Classical Studies:

CLST 321.401 - See ENGL 021.

CLST 511.401 - See COML 501 (also ENGL 571/GRMN 534/ROML 512/SLAV 500).

Comparative Literature:

COML 501.401
History of Literary Theory
R. Copeland
T 1-4

This course on literary theory will have a strong historical component.  We will be tracing out the transformation of key problems in foundational texts ranging from antiquity to the post-modern age, including works by Plato and Aristotle, Longinus, Augustine, Dante, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida (authors represented on the Comparative Literature Theory exam list), leading to our most contemporary concerns with postcoloniality, race, and gender.  Our readings will help us to understand the disciplinary and institutional transformation of literary studies in the last few decades.  We will look at the production and revision of such issues as text and culture, language and signification, representation, affect and the body, ownership and authority, canonicity, power and ideology, history and nation, and the constitution  of the subject.  Course requirements: three short papers (7 pages), and one oral report (accompanied by bibliography) as a final project.

This course is cross-listed as CLST 511/ENG 571/GRMN 534/ROML 512/SLAV 500.


COML 526 - See ENGL 705 (also SLAV 526).

COML 556 - See JWST 356 (also RELS 418, JWST 555, NELC 356/556).


East Asian Literatures & Cultures:

No Listings Available.


English:
   
ENGL 020.001
Literature from Chaucer to Milton
M. de Grazia
TR 10:30-12

This discussion course is designed to familiarize students with major works of literature from Chaucer to Milton.  We will proceed chronologically by genre, beginning with poetic narratives (Chaucer’s tales, Spenser’s romance and Milton’s epic), continuing with the drama (a comedy and tragedy by Shakespeare), followed by lyric poems (Sidney, Donne, Jonson, Lanyer, Wroth, Herbert, Marvell), and concluding with prose selections (More’s Utopia and Pepys’ Diary).  While we will be situating these works in their historical and cultural contexts, emphasis will be on close reading.  Four (4-5 page) critical papers will be assigned, occasional class exercises, and a final exam.


ENGL 021.401
Medieval Epic and its Classical Legacy
R. Copeland
MW 2-3:30

This course will examine aspects of the epic genre in medieval English literature by looking at classical epic and its reception. We will begin with Virgil’s Aeneid and consider how its reception in late antiquity, through Augustine's Confessions and through philosophical commentators, prepared the way for medieval responses to the form. Readings in the medieval tradition will include Beowulf, some early Arthurian writings that stress an imperial theme, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer’s House of Fame and Nun’s Priest’s Tale, and Malory’s Morte Darthur. Some theoretical and historical readings may also be included in the syllabus. Grading will be based on several short papers and one longer writing assignment.


ENGL 221.401
Women and Writing in Medieval and Renaissance England
D. Wallace
MW 3:30-5

In this course we’ll consider the relationships of women to writing from c. 1220 (Ancrene Wisse, a text written for enclosed religious women) to 1673 (the death of ‘Mad Madge,’ a playwright much reviled by Virginia Woolf). We’ll concern ourselves mostly with texts written, dictated, inspired or commissioned by women, plus texts written against or forced upon women: texts, in short, that helped shape the possibilities of premodern women’s lives.

This course questions traditional periodizations by shooting the medieval/ Renaissance divide and by considering arguments of advance and decline for women. Does the rise of the university, for example, bring a diminution of educational opportunities for women? Is the Middle Ages to be seen, as some feminist historians have seen it, as a feminine ‘golden age’? Does the coming of the ‘Renaissance’ reduce female options to that of marriage or marriage? How do both the observant and oppositional activities of women shift as we move from Catholic through Lollard to Protestant cultures? We might consider here the writings of Protestant Elizabeth I and embroideries of Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots; other authors might include Anne Askew, Isabella Whitney (fl. 1567-1573), Mary Herbert (1562-1621), Elizabeth Cary (1585?-1639), and Rachel Speght (c. 1597-16??).  Such developmental narratives can be challenged by others suggesting strange resemblances over time, featuring women occupying liminal places: the anchoress; the pregnant woman. We can thus read Trotula texts (female-authored gynaecological manuals), a manual for female recluses (Ancrene Wisse), a mystical text by a woman who uses her body as a spiritual laboratory (Julian of Norwich) and best-selling texts by Renaissance women who will not survive pregnancy. We can match texts from women centuries apart: such as Christine of Markyate (1096-1160), who defied family expectations of marriage to live as a recluse, eventually leaving us with an extraordinary lifestory and a psalter of her own; and Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle  (Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mad Madge’) who wrote several plays that imagined all-female academies long before Virginia penned A Room of One’s Own. The question of continuing nun-nostalgia in Protestant cultures might also be raised. So too the question of women and travel: how did Margery Kempe manage to traverse the face of the known world, avoid injury, and return to compose her text? As centuries pass, do women travel less?

Examination in this advanced undergraduate seminar will be by two essays: one of 5 pages (written after about six weeks) and one researched in the latter part of the semester and handed in during the final week of class (12 pages). We'll try to develop a friendly, collaborative working mode in this seminar; students will have the opportunity of writing a one-page, brainstorming abstract of their final paper in week 12.

Attendance: please let me know by e-mail of any intended absences due to religious holidays, illnesses, or other causes.


ENGL 223 - See ITAL 330.


ENGL 266.601
Assault, Battery, and Medieval Literature
Mathews
R 6:30-9:30

This course examines how narratives of violence are constructed and read by diverse modes of writing: poetry, prose, statute, and trial transcript. Our critical interrogations of textual accounts of stabbings, rapes, shootings, and below the belt punches will include but certainly will not be limited to topics and issues relating to 1) forms of persecution and prosecution across the Reformation and beyond 2) competing theories of jurisprudence and changing conceptions of the “literary” 3) editorial revisionism, censorship, and other modes of “textual assault.”  Authors may include Sophocles, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Richardson, Hardy, Faulkner, and Eco.


ENGL 553.301
Premodern Women: Writing and Place
D. Wallace
M 12-3

This course considers the relationships of premodern women to writing and to the places of their lives and travels. The relationship of premodern women to territory is particularly tenuous and fraught. Women, particularly aristocrats, were expected to leave their homes and native ground and marry into unfamiliar cultures in foreign landscapes: is homesickness originally a female complaint, before it is taken over by males dreaming of England from their distant colonial postings? Catholic English women, following the Reformation, continued living communally in continental Europe. Here too homesickness is a factor, expressed in their careful conservation of medieval English writings (Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century English anchoress, survives as written and conserved by seventeenth-century English women). Continents were often figured as naked female figures. Tensions at faith frontiers (east and west) were often expressed through conflicts over or within particular female bodies: figures to consider here include saints Dorothea of Montau and Rose of Lima. Women sometimes occupied places, knowingly or not, where earlier generations of women had lived, in quite different cultural and religious circumstances: places such as Wilton and Welbeck. The study of a particular place over time might make an interesting research essay. The question of continuing nun-nostalgia in Protestant cultures might also be raised. So too the question of women and travel: how did Margery Kempe manage to traverse the face of the known world, avoid injury, and return to compose her text? As centuries pass, do women travel less?

This course questions traditional periodizations by shooting the medieval/Renaissance divide and by considering arguments of advance and decline for women. Does the rise of the university, for example, bring a diminution of educational opportunities for women? Is the Middle Ages to be seen, as some feminist historians have seen it, as a feminine ‘golden age’? Does the coming of the ‘Renaissance’ reduce female options to that of marriage or marriage? How do both the observant and oppositional activities of women shift as we move from Catholic through Lollard to Protestant cultures? We might consider here the writings of Protestant Elizabeth I and embroideries of Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots; other authors might include Anne Askew, Isabella Whitney (fl. 1567-1573), Mary Herbert (1562-1621), Elizabeth Cary (1585?-1639), and Rachel Speght (c. 1597-16??).  Such developmental narratives can be challenged by others suggesting strange resemblances over time, featuring women occupying liminal places: the anchoress; the pregnant woman. We can thus read Trotula texts (female-authored gynaecological manuals), a manual for female recluses (Ancrene Wisse), a mystical text by a woman who uses her body as a spiritual laboratory (Julian of Norwich) and best-selling texts by Renaissance women who will not survive pregnancy. We can match texts from women centuries apart: such as Christine of Markyate (1096-1160), who defied family expectations of marriage to live as a recluse, eventually leaving us with an extraordinary lifestory and a psalter of her own; and Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, a playwright much reviled by Virginia Woolf who, nonetheless, wrote several plays imagining all-female academies long before Virginia penned A Room of One’s Own.

On Saturday 11 November there will be a one-day conference at Penn dedicated to issues of medieval/Renaissance periodization. There will be visiting Faculty speakers: but the event is chiefly envisioned as an opportunity for graduate students to explore these issues; this course might be seen as a conduit to that event. Assessment will be by one long essay, preceded by a one-page brainstorming abstract earlier in the semester.


ENGL 571 - See COML 501 (also CLST 511/GRMN 534/ROML 512/SLAV 500).


ENGL 705 - See SLAV 526 (also COML 526).


Germanic Languages & Literatures:


GRMN 534 - See COML 501 (also CLST 511/ENGL 571/ROML 512/SLAV 500).


History:

HIST 001
Europe in a Wider World to 1500
Goldberg
MW 10-11 & Recitation


HIST 010
The World, 900-1750
A. Feros
TR 3-4:30


HIST 031 (CGS)
Europe, 1000-1500: World of the Middle Ages
Novikoff
W 6-9

The course will consider the creation of a distinctive European civilization from the economic, political, and cultural revolution of the late 10th and 11th centuries to the beginning of the extension of European power into the non-European world around the turn of the 16th century. The course will examine change and continuity on both large and small scales, emphasizing such themes as power and order, the complexities of a pre-industrial economy, the formation of ethnic identities, and the worlds of formal thought and learning as well as those of the imagination and the arts. The course will also explore relations between Europe and the Islamic and Byzantine worlds as well as the role of northern and eastern Europe. A substantial part of the required reading will be original source materials in translation. Fulfills Distribution II; History & Tradition.


HIST 090
Pre-Modern Japan
G. Hurst
MWF 11-12


HIST 140 - See JWST 157 (also RELS 121/NELC 052).


HIST 215
Comparative Islamic Empires
F. Kashani-Sabet
W 2-5


HIST 533 - See RELS 533.

History of Art:


ARTH 109.601 (CGS)
European Art & Civilization after 1400
E. Tapp
M 5:30-8:30

Fulfills Distribution in Arts & Letters (CGS only).

ARTH 217.617
Introduction to Visual Culture of the Islamic World
R. Holod
TR 12-1:30

A one-semester introduction to visual culture of the Islamic world. The course will examine how visual culture has functioned and continues to operate within Islamic civilization. Visual culture encompasses but is not limited to specific histories of art and architecture. Aspects of crafts, film and popular art will also be discussed. Material in the course will be drawn from the seventh to the twentieth centuries. Attention will be given to relationships between visual culture and literature, using specific case studies, sites or objects which may be related to various branches of Islamic literature, including historical, didactic, philosophical writings, poetry, and religious texts. The course is designed to serve non-specialists. All primary  sources will be available in English translation.


ARTH 240.640
Introduction to Medieval Art
R. Maxwell
MWF 11-12

An introductory survey, this course investigates painting, sculpture, and the "minor arts" of the Middle Ages. Students will become familiar with selected major monuments of the Late Antique, Byzantine, Carolingian, Romanesque, and Gothic periods, as well as primary textual sources. Analysis of works emphasizes the cultural context, the thematic content, and the function of objects. Discussions focus especially on several key themes: the aesthetic status of art and the theological role of images; the revival of classical models and visual modes; social rituals such as pilgrimage and crusading; the cult of the Virgin and the status of women in art; the "beautiful" and the "ugly"; and, more generally, the ideology of visual culture across the political and urban landscapes.


ARTH 241.601 (CGS)
Byzantine Art & Architecture
G. Varinlioglu
R 6-9

This course surveys the arts of Byzantium from the fall of Rome to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Study of major monuments, including icons, mosaics, architecture, and ivories will provide us with an overview of this rich artistic culture. We will pay special attention to the role of the Orthodox Church and liturgy in the production and reception of art works. Weekly recitation sections will focus on selected major issues, such as the relationship of art to the Holy, the uses and abuses of Iconoclasm, and imperial patronage. The course will also grapple with the Empire's relation to other cultures by looking at the impact of the Christian Crusades and Moslem invasions as well as Byzantium's crucial impact on European art (e.g, in Sicily, Spain).


ARTH 301.302
Islamic Art
R. Holod
W 2-5


Jewish Studies:


JWST 157.401 (HIST 140/RELS 121/NELC 052)
History of Jewish Civilization II: Early Middle Ages to the 17th Century
D. Ruderman
TR 1:30-2:30 & Recitation

Exploration of intellectual, social, and cultural developments in Jewish civilization from the dawn of rabbinic culture in the Near East through the assault on established conceptions of faith and religious authority in 17th century Europe. Particular attention will be paid to the impact of Christian and Muslim “host societies” on expressions of Jewish culture.

Fulfills General Requirement II: History & Tradition.


JWST 257.401 (HEBR 257/HEBR 557/RELS 226)
Introduction to Midrash
D. Stern
TR 3-4:30

This course is intended to introduce students to midrash, the activity of Biblical interpretation as practiced by the Rabbis in the ancient world; to its literature, its literary forms, and its techniques of interpretation; and to modern scholarship on midrash. We will study various texts from different periods in the history of Midrashic literature, and attempt to apply different critical and disciplinary methodologies - literary, historical, theological - to the task of analyzing these texts. We will also seek to situate midrash within the larger history of Jewish Biblical interpretation and within the context of Jewish literary creativity through the ages, including our own. Class discussion will be held in English, but students must be able to read unpointed Hebrew texts. No other previous background in the literature is necessary. Since the content of this course may change from year to year students may take it for credit more than once (if the course is indeed different).

Seminar. Fulfills General Requirement III: Arts and Letters.


JWST 258.401 (NELC 285/RELS 228)
Jews Under Medieval Islam
Goldstein
R 3-6

This seminar will examine what Jews living in Muslim lands wrote during medieval times, focusing on a range of primary sources including poetry, Bible commentary, historiography and polemics. Through these sources we will develop an understanding of the place of this community in Jewish history as well as within the medieval empire of Islam. Seminar.

All readings and lectures in English.
Fulfills General Requirement III: Arts and Letters.


JWST 356.401
Ancient Interpretation of the Bible
D. Stern
TR 10:30-12

Christianity and Judaism are often called "Biblical religions" because they are believed to be founded upon the Bible. But the truth of the matter is that it was less the Bible itself than the particular ways in which the Bible was read and interpreted by Christians and Jews that shaped the development of these two religions and that also marked the difference between them. So, too, ancient Biblical interpretation (Jewish and Christian) laid the groundwork for and developed virtually all the techniques and methods that have dominated literary criticism and hermeneutics (the science of interpretation) since then. The purpose of this course is to study some of the more important ways in which the Bible was read and interpreted by Jews and Christians before the modern period, and particularly in the first six centuries in the common era. We will make a concerted effort to view these interpretive approaches not only historically but also through the lens of contemporary critical and hermeneutical theory in order to examine their contemporary relevance to literary interpretation and the use that some modern literary theorists (e.g. Bloom, Kermode, Derrida, Todorov) have made of these ancient exegetes and their methods. All readings are in English translation, and will include selections from Philo of Alexandria, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Rabbinic midrash, the New Testament and early Church Fathers, Gnostic writings, Origen, and Augustine. No previous familiarity with Biblical scholarship is required, although some familiarity with the Bible itself would be helpful. Benjamin Franklin Scholars. Non-Honors students need permission.

Fulfills Distribution III: Arts and Letters. (This course is cross-listed as NELC 356, NELC 556, RELS 418, COML 556, JWST 555.)


JWST 555 - See JWST 356 (also NELC 356/556, RELS 418, COML 556).


Linguistics:

LING 310
History of the English Language
A. Kroch
TR 3-4:30

This course traces the linguistic history of English from its earliest reconstructable ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, to the present. We focus especially on significant large-scale changes, such as the restructuring of the verb system in Proto-Germanic, the intricate interaction of sound changes in the immediate prehistory of Old English, syntactic change in Middle English, and the diversification of English dialects since 1750.


Music:

No Listings Available.


Near Eastern Languages & Literatures:


NELC 052 - See JWST 157 (also HIST 140/ RELS 121).

NELC 285 - See JWST 258 (also RELS 228).

NELC 356/556 - See JWST 356 (also RELS 418, COML 556, JWST 555).

NELC 534 - See RELS 545.


Philosophy:

No Listings Available.


Religious Studies:

RELS 121 - See JWST 157 (also HIST 140/NELC 052).

RELS 226 - See JWST 257 (also HEBR 257/557, RELS 226).

RELS 228 - See JWST 258 (also NELC 285).

RELS 418 - See JWST 356 (also COML 556, JWST 555, NELC 356/556).


RELS 438 (CGS)
The Sermon on the Mount: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Interpretations
J. Treat
W 6-8:40

This course introduces students to the development of Christian biblical interpretation by focusing on ancient, medieval, and modern interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount. Students will encounter a variety of important interpreters (including John Chrystosom, Augustine, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Dibelius, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Hans Dieter Betz), guided by appropriate secondary materials. The Sermon on the Mount is part of the Gospel of Matthew and is often considered to summarize the essential teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
 
This course has no prerequisites. Readings will be made available in English. Students will be encouraged to do original research in the primary sources.


RELS 533 (HIST 533)
Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition
A. Matter/T. Waldman
M 3-5

The collection of mystical writings attributed to Dionysius, the philosopher converted by Paul on the Areopagus in Athens, have one of the most interesting historical trajectories of any texts in the Christian spiritual tradition. Probably dating from sixth-century Syria, these explorations of apophatic theology were thought to be by Paul’s convert, who was also the first Bishop of Athens and later the Saint Dennis who was the Apostle to Gaul and first Bishop of Paris. The corpus of surviving texts (“The Celestial Hierarchy”, “The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy”, “The Divine Names”, and “The Mystical Theology”) will be the starting point for an exploration of Dionysian spirituality in medieval Christianity, particularly the Western Europe. We will also read works of John Scotus Eriugena (ninth century), Peter Abelard and Suger of Saint-Denis (twelfth century) and Meiser Eckhart (thirteenth century), all of whom had some significant influence from this tradition. Finally, we will look at the development of the Abbey of Saint-Denis in Paris as the center of architectural and artistic symbolism based on Dionysian ideas.
 
This is an advanced seminar. The readings can mostly be done in English, but knowledge of Greek, Latin, French and/or German will also be helpful. Each student will write a research paper.

Fulfills Distribution II: History & Tradition.


RELS 545 (NELC 534)
Sufi Tafsir Literature
Staff
T 10-1


RELS 735.401
Judaism and Christianity Seminar: Papyrology
R. Kraft
T 3-5

This work-seminar will introduce participants to the study of ancient papyri, both documentary and literary, with a focus on Greek and Coptic materials (also some attention to Latin, Demotic, and Arabic). Hitherto unexamined fragments will be available for possible publication, from the collections here at the University as well as elsewhere. There will also be an opportunity for hands-on work with small cartonnage fragments (conservation, separation, classification and decipherment). No prerequisites, but knowledge of Christian origins at the level of RELS 135 is expected (remedial readings will be recommended, where necessary).

Permission needed from instructor.



Romance Languages & Literatures:

FREN 330
Medieval Literature
K. Brownlee
TR 12-1:30

The course explores one of the greatest literary creations of medieval France: the world of King Arthur. We will study the parameters of this world in the contexts of fiction and history, politics and fantasy. Texts to be studied include Tristan (Béroul and Thomas), Perceval (Chrétien de Troyes), Les Lais (Marie de France), the Lancelot en Prose, and the Mort du roi Arthur.

All reading and discussion in French.

Distribution III: May be counted as a Distribution Course in Arts & Letters.


ITAL 330 (ENGL 223)
Dante’s Divine Comedy
K. Brownlee
TR 10:30-12

In this course we will read the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, focusing on a series of interrelated problems raised by the poem: authority, fiction, history, politics and language. Particular attention will be given to how the Commedia presents itself as Dante's autobiography, and to how the autobiographical narrative serves as a unifying thread for this supremely rich literary text. Supplementary readings will include Virgil's Aeneid and selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

All readings and written work will be in English. Italian or Italian Studies credit will require reading Italian texts in their original language and doing the written assignments in Italian.


ROML 512 - See COML 501 (also CLST 511/ENGL 571/ GRMN 534/SLAV 500).


Slavic Languages & Literatures:


SLAV 500 - See COML 501 (also CLST 511/ENGL 571/ GRMN 534/ ROML 512).

SLAV 526 (COML 526/ENGL 705)
In Defiance of Babel
J. Verkholantsev
M 2-5

The course explores the historical trajectory from antiquity to the present day of the idea of discovering or creating an ideal universal language as a medium for explaining the essence of human experience and a means for universal communication.

The possibility of universal communication has been as vital and thought-provoking a question throughout the history of humanity as it is at the present. Particularly, the idea that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was a language which perfectly expressed the essence of all possible objects and concepts has occupied the minds of scholars for at least two millennia. In defiance of the myth of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, there have been numerous attempts to overcome divine punishment and discover the path back to harmonious existence. For theologians, the possibility of recovering or recreating a universal language would allow direct experience of the divinity, for philosophers it would enable apprehension of the laws of nature, for mystic-cabalists it would offer access to hidden knowledge. Today, this idea still continues to provoke scholars and it echoes in the modern theories of universal grammar and underlying linguistic structures, as well as in various attempts to create artificial languages, starting with Esperanto and ending with a language for cosmic intercourse.