Fall 2003 Medieval Studies Courses
The following list is intended to be as inclusive as possible. An effort has been made to include all courses listed in the Medieval Studies program regulations as counting toward the graduate minor or undergraduate minor. Courses which might be of interest to medievalists but which do not count toward one of the minors are also included. Please consult the director of the minor program with questions about the relevance of specific courses.
This information is subject to change. Please consult the Registrar's online schedule or the individual departments for up-to-date information on fall courses. You may also find the preliminary list of select courses planned for Spring 2004 useful in planning your schedule.
UNC students may also take courses at Duke University through inter-institutional registration. See the Duke University Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies website for the most up-to-date information on medieval courses at Duke.
Art
ART 35: Medieval Survey (MWF 10-10:50) Jaroslav Folda
This course is a basic, introductory level survey course for undergraduates. No prerequisites. Art 35 covers the history of Medieval art and architecture from the time of Constantine I, c. 300 to c. 1300 A.D. The historical developments are discussed in the following five categories: a. Early Christian art, b. Byzantine art, c. Early Medieval art in Western Europe, d. Romanesque art, and e. Gothic art.
ART 351: Seminar in Medieval Art (W 2-4:50) Dorothy Verkerk
A graduate art history seminar on the Irish High Crosses, Saints, and Pilgrimage to Rome.
Classical Archaeology
CLAR 51: Early Christian and Byzantine Art (TR 9:30-10:45) Carolyn Connor
An introduction to the history of Christian art in Italy and the eastern Mediterranean from the time of Constantine the Great, around 300 AD, to the end of the Byzantine Empire and the capture of Constantinople in 1453. Prime examples of art and architecture will be studied with special emphasis on their historical and cultural setting.
Comparative Literature
CMPL 195 (see ITAL 134)
English
ENGL 51: English Literature of the Middle Ages (TR 12:30-1:45) Patrick O'Neill
ENGL 52: Chaucer (TR 9:30-10:45) Joe Wittig
ENGL 153: Medieval Romance (MWF 1-1:50) E. D. Kennedy
The study of Arthurian romance. Works/authors include Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enide and Lancelot; Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival; Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan; Sir Thomas Malory, Morte Darthur; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; the French Vulgate Quest of the Holy Grail and The Death of King Arthur; Tennyson, Idylls of the King; Mark Twain, Connecticut Yankee. Paper; mid-term exam; final exam; oral report for graduate students.
ENGL 237A: Old English Grammar and Reading (TR 11-12:15) Ted Leinbaugh
Introduction to the early history of the English language through a study of the phonology, inflections, and syntax of Old English prose and poetry. Our textbooks will include Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. We will learn to read Old English (the Germanic language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons in Britain from about the middle of the fifth century until the end of the eleventh century A.D.), and we shall study both poetry and prose. Readings will include excerpts from Beowulf, The Battle of Brunanburh, Cædmon's Hymn and selections from the writings of King Alfred the Great and Aelfric.
French
FREN 60: Survey of French Literature I (TR 12:30-1:45) J. Noblitt
FREN 221: Old French (TR 9:30-10:45) E. D. Montgomery
German
GERM 66: Women in the Middle Ages (TR 11-12:15) Kathryn Starkey
GERM 210: Topics in Medieval Literature (TR 9:30-10:45) Kathryn Starkey
[Paul Roberge: No medieval courses offered.]
History
HIST 15: Medieval History (MWF 8:00-8:50) Michael McVaugh
A survey of western Europe and the Mediterranean World, 300-1400.
HIST 36: Introduction to Islamic Civilization (MWF 1:00-1:50) Sarah Shields
A broad, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary introduction to the traditional civilization of the Muslim world.
HIST 55: Women and Marriage in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (TR 12:30-1:45) Stan Chojnacki
The aim of this course is to trace Europeans' ideas about women and women's roles during the period from about 600 to about 1600. The question we ask is, whether and how the ideas matched women's actual experience, and whether that connection between ideas and practice changed during that long period. We pay special attention to the relationship between Roman Catholic and, toward the end, Protestant notions about women and family life, and the way Europeans lived their gender experience. These thousand years were a time of powerful church influence on people's attitudes and of efforts by religious institutions to influence how people lived their basic and most intimate lives. The main focus of the churches' concern was women, because for churchmen women and men's relations with them were the at the heart of the conflict between heaven and earth, between religiosity and worldly sinfulness. In following this long story through the Middle Ages and Renaissance and into the Reformation period, we look at the following issues: the ideal of celibacy and the realities of sexuality and family life; holy women and their social influence; the impact of economic change and urbanization on women's position; governmental growth, gender roles, and marriage; aristocrat values and the status of women; notions of motherhood as the key to cultural change; the tradition of priestly misogyny; images of women in learned and popular culture; transgressive women: prostitution and witchcraft; the Protestant reformers and a new view of marriage. The format of the class will be informal lecturing and discussion. There will be three take-home exams.
HIST 56: Manor to Machine: The Economic Shaping of Europe (TR 11:00-12:15) Melissa Bullard
What are the origins of capitalism? What factors led to the Industrial Revolution? What is meant by an economy historically? These are some of the important questions we ask in History 56 to guide our study of the economic development in Europe to the Industrial Revolution. It took many centuries for Europeans to learn to think of economics as an independent area of life and to redefine what was considered legitimate profit. Thus, we begin our study with the legacy of the Ancient world and Aristotle's thoughts on "oeconomia", which shaped the attitudes of the medieval church towards money and gain. Other topics include the agricultural economy of the medieval manor and its legacy for protoindustrial practices; the urban and commercial explosion of the later Middle Ages; economic roles of women; mercantilism; and the debates about the origins of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Stressed throughout is the dynamic interplay between changing economic practices and people's assumptions about their economies. Enrollment is limited to 20-25 students to encourage a friendly atmosphere and lots of discussion. The syllabus and assignments will be posted on the course web page. Mechanics include essay exams, student projects, and a paper.
HIST 100-2: Medicine in Medieval Europe (MWF 12:00-12:50) Michael McVaugh
This course explores the evolution of medical practice and thought in Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, mixing social, intellectual, and cutlrual history. The principal themes of the course will include: 1) the growing conviction in the Middle Ages that medicine was a learned subject, and the emergence of a medical profession; 2) the tensions between learned medicine and the larger world of healing that included a wide range of religious and magical techniques; 3) changing views of the body and its function; 4) the cultural and social significance of disease; 5) and the gradual appearance of "modern" medical institutions and structures such as the hospital and highly developed regimes of public health.
HIST 100-3: Renaissance Venice: Public Images and Private Lives (TR 3:30-4:45) Stan Chojnacki
From the 13th to the 16th century and beyond, the Venetian Republic was one of Europe's great powers and an object of almost mythic fascination. To other Europeans its government seemed a model of balance and wisdom, free of the conflicts that beset other states. It ruled an island and coastal empire in the Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean Seas and, after 1400, controlled a vast domain on the Italian mainland. The dominant commercial state in Europe, its wealth dazzled visitors with the sumptuousness of its site and buildings and the affluence of the mercantile elite that governed it. And in the 15th and 16th centuries it witnessed a vast outpouring of artistic and architectural splendor. To most visitors it seemed, in the words of a French diplomat, "the most triumphant city I have ever seen."
But what kind of lives were lived behind the gorgeous façades? This course explores the relationship between the public image of late-medieval and Renaissance Venice, in words, visual representations, and policies, and the experiences of the real people who lived there. We shall look at working men and women, merchant patricians and their families, visitors and vagabonds, Christians and Jews. We'll examine the extent to which government succeeded in regulating people's behavior in the workplace, in government councils, and in the home. We'll consider marriage practices (and conflicts), adolescence and adulthood, the structures and practices of relations between men and women, and the ways in which Venetian officialdom accommodated such seemingly subversive phenomena as prostitution, witchcraft, and Venice's dynamic Jewish community.
The format of the course will be informal lecturing and group discussion. The discussions will be based on chiefly on readings, but we will also examine Renaissance Venice's self-expression in art as documentation of lived experience. Undergraduates will be tested on exams and write a longer paper; graduate students will write papers only.
HIST 104B: The Late Roman Empire, 193 A.D.-378 A.D. (TR 12:30-1:45) Richard Talbert
The aim of the course is to consider the nature and development of the Roman empire during the third and fourth centuries A.D., with special reference to social, administrative and economic change. The course opens with a survey of the Roman world under the Severan emperors, and the significance of their impact upon it. The nature of the third-century crises is analysed next, with some evaluation of the efforts made by successive emperors to surmount them, in particular Gallienus and Diocletian. Among fourth-century rulers, marked attention is paid to the crucial reigns of Constantine, Constantius, Julian and Valentinian. One major development of the period which receives close examination is the emergence of Christianity from a position of persecuted sect to that of officially recognized religion despite an attempted pagan revival on the part of Julian. The growing complexity of the state's relationship with the church is traced principally through documents relating to Donatism in North Africa. Among other important trends discussed are major changes in taxation and in the army, as well as the growth of compulsory direction of labour, both in agriculture and elsewhere. The course ends with an overall assessment of the factors serving alternately to divide and unify the empire in a formative era when it was subject to intense pressures. Throughout, stress is laid upon use of source material (all in translation), most notably legal texts and the greatest historian of the period, Ammianus Marcellinus. While plenty of guidance will be given, students are expected to read widely for themselves among ancient and modern authors, as well as to take an informed part in class discussion. They must be willing to present their own findings to the class, and to respond to those of others. Great significance is attached to students' contributions.
[Judith Bennett, Richard Pfaff: No medieval courses offered.]
Italian
ITAL 134 (CMPL 195): Petrarch and the Lyric Tradition (T 3:30-6:00) Dino Cervigni
The course focuses on Petrarch's canzoniere, which is read against the background of several other love poems, such as selected texts from the Bible, Greek and Roman love poetry, Provencal and Italian poems, and Dante's poetry itself. Selected readings from several other national literatures will highlight the pivotal role of Petrarch's canzoniere in forming a lyric tradition in Spain, France, and Britain. The course is taught in English and all texts will have the original language and an English translation.
Latin
LATN 230: Topics in Medieval Latin (TR 9:30-10:45) Maura Lafferty
The focus of this course will be on Medieval Latin Literature by and about Women. We'll be looking at authors like Perpetua, Dhuoda, Heloise and Hildegard, in addition to looking at some hagiographical, historical and misogynistic literature on women.
Music
MUSC 51: History of Music to 1650 (MWF 11-11:50) Anne MacNeil
Portuguese
PORT 221: Old Portuguese (TR 9:30-10:45) M. P. Rector
Religious Studies
RELI 27: History of the Christian Tradition (MWF 10-10:50) P. I. Kaufmann
RELI 136: Saints and Sinners: Christian Theologies in the Middle Ages (TR 2:00-3:15) Lance Lazar
Prerequisites/Permission: Reli 27 or Reli 30 or permission of instructor.
Exams/Papers: Two papers and a final. Participation in class discussions is essential, and includes occasional oral reports and assignments.
Description: This course examines the intersection of philosophy and Christian belief from roughly 1000 to 1600. We explore the theoretical frameworks developed by medieval Christians to support their beliefs, as well as the ideal types of righteous and reprobate living which they admired or disdained. Themes will include hagiography, asceticism, political thought and apocalypticism, and Christian esotericism.
Required Texts (not yet finalized):
- Head, Thomas F., ed., Medieval hagiography: an anthology (New York: Garland Pub., 2000) (Routledge; Taylor & Francis, 2001). Anthology Dav BR1710 .M39 2000 ISBN 0415937531 ISRN 9780415937535 $35.00 Retail Price
- O'Donovan, Oliver, and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, eds., From Irenaeus to Grotius. A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1999). Dav BR115.P7 F746 1999
- Ascetic behavior in Greco-Roman antiquity: a sourcebook, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush (Minneapolis, MN, 1990). Dav BV5023 .A73 1990
- Eusebius' ecclesiastical history: complete and unabridged, tr. C.F. Cruse (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998). Dav BR160.E55 E55 1998
- Carruthers, Mary and Jan M. Ziolkowski, eds., The medieval craft of memory: an anthology of texts and pictures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). Dav BF385 .M43 2002
- McGrath, Alister, 1953-, ed., The Christian theology reader, 2nd ed. (Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001). Dav BT77 .C47 2001
- Backman, Clifford R., The worlds of medieval Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Dav D131 .B33 2003
- Evans, G. R. (Gillian Rosemary), Fifty key Medieval thinkers (London; New York: Routledge, 2002). Dav BR1702 .E93 2002
- Bynum, Caroline Walker, Metamorphosis and identity (New York: Zone Books; Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by MIT Press, 2001). Dav BD373 .B96 2001
Romance Languages (See also FREN, ITAL, PORT, SPAN)
ROML 220: Vulgar Latin (TR 11-12:15) E. D. Montgomery
Spanish
SPAN 71: Survey of Spanish Literature to 1700 (MWF 11-11:50) M. S. Collins
SPAN 201: Beginnings of Castilian Hegemony to 1369 (MWF 11-11:50) F. A. Dominguez
Women's Studies
WMST 66 (See GERM 66)