COML 235 - See RUSS 234 (also HIST 219/SLAV 517).
English:
ENGL 020.001
Major British Writers 1350-1660
MW 3-4:30
Emily Steiner
The term "Middle Ages" first gained currency in the
17th century and has since had a powerful influence over our conception
of the literary past. This course introduces students to three hundred
years of English literature by examining the ways in which that
literature mythologizes and historicizes. How do medieval and
Renaissance writers interpret and reinterpret classical, heroic, and
Christian themes? What idealized pasts, utopias, and dystopias do they
imagine and to what purpose? What myths about gender, ethnicity, and
nationality do they perpetuate and create? Finally, how do our myths of
"medieval" and "Renaissance" determine how we read English literature?
Readings may include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Malory's Morte D'Arthur,
More's Utopia, assorted sonnets by Spenser and Donne, a play by
Shakespeare and Milton's Paradise Lost.
ENGL 022.001
Escape/No Escape: The World of Romance and the
Pastoral
TR 1:30-3:00
Barbara Riebling
At first blush nothing seems more an escape from daily
reality than the worlds of Romance and the Pastoral: idealized knights
and their ladies battle dragons, giants, and sorcerers as happy
shepherds pipe in idyllic landscapes of desire. Indeed, while Nathaniel
Hawthorne praised Romance as a genre that can "mingle the Marvelous as
an evanescent flower" he went on to complain that "it sins unpardonably
so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart." In
this course we will look at escape both as a generic trait of Romance
and Pastoral and as a persistent theme in the works we study. Beginning
with a brief survey of classical texts and moving on to an examination
of central works in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, we will
interrogate the accusation of"escapism" while noting the recurring
themes of imprisonment, enchantment, and ineluctable conflict in such
works as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
Spenser's The Fairy Queen, and Milton's Lycidas.
ENGL 025.001
The Age of Chaucer
TR 3-4:30
Holly Barbaccia
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote some of the bawdiest, most
insightful, and most moving poetry in English. More precisely, he wrote
his poetry in the developing language we now call "Middle English." In
this class, we will encounter Chaucer's most important and most
entertaining texts in their original language: we'll take our time with
each text (reading only about 800 lines of poetry per class), and we'll
spend a great deal of time in class reading and performing the poetry
out-loud. Using this method, we'll read Chaucer's great love poem,
Troilus and Criseyde, his poignant Book of the Duchess, his elegant
Anglo-French courtly lyrics, and, of course, a few highlights from the
famous Canterbury Tales. Your grade will be based on your class
attendance and enthusiastic participation, two papers, one in-class
exam, and a variety of informal presentations, quizzes, and listserv
posts. No previous experience with Middle English required. This course
fulfills the Distribution 3, Arts & Letters requirement.
Germanic Languages & Literatures:
No Listings Available.
History:
HIST 140 - See JWST 157.401 (also RELS 121/AMES 157).
HIST 201
The Twelfth-Century Renaissance
M 2-4:30
Edward Peters
Subject of Study: In 1927 the great American medieval
historian Charles Homer Haskins published his classic work, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century.
The book was both an assessment of what was a widely-recognized turning
point in European history and culture and an appropriation for that
period of the recently popularized term “Renaissance,” by then
conventionally located in the late fourteenth through the late
sixteenth centuries. Haskins’ book became – and remains – a classic,
but it has not survived without its critics (some of them, for
different reasons, severe), nor without debates on the appropriateness
of the term “Renaissance” in its title and governing concept. In 1982
two American scholars, Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, then of
UCLA and Harvard, edited a massive, multi-participant reassessment of
Haskins' work called Renaissance and
Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Still more recently, the idea of
the twelfth century as a “Renaissance” has been reassessed again, by
Marcia Colish and C. Stephen Jaeger.
The purpose of this course is fourfold: to look at
Haskins’ great book, to consider aspects of the twelfth century that
Haskins did not, to reconsider some of those that he did, and to ponder
his and others’ use of the term “ Renaissance” to describe the twelfth
century. We will do this by looking at both primary sources (Heloise
and Abelard, Bernard Silvestris, John of Salisbury, among others) and
the best recent scholarship.
HIST 219 - See RUSS 234 (also COML 235/SLAV 517).
HIST 408
The World of Dante
T 1:30-4:30
Edward Peters
The World of Dante is a 400-level course (with
additional reading and writing requirements for its graduate student
participants) that will focus the history of thirteenth- and early
fourteenth-century Europe from the perspectives offered by the quite
remarkable life, career, thought, and literary work of Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321), a Florentine and Tuscan political figure, exile, moral
philosopher, lay theologian, and poet, as well as on those of some
predecessors and contemporaries, and on the “world of Dante,” that is,
the immediate Florentine and Tuscan setting of most of his life and the
focus of a good deal of his thought, including his thought about the
larger world. It will also deal with the larger world of Dante’s
culture, consciousness, and interests. Dante’s son Pietro called his
father, theologus, philosophus, poeta. To be either or both of the
first two required a mental horizon far wider than that of Florence or
Tuscany, and our course will reach out into those areas of the world
(chronological, spatial, and social) in which philosophy and theology
had a professsional existence and how Dante got them and how he and
others used them.
On the theoretical level, we will consider the validity
of using literary works for historical research. Although the course
focuses on Dante and northern Italy, it will also deal with much of
western Europe - since Dante himself did - particularly the interaction
of formal thought and its institutions (universities, Mendicant
convents, literary coteries, and court-circles of kings and cities)
with political and intellectual life in a number of its less formal
contexts.
The course might alternatively be called “The Long
Thirteenth Century,” as it is now occasionally fashionable to do with
some centuries, and in Dante’s case this would make sense – we will
begin chronologically with the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, the
election of Frederick II as King of the Romans in 1215, and the the
murder of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti in 1216 – the mythical
beginning of the antagonism of Guelfs and Ghibellines in Florence. We
will end around 1321, the year of Dante’s completion of the Paradiso,
his oration on geophysics, and his death, with a few considerations of
the initial and later reception of the works and Dante’s reputation.
The date is also consistent with another set of circumstances that seem
to mark off a distinctive period – the Avignon Papacy, the last
imperial concerns for a presence in Italy, and the emergence of a
distinctive Florentine and Tuscan political and literary culture and
economy.
HIST 410.601
The Norman Conquest and Twelfth-Century England
M 5:30-8:30
Thomas Waldman
The course will introduce students to some of the major
themes in English history by concentrating on the Norman Conquest of
1066 and developments in the British isles up through the reign of King
John. After a brief examination of Anglo-Saxon England on the eve of
the Conquest, we will look at contemporary sources (chronicles, poems,
the Bayeux Tapestry) and modern descriptions (including video) for the
Conquest itself. Other topics will include the growth of royal
government, town and country, feudalism, and religious life. We will
pay particular attention to the controversy surrounding the life and
murder of Thomas Becket by examining the many contemporary lives
(including eye witness accounts of the murder) as well as modern plays
and films. Students will give two short oral reports and write a
research paper.
History of Art:
ARTH 100.302
Delights Unseen: The Image of Heaven in Late
Antique and Medieval Art
MW 3-4:30
Warren T. Woodfin
While the conventional image of heaven today may be the
clouds and pearly gates of cartoons in the New Yorker, numerous
competing pictures of the state of the blessed circulated in medieval
theology and imagery. The depiction of the promised rewards of
believers was an important tool in the winning and encouragement of the
faithful and formed part of the first art of the Church. The central
problem, of course, was depicting what no human eye had seen. Through
dreams and visions, saints and mystics helped give concrete form to a
realm beyond lived experience—even, on occasion, bringing back actual
fruits of paradise. Art, in turn, became a tool for articulating or
reconciling competing theologies of the afterlife, its punishments and
pleasures. This course will examine the evidence of art and
architecture from the third century C.E. to the late Middle Ages
together with medieval writings that claim to describe thelandscape of
the afterlife. Through text and image, we may hope to catch a glimpse
into the changing imagination and aspirations of medieval culture.
ARTH 217/617
Visual Culture of the Islamic World
TR 12-1:30
Renata Holod
The course is a one-semester introduction to visual
culture of the Islamic world, beginning with contemporary material. 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 and popular art will be discussed also. Material in the course
will be drawn from the seventh to the twentieth centuries, and will be
presented thematically as well as chronologically. Attention will be
given to relationships between visual culture, history 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 reading will be available in
English.
ARTH 241/641
Byzantine Art & Architecture
MWF 11-12
Robert A. Maxwell
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 541
Narrative and Medieval Art
M 3-5
Robert A. Maxwell
For advanced undergraduate and graduate students. This
course explores the creative intersection of textual and visual
narratives, both sacred and secular, in the Middle Ages. We will devote
the first part of the semester to an investigation of medieval
narrative theory and historiographic practice, viewed also in light of
modern narratology. The second half of the course will be devoted to
examining case studies, each drawn from different periods, regions, and
media. These include late antique manuscript illumination from Rome;
stained glass of Chartres Cathedral; the Bayeux Tapestry; Italian
baptistery mosaics; Romanesque monumental sculpture; German and French
romance epics; etc. Some classes will be held in the Rosenbach Museum,
the Free Library, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
ARTH 718 (also AAMW 718)
Problems in Islamic Architecture: Town and Territory
Renata Holod
Explorations of urban and suburban complexes, centered on the Isfahan
of the 12th and the 17th century. Graduate seminar.
Jewish Studies:
JWST 100.401
The Binding of Isaac
TR 10:30-12:00
David Stern
The story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac
the Binding of Isaac as told in Genesis 22, is perhaps the greatest of
all tales in the Bible about religious obedience and faith. It is also
one of the most problematic texts in all Jewish literature, the subject
of numerous interpretations, and a source for countless later tales and
re-imaginings in Jewish literature. In this course, we will study the
history of this tale from the Bible through modern Jewish writing in
order to show how a specific tradition in Jewish literature develops
and changes in response to the historical changes and religious and
cultural developments that Jewish civilization itself undergoes. In
this way, we will also attempt to understand the very nature of
Tradition itself as it figures in Jewish culture. For comparative
purposes we will also consider the history of the tale in Christian and
Islamic traditions as well. All readings will be in translation, and no
previous background in Jewish literature or history is required. This
course is intended to serve as a way of introducing Jewish literature
and culture. Readings will include sections of the Bible, classical
Jewish interpretations of the Biblical tale, Crusader Chronicles, poems
both medieval and modern, and modern treatments of the theme by the
Christian philosopher S., Kierkegaard and such writers as Kafka,
Ch.N.Bialik, and A.B.Yehoshua, among others. Seminar, Crosslisted with
AMES 252, Fulfills General Requirement II: History and Tradition,
Benjamin Franklin Seminar, WATU.
JWST 157.401 (also HIST 140/RELS 121/AMES 157)
History of Jewish Civilization II: The Hellenistic
Period to the Seventeenth Century
MW 10:00-11:00 [plus recitation]
Talya Fishman
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 and
Tradition.
JWST 523-401
Studies in Medieval Jewish Culture: Packaging
Jewish Knowledge
M 2:00-5:00
Talya Fishman
The seminar will explore variables of "packaging"
involved in the transmission of Jewish knowledge, their historical and
cultural significance, and their impact on the formation of Jewish
tradition. The first part of the course will examine regulations
pertaining to the production of tradition's material texts e.g., the
choice of font, the ruling of guidelines in parchment, the presence of
marks of vocalization or cantillation, presentation of the text in
scroll or codex form and rabbinic claims about different sorts of
material texts e.g., whether they may be recited aloud, whether they
are susceptible to ritual impurity, whether they may be read in
translation, whether they are to be transmitted orally or in writing.
The remainder of the course will examine discrete genres of Jewish
tradition (e.g., Talmud, Talmud commentary, codes, kabbalah,
homiletical compendia) and reflect on broader cultural implications of
their formats: Are they single-authored compositions or agglomerations?
Do they cite earlier sources, and if so, are the citations accurate?
Why do they emerge when and where they do? What light do they shed on
changing modes of pedgagogy? How do they reflect changing conceptions
of authority and how do they shape them? Primary sources include
readings from ancient, medieval and early modern Jewish texts.
Secondary sources include readings from Drory, Carruthers, Rouse,
Chartier and others. Open to undergraduates only with the instructor's
permission. Seminar, Crosslisted with RELS 523, AMES 541.
AMES 658.301
Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis
David Stern
This course will trace the history of Medieval Jewish
Biblical interpretation and commentary rom the Masoretic Bible in the
10th c. through the main schools of exegesis and their pactitioners in
Ashkenaz and Sefarad in the High Middle Ages, and their successors in
Italy and early modern Eastern Europe. The course will specifically try
to connect the history of Jewish Biblical exegesis with Jewish reading
practices and other historical developments. Ability to read unpointed
Hebrew texts as well as modern scholarship in Hebrew is required.
Undergraduates must speak to Dr. Stern before enrolling; graduate
students interested in taking the course are asked to notify him.
Seminar.
Linguistics:
No Listings Available.
Music:
No Listings Available.
Near Eastern Languages & Literatures:
No Listings
Available.
Religious Studies:
RELS 121- See JWST 157.401 (also HIST 140/AMES 157).
RELS 413
Joan of Arc
M 6-9
Jane Marie Pinzino
WHO WAS THE HISTORICAL JOAN OF ARC? Yes, Joan of Arc
really existed (1412-1431) and her unique leadership has inspired the
appreciation of followers down to the present day. The course
investigates fact and fiction by scaling the quarry of evidence from
15th-century legal records down to a 21st-century television series.
Join the debate and weigh in--who is the real Joan of Arc?
RELS 434
History of Christian Thought 1000-1800
TR 1:30-204
E. Ann
Matter
This course will give a survey of the developments in
Christian thought from the early scholastic period to the Enightenment
(that is, roughly, from Anselm of Canterbury to Johann Sebastian Bach).
The emphasis will be on Western Christianity, with an eye to the
development of Christian sectarianism. Primary source readings will
include selections from Anselm, Peter Abelard, The Glossa ordinaria,
the Victorines, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas,
Meister Eckhart, Hadewijch and other Beguines, Catherine of Siena,
Thomas a Kempis, Nicholas of Lyra, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John
Bunyan, Lutheran Pietists, and John Wesley. It will be a whirlwind
tour, but by the end of the semester, students will have gained
familiarity with the major Christian thinkers of the late Middle Ages
and the Protestant and Catholic Reforms, and some sense of the
theological and cultural aftermath of these eras.
Romance Languages & Literatures:
FREN 330.301
Medieval Epic and Romance: Desire, Cultural
Difference, Personal Identity
TR 12-1:30
Kevin Brownlee
The course will examine how a set of French medieval
epic and romance texts represent issues of cultural difference and
personal identity, always in the context of economies of desire. Taking
as our point of departure the Chanson de Roland, medieval France's
archetypal epic of crusade and heroic values, we will then read several
key romances which restage Muslim-Christian cultural identities in
terms of love and commerce, within the context of the whole
Mediterranean world (including Fleur et Blanchefleur & Aucassin et
Nicolette). Other possible readings include the Chanson de Guillaume,
in which the crusade epic is transformed by the thematization of
conversion through love, combined with laughter and the comic; and
Chrétien de Troye's romance of Yvain, a drama of personal identity in
terms of public constraints and private desires. We will conclude with
the Quête du Saint Graal. All readings and discussion in French.
Distribution III: May be counted as a Distribution Course in Arts &
Letters.
ITAL 333
Dante's Divine Comedy
TR 10:30-12
Kevin Brownlee
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.
ITAL 383
La Novella Italiana
TR 12-1:30
Victoria Kirkham
Boccaccio's Decameron (ca. 1350) will orient a "viaggio
in Italia" through the novella, a form of short fiction particularly
Italian in its flavor and fertile history. The course will consist of
three sections: 1) medieval examples of the genre (e.g., the Novellino,
a collection of witty, elegant tales composed in the 13th-c. orbit of
the Sicilian court of Emperor Frederick II); 2) selections from the
Decameron chosen to illustrate life in early Renaissance Florence and
the master story teller's range, from fable to history, from hillarious
sexual escapades to high tragedy); 3) novelle after Boccaccio, which in
the 16th and 17th centuries created such world famous characters as
Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Cindarella; and in the 19th and 20th
centuries began to attract female authors, including Grazia Deledda, a
Sardinian who won the Nobel Prize in 1926. The course will conclude
with such Novecento writers as Sibilla Aleramo, Pirandello, Buzzati,
and Calvino. We shall also screen Pasolini's film version of the
Decameron, as well as two other Italian films constructed as short
story anthologies. Course conducted in Italian with informal discussion
and lecture format. Prerequisite: 5 semesters of Italian or in
exceptional circumstances by permission of instructor.
Slavic Languages and Literatures
RUSS 234 (also COML 235/HIST 219/SLAV 517)
Literary and Cultural History of Medieval Russia
TR 1:30-3 [Lecture/Discussion]
Julia Verkholantsev
This course offers an overview of the literary and cultural history of
Medieval Rus' from its origins through the Late Middle Ages, a period
which laid the foundation for the emergence of the Russian Empire.
Three modern-day nation-states – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – share
and dispute the cultural heritage of Medieval Rus’, and their political
relationships even today revolve around questions of national and
cultural identity. The course takes a comparative and interdisciplinary
approach to the evolution of the main cultural paradigms of Russian
Orthodoxy viewed in a broader European context. Students will explore
the worldview of medieval Orthodox Slavs by delving into such topics as
religion, spirituality, art, literature, education, music, ritual and
popular culture. Occasionally, we will also look at the ways medieval
themes have been exploited by 19th and 20th-century Russian writers and
artists. Distributional Requirement II: History and Tradition.
