking notions of meaning (significatio), nature (essentia, quidditas), concept (conceptus, intentio), and Idea (in the sense of an ideal or standard, as a Divine Idea) in scholasticism, was the notion of form. Considered semantically, a form is what a word signifies, constituting its meaning. Metaphysically, a form is a determination of a thing’s being, establishing the thing in its singular existence in its specific kind or nature. Epistemically, it is the form of the thing received in the mind that constitutes the mind’s concept, whereby the mind conceives of the thing signified by the word subordinated to this concept. Finally, axiologically, the true form of the thing, its Divine Idea in the Neo-Platonic-Augustinian sense also serves as the standard that this kind of thing is supposed to “live up to.” The four parts of this class (Semantics, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Axiology) are meant to re-capture the scholastic notion of form in all of these functions and re-inject it into our modern philosophical discourse in the hopes that it can regain its original integrative role in our otherwise desperately fragmented post-modern culture.

ENGL 5135 R01 (3) Paleography | O'Donnell
F 2:30 - 5:00 | 52353

This course offers an in-depth introduction to the history of handwriting and book production (“paleography” and “codicology”) in western and central Europe during the years 400 to 1500—a critical period for the creation of the book as we know it. Students will receive training in the handling and interpretation of rare materials from across the whole medieval period. They will learn how to read and transcribe ancient and medieval writing (a set of skills that will transfer to later periods of handwriting); how to determine the place and date of production of a book based on its script, material, or decoration; and how to interpret the manuscript book as a primary source for the study of society, politics, and culture. Trips to special collections and visits from period experts from a range of disciplines are a feature of the course. Specialists of any historical period are welcome.