Courses marked with an asterisk (*) can be taken for Medieval Studies graduate credit with the major advisor’s

approval and the approval of the instructor.

Please Note:  Class numbers and times may change in PeopleSoft.

Art & Art History:  

ARTH 321: Historiography of Art History

English:

Course Description: Over the past decade, the fifteenth century has been the subject of energetic and enthusiastic reassessment. The traditional descriptions of this century as a literary wasteland -- an “age of brass,” in C.S. Lewis’s words -- have themselves become rather tired within the current scholarly trend of quoting such notions in order to quickly dispense with them. This course, largely a survey of late-medieval writing from Lydgate to Skelton, will begin with the space left between traditional and current approaches to this period: What is literary about the fifteenth century, anyway? And how is our understanding of the late-medieval moment shaped by the conventions of literary historiography, both current and former? Our reading will begin with Lydgate and Hoccleve, and move through work by Ashby, Bokenham, Capgrave, Pecock, Douglas and Henryson. We’ll conclude with a brief tour through the most lightly traveled paths of the later fifteenth century, with readings from Caxton, Skelton and Hawes. Because many of these readings register a deep engagement with their historical context, we’ll spend some time theorizing the relationships between literature and history, as well as concepts of poetic authority, literary form and political power. We’ll test methodologies, concepts of periodization, and see what it might mean to re-engage questions of the aesthetic in this period – and if that’s “post-historicist” after all. Requirements include two presentations, an annotated bibliography, and a seminar paper.

ENGL 415-02: Seminar in Medieval Literature

History:

MWF 2:00-2:50

MWF 10:00-10:50

Course Description: In this seminar we will survey some of the (mostly recent) scholarship in medieval cultural and social history.  Topics covered will include popular religion, heresy, history of the family and childhood, sexuality, and monastic life.

*ILCS 243: Italian Literature Through Renaissance                  

TuTh 11:00-12:15

*ILCS 255W: Dante’s Divine Comedy in English

ILCS 334: Seminar on Machiavelli

Tu 3:00-5:45