Upcoming Medieval Studies Graduate Courses

Spring 2023| Upcoming Courses: Spring 2025 | Past Courses

 

  • MVST 5064 R01 (4) The Divine Comedy: Poetry, Theology, and the Medieval Imagination | Barsella & Pini
    T 2:30 - 5:00 | CRN 50917
    This seminar offers an in-depth study of the poetic and theological imagination of Dante’s Divine Comedy. We will combine close reading of selected cantos with primary and secondary works illuminating key aspects of Dante’s literary and theological invention. Issues will be discussed within the historical and ideological contexts of the relevant theological and poetic debates in Dante's time. We will consider Dante’s theological influences, such as Augustine, Boethius, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Bonaventure, and explore theological topics such as medieval Christian practices of pilgrimage, scholastic debates about atonement and the afterlife, cosmology, and the relationship between erotic love and divine union in Christian mystical theology. 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 5230 R01 (3) Advanced Greek: Early Christian Responses to Empire | Fiano
    T 9:00 - 11:30 | CRN 44372
    This course includes both a rapid review of Greek grammar and syntax, and also intermediate/advanced readings from Hellenistic and/or early Christian texts.

    THEO 6365 R01 (3) Cappadocian Fathers | Demacopoulos
    T 1:00 - 3:30 | CRN 50855
    This course is designed to provide a thorough introduction to the writings, interaction, and significance of the Cappadocian fathers. Although we will cover a number of theological, literary, and scholarly themes, we will pay special attention to (and have scholarly debates about) their promotion of asceticism, exegetical style, anthropological/gender constructions, and the promotion of the Nicene cause.

    HIST 8110 R01 (4) SEM: Church Law & Medieval Society | Mueller
    M 5:30 - 8:00 | CRN 50915
    This course will consist of a two-semester proseminar/seminar sequence inviting graduate students to formulate and conduct original research projects in the field of medieval church law. 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 5423 R01 (4) Religion, Magic, and Science in the Late Medieval and Renaissance World | Meyers
    T 5:30 - 8:00 | CRN 50913
    Medieval and Renaissance Europeans had a sophisticated, pre-modern understanding of the world and universe around them, from the canyons to the stars. This seminar explores the cosmos as seen from the perspective of Renaissance peoples, moving from the depths of inner earth to the heavens and exploring the creatures that dwelt there, from angels to demons, as well as the connections that bound them and the universe together. In this universe, religion, magic, and science coexisted uneasily and interacted constantly. A central topic will be the decay of this cosmos and its replacement by a universe more familiar to modern peoples. Readings will focus on primary texts and a combination of classic accounts and recent historiography. 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.

    PHIL 5010 R01 (3) Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas | Klima
     F 11:45 - 1:45 | CRN 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 6110 R01 (3) Philosophy of the Islamic World | Somma
    T 2:30 - 4:30 | CRN 50656
    This course introduces students to philosophy of the Islamic world, covering philosophical developments in both the eastern and western Islamic world. It begins shortly after the Graeco-Arabic translation movement of the eighth to the 10th centuries with the work of al-Kindī and ends with the establishment of post-Avicennan philosophy in the 12th and 13th centuries.

    ENGL 5211 R01 (3) Introduction to Old English Language and Literature | O’Donnell
    M 2:30 - 5:00 | CRN 50752
    This course is an introduction to Old English (Anglo-Saxon) language and literature. Old English was the language of England from the 7th to the 12th centuries, the language in which Beowulf was composed. We will read a representative selection of Anglo-Saxon prose and poetry in the original language, including The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, works by King Alfred and Bede, The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Lament, and The Dream of the Rood. Students will be introduced to Anglo-Saxon palaeography so that they can read the texts from medieval manuscripts as well as from printed editions.

    GERM 5002 R01 (0) Graduate Reading in German II | Hafner
    T/F  11:30 - 12:45 | CRN 17960                   

    FRENCH 5001  R02 (0) Reading French Theory | Meyer
     T  2:30 - 2:15 | CRN 49603      

     

  • SESSION I

    LATN 5090 R01 (4) Latin for Reading | Mcgowan
    MW 1:00 - 4:00 | CRN 14870
    A course designed for graduate students seeking a reading knowledge of Latin in their discipline. Some prior study of Latin is desirable but not necessary.

    ENGL 5213 R01 (3) Studies in Old English Literature | O'Donnell
    MW 9:00 - 12:00 | CRN 16464
    This course immerses students with a basic knowledge of Old English language and literature in an in-depth study of one of the major Old English codices, its texts, and critical contexts: Vercelli, Junius, Exeter, or the Beowulf (Nowell) Codex.

    MVST 5350 L01 (3) Holy Grails: Medieval, Modern, and Digital | Reilly
    TR 9:30 - 12:30 | CRN 16500
    This seminar explores the medieval Grail legend via a disciplinary triangulation of literary criticism, medievalism, and data science. No knowledge of Old French or programming required. Participants will learn several tools of data science to ask new questions of a vast medieval corpus, which has resonated throughout the centuries. Topics will include: metalepsis and narrative structure; manuscript illuminations; text as data; manuscript image classification; and medievalist rewritings. 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.

    SESSION II

    LATN 5093 R01 (4) Ecclesiastical Latin | Mcgowan
    MW 1:00 - 4:00 | CRN 15081
    This course is a study of the grammatical structure, form, and vocabulary of Church Latin, focusing on the Bible, the Church fathers, and medieval thinkers.

    SESSION III

    HIST 5205 R01 (4) Fall of the Roman Empire| Bruce
    Online Asynchronous | CRN 15789
    This graduate seminar introduces students to the historiographical paradigm of the "decline and fall" of the Roman Empire and examines modern responses to it. 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.

     

  • ENGL 5223 R01 (3) Embodied Research in Medieval Drama | Albin
    M 2:30 - 5:00 | CRN 53721
    What did it feel like to hammer nails into Jesus’s hands or to intone judgements at doomsday or to dance with the deadly sins on an open-air stage in the late Middle Ages? How far can we go in reconstructing, practicing, and sharing medieval performance styles today? What kind of knowledge might the evidence of our own bodies afford us in support of our study of the medieval past? In this course, we will tug at this knot of questions through careful reading, writing, discussion, and experimentation across an uncommon collection of sources, including medieval English playtexts and documents; scholarship on medieval drama and its reenactment; theoretical texts in performance studies, theater-making, and embodied technique; and the witness of our own embodied and reflective experience. Relevant research areas include medieval drama, history of the body, history of experience, history of spirituality, critical temporality studies, non-discursive epistemology, affect studies. Primary source readings will include much of the corpus of surviving Middle English drama supplemented by the Records of Early English Drama project; further readings include Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, Augusto Boal, Rob Boddice, Jerzy Grotowski, Andre Lepecki, Lauren Mancia, Mary Overlie, Rebecca Schneider, Matthew Sergi, Mark Smith, Ben Spatz, and others. Course assignments will center close reading, scholarly research, and academic writing, with options for digital humanities and performance-driven research, undertaken independently or collaboratively. Students may also opt into a parallel laboratory in Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints and/or a public performance of medieval drama at the Cloisters Museum in spring 2026. While helpful, no prior knowledge of Middle English or Latin is expected or required.

    PHIL 5012 R01 (3) Introduction to St. Augustine | Pini
    R 1:00 - 3:00 | CRN 48104
    This seminar provides a systematic survey of the main themes of St. Augustine's philosophy and theology. Topics will include faith and reason, divine ideas, time, eternity, and creations, the theology of the Holy Trinity, the nature of the soul, the freedom of the will and divine predestination, good and evil, original sin and divine grace, and the human history as the history of salvation. The unifying theme of the discussion will be a synthetic account of St. Augustine's Neoplatonic Christian anthropology, occasionally contrasted with St. Thomas Aquinas' Aristotelian Christian anthropology. The discussion will be organized around student presentations and two term papers on topics other than one's presentation topics.

    PHIL 6114 R01 (3) Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages | Cullen
    M 1:00 - 3:00 | CRN 53477
    Neo-Platonism is the foundation of the whole of medieval philosophy. This course will first involve an examination of the classical sources of this school of philosophy in the ancient philosophers, Plotinus and Proclus. Students will then examine the reception of this classical school in the Christian tradition. Students will explore the crisis of Christian neo-Platonism in the fourth century between the Arians and orthodox Christianity, represented by Gregory of Nyssa. Students will then read select works of three founding thinkers of the whole medieval tradition: Augustine, Boethius, and Dionysius the PseudoAreopagite. Brief consideration will be given to John Scout Eriugena, whose translation of Proclus into Latin influenced later medieval thought. The third component of this course will be an examination of certain architectonic, neo-Platonic elements in the thought of the major thirteenth-century Scholastics, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas. Special focus will be given to topics such as the concept of God, and of being, the origin and destiny of the soul, the status of the human body, and the eternity of the world.

    HIST 7056 R01 (4) (Prosem) Medieval Political Cultures | Paul
    T 2:30 - 5:00 | CRN 53892
    This course, the first part of a two-semester proseminar/seminar sequence will introduce students to recent debates and different approaches to cultures of power and political processes in western Europe in the central middle ages. Among the many toopics we might consider are lordship, status and authority, political assembly and consultation, courtliness and persuasion, rulership and sanctity, and the rise of accountability. Students will become familiar with a wide range of source material, from diplomatic and documentary collections to historical narratives and courtly literature. With this solid foundation in the current historiography and available research tools, students will be expected to identify a suitable topic for a sustained research project. Completing this project will be the objective of the seminar course to be offered in the Spring. 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 5203 R01 (4) Medieval Hagiography | Bruce
    F 2:30 - 5:00 | CRN 53886
    This research seminar introduces students to the challenges and pitfalls of using saints' lives and other hagiographical writings (miracula, furta sacra, etc.) as sources for medieval history. It aims to familiarize students with competing historical approaches to these genres and to provide a practical guide to the scholarly resources necessary to exploit them as historical sources. 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.

    MVST 5077 R01 (4) Editing Medieval Texts | Reilly
    F 11:30 - 2:15 | CRN 53475
    This is a course in the theory and practice of editing, especially as it relates to medieval texts, with most of the examples coming from Middle English. We'll give attention to documentary, historical, and aesthetic approaches, and we will spend som etime exploring digital methods and concerns. 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.