Byzantium (3 credits)

MELC-M 348 with Daniel Caner

This course explores the history, society, economy and culture of the Byzantine Roman Empire ("Byzantium"), ca. 330-1453 CE. Focuses on its imperial and Christian ideology, urban and frontier life, military ventures and diplomatic strategies for survival while situated between Western Christendom and Islamic Caliphates in the medieval Middle East.

 

Literary History 1: Beginnings Through the Seventeenth Century (3 credits)

ENG-L 310 with Robin Reames

What was literature in English before there was such a thing as "English Literature"? The idea of "literature" as we commonly think of it today did not really exist before the 18th century if not later. So, what function did it have for the people who created, heard, and read "literature" before the existence of the very idea? In this course, examine how, prior to the invention of literature, the craft of rhetoric propelled poets and wordsmiths in the medieval and early modern eras to innovate with the arts of language, and we pay particular attention to how the people of this era used language to shape and structure their experiences and lives—perhaps one of the most important things you can do in your college education.

 

Medieval Japan: The Age of Bandits and Buddhas (3 credits)

EALC-E 352 with Morten Oxenboell

This course introduces the students to Japanese history until 1600. Focus will be on the "Century of Buddhas and Bandits" c. 1250-1350, when Japan experienced dramatic social and religious transformations and innovations. Warriors played an important role for many of these changes, but emphasis in this course will be on other demographics, especially monks, merchants, and bandits/pirates. We will read excerpts from influential works from this period (in English translation) and discuss how social changes were influenced by environmental challenges and technological advancements and how these changes impacted religious and philosophical ideas and movements. While the course is largely organized as a chronological survey, it revolves throughout around four major themes: Environment (including geography and epidemics), religion and philosophy, social institutions, and economy. These themes will generally not be treated separately but will be the reference points for all discussions in class of political, social, and cultural developments through the premodern history of Japan.

 

Medieval Literature (3 credits)

CMLT-C 321 with Jeffrey Johnson

Night-stalker cannibals, people with their eyes sewn shut, a father crusading to kill his own daughter, the clash of empires, divine hallucinations, multi-generational vendettas--across the European Middle Ages, creative artists used epic poetry to tell the most shocking stories and to dramatize the most important issues of their time in social, political, religious, and artistic terms. We will read four epic poems from four distinct cultures in England, France, Germany, and Italy that bring to life storylines involving monsters and giants, salvation and damnation, family betrayal, egomania, and the operations of the human soul. To enhance our enjoyment of the literature, we will also survey works of art in different media related to the four epics: paintings, manuscript illuminations, modern graphic illustrations, music, and archaeological discoveries.

 

Medieval Queens and Empresses  (3 credits)

HIST-J 300 with Deborah Deliyannis  

In the Middle Ages, some women exercised a surprising amount of authority - surprising to us, and sometimes surprising to their contemporaries.  In this writing-intensive seminar, we will consider queens and empresses in Europe and the Mediterranean from the late Roman empire to the fourteenth century.  We will examine sources for ruling women:  how they were described (and by whom), how they were represented in art, and what is said about them in legal and religious texts.  We will discuss the way they achieved political power, what kinds of authority they could exercise, who they married, what behaviors were expected of them, and how their personalities impacted their regions.

 

Mongolia’s Middle Ages

CEUS-R 361 with Michael Brose (3 credits)

Examination of Mongolia's "Middle Ages" between the Mongol world empire and the modern era, 1350 to 1850. Topics include the nobility, Oirats, Buddhist conversion, Manchu-Chinese rule, and Buriats and Kalmyks in Russia. Readings include modern histories and sources in translation.

 

The Bayeux Tapestry from Scratch (French/Francophone Culture Topics) (3 credits)

FRIT-F 225 with Elizabeth Hebbard

The Bayeux Tapestry is a 70-meter-long textile depicting the background and events of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is thought to have been made for Odo of Bayeux shortly after the Norman Conquest of England and designed for display in Bayeux cathedral. Likely called a tapestry because of that display context, the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery featuring the work of many anonymous needlecraft artists. The Bayeux Tapestry itself is worthy of sustained attention, particularly given that so few textiles survive from the Middle Ages, but this course uses this object to dive deeper into networks of people and specialized knowledge of the premodern world. Where was flax cultivated and exported in the 11th century and how are the crops processed to gather fibers and weave them into linen cloth? How is wool spun into yarn, and what dye plants were available to color it? How long does it take to make a 70-meter embroidery? How were textiles used in the premodern world to engage in storytelling, and why was the Norman Conquest recounted in embroidery? Who made this object, and what can we learn from it today about art and sustainability, premodern craft as knowledge, gender and textile work, and the natural world?

 

The Literature of Walking

ENG-L 373 with Shannon Gayk

This class surveys literature prompted by journeys on foot, from writing by medieval pilgrims and romantic wanderers to that of modern trekkers, explorers, and refugees. We will think together about the ubiquity of the "journey motif," and about how writers conceive of landscape as text, by looking at poetry, essays, and fiction from the Middle Ages to today and by doing some literary walks of our own. We will also consider why accounts of journeys and pilgrimages have been such powerful ways of exploring the paths of our inner lives and human experience. We will read short poems and prose by Rousseau, Wordsworth, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Dickens, Frost, and Woolf and longer works by Rebecca Solnit, Robert MacFarlane, and Cormac McCarthy. Our approach will be interdisciplinary: literature is our home base, but we will also be reading anthropological, religious, and historical writings as well. Our written work will be critical, reflective, and creative, encouraging deep reflection on our reading and on our own experiences on the road.

 

Travelers and Explorers in Central Asia (3 credits)

CEUS-R 311with Ron Sela

This course charts the exploration of Central Asia from China to Iran in the eighth through the nineteenth centuries. Uses primary sources in English translation to evaluate these travelogues as sources, comparing and contrasting medieval and modern, from insider and outsider perspectives.

 

Unfolding Secrets: Introduction to the Kabbalah (3 credits)

JSTU-J 220 with Anna Sierka

The course will introduce the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah. This course will offer an overview of the emergence, rise, and further evolution of kabbalistic thought in the medieval and Early Modern periods. Participants will be invited to join an exploration of the mystical secrets of major kabbalistic corpora, including the Zohar, The Book of Splendor, which is considered the most significant composition of Kabbalah, offering a vibrant template for the further evolvement of kabbalistic symbolism. Special emphasis will be placed on the themes of cosmogenesis, origins of evil, contemplation, mystical eroticism, and transmission of secret lore.

 

Western Europe in the High and Later Middle Ages (3 credits)

HIST-B 352 with Leah Shopkow

This course focuses on the expansion of European culture and institutions: chivalry, the Crusades, rise of towns, universities, Gothic architecture, law, and revival of central government. The course also overviews violent changes in late medieval Europe such as overpopulation, plague, Hundred Years' War, peasant revolt, crime, inquisition, and heresy.

 

World Literature Before 1500 (3 credits)

CMLT-C 320 with Ryan Hintzman

The course introduces Japan's rich classical literary tradition and its material and visual culture from the earliest periods to the early modern period and beyond; it also introduces students to interdisciplinary study and to humanistic practices of looking closely at materials from non-Western, non-modern cultures. Readings drawn from The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book, the great warrior epic Heike monogatari, waka poetry, and early modern haiku; visual materials include paintings, narrative handscrolls (emaki), and calligraphic texts. No experience with the Japanese language or Japanese literature required. The course spends the first half of the term looking in detail at the great age of Heian court literature (c. 1000) and its place in later cultural imaginations, and then turns back to look at the seventh and eighth centuries, where we find a rather different (and rather unfamiliar) "Japan" in contact with other cultures in Asia and the Silk Road; the last few weeks of the course will be devoted to lyric poetry (waka), the poetic artefacts produced as part of poetic culture, and the poetic tradition's reinvention in the early modern period as haiku and haikai. Along the way, we will also see how generations of artists, writers and thinkers have reinterpreted and re-invented "classical" literature and the idea of "Japanese" literature to suit the needs of their particular historical contexts.

Past Course Listings

Fall 2025

Spring 2024

Fall 2024

Spring 2023