The course explores how art worked in politics and religion from ca. 300-1200 CE in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Students encounter the arts of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam, great courts and migratory societies; dynamics of word and image, multilingualism, intercultural connection, and local identity. We examine how art can represent and shape notions of sacred and secular power. We consider how the work of 'art' in this period is itself powerful and, sometimes, dangerous. Course format combines lecture on various cultural contexts with workshop discussion focused on specific media and materials, or individual examples.

This seminar will examine the concept of 'plague' from antiquity to the present using works of art and archaeological materials. The course will explore in particular the bioarchaeology of the Black Death, the Justinianic Plague, and other examples of infectious diseases with extremely high mortalities. We will also consider the differing impact of plagues during the medieval, early modern, and modern periods: themes in art; the development of hospitals; the meaning of the word 'plague' and questions of scapegoating throughout history; and changing ideas of disease and medicine.

Before the suppression of non-Christians in Spain and Portugal after 1492, three vibrant medieval cultures inhabited the peninsula: Muslims based in Al-Andalus, Christians based in the northern Spanish kingdoms, and Sephardic Jews throughout both realms. Their coexistence transformed their visual culture in ways that resonated well beyond Iberian borders, from Atlantic colonialism to modern identity politics. This course asks how the contacts, conflicts and compromises provoked by "living with" each other shaped artistic traditions and cultural identity in a land both enriched and destabilized by its own diversity.

This course explores reading and writing practices in antiquity and the medieval West, including the cultural history of the book and its functions as both object and text from antiquity to the printing revolution.

This course will focus on the emergence of a 'common' (Koinê) Greek language adopted by an increasingly Hellenized eastern Mediterranean world of Jews, Pagans, Christians, Romans and Greeks. Readings include the Bible, Jewish Tragedy, Stoic philosophy, and hagiography, as well as introduction to papyri and manuscripts of post-classical texts.

This course aims at reading and analysis of some of the most iconic texts of the Middle Ages including the Mediterranean. In addition to providing a fascinating group of texts for us to discuss, `Rethinking Medieval Cultures' will reveal the many dynamic perspectives at issue during this foundational period of Western civilization. Issues of power - political, religious, amorous and supernatural - attitudes toward sex and gender, slavery, class and dreams are some of the topics voiced in our readings.

The course aims to trace the origins of the first person in the Western literary tradition through the lens of confession, both as discourse and sacrament. By examining a series of texts that date from the late 12th century till the late 14th century, the course will consider how authors staged (oftentimes false) confessions in a bid to test the relation between the first person and truth as well as to claim a novel authority for fiction. By pairing medieval literary and theological texts with contemporary criticism, the course will try to understand how this period paved the way for our understanding of the first person and its discourses.

The topic of the "book" can be opened in many ways. This seminar investigates the book's plangent materiality: its claims on timelessness, its transience. Through keyholes in space and time, we'll discuss how the book has changed, how it produces visual and readerly processes, and how it instantiates the persistent trope of the "page". Books have social lives too, and we'll examine grand medieval books and inspect the micrographic doodles on a page's margins that are parts of the textual cultures and communities of books. Attention will be paid to book collectors' books and to collections of books, like libraries and archives.

This course looks for the origins of the modern world - and the unrealized alternatives to its trauma and inequity - in medieval travelogues, histories, and poetic fictions. We will trace ideologies of race, religious difference, and colonialism as they emerged. At the same time, the works we will read belonged to a world radically different from the modernity to come: the medieval literary imagination can surprise with both its beauty and its sense of justice. Readings include work by Ibn Fadlan, Geoffrey Chaucer, and The Book of John Mandeville, as well as theory and criticism from Carolyn Dinshaw, Cedric Robinson, and Sylvia Wynter.

Introduction to Middle High German language and literature 1100-1400. Selections from Arthurian romance (Parzival, Tristan), epic (Nibelungenlied), lyric poetry (Minnesang), and mysticism (Meister Eckhart, Mechthild von Magdeburg). Class sessions focus on close-reading and translating original texts. Also planned are visits to Rare Book Room and a local museum.

This course will survey the "Dark Ages" from the end of the Roman Empire to the end of the first millennium (ca. 400-1000 AD), often seen as a time of cultural and political decline, recently even labelled as the "end of civilization". The complex political and social landscape of the Roman Empire, however, had more to offer than just to end. This course will outline how early medieval people(s) in the successor states of the Roman Empire used its resources to form new communities and will suggest to understand the "Dark Ages" as a time of lively social and cultural experimentation, that created the social and political frameworks of Europe.

Catastrophe reveals the fragility of human society. This course examines a series of phenomena--plague, famine, war, revolution, economic depression etc.--in order to reach an understanding of humanity's imaginings of but also resilience to collective crises. We shall look in particular at how political forces such as empire have historically both generated and resisted global disasters. Material dealing with the especially fraught centuries at the transition between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period will be set alongside examples drawn from antiquity as well as our own contemporary era.

Between the 700s and 1000s, pirates known as Vikings raided much of Europe. Some were linked to merchant communities trading in Central Asia, while others joined diaspora groups that settled the North Atlantic. They made their world through various means--texts, images, artifacts, and behaviors. In this course, students will accomplish parallel work, guided by the principle that making is best studied by doing. Students will learn how Viking-Age peoples made their world and consider how we recreate and represent that world today. This course includes travel to Denmark during spring recess.

The twelfth century witnessed an effusion of new musical styles and creative practices, stimulated by societal changes that have been controversially dubbed a "Renaissance." We examine the century's available expressive idioms against this dynamic socio-historical context (the rise of urbanism, universities, and religious orders and the waning of older, feudal modes of life). Topics include: vernacular lyric song in Arabic, Hebrew, Provençal, and English; settings of Latin verse; Parisian polyphony; liturgical composition; the works of Beatrice de Die, Hildegard of Bingen, St Godric, Adam of St Victor, and Peter Abelard.

An introduction to medieval Near Eastern legal cultures that focuses on the intertwined development of Jewish and Islamic law from late antiquity until the twelfth century. We consider both legal writings such as codes and responsa and evidence for practices in state and communal courts. Geared both to students interested in legal history and to students interested in using legal texts and documents for general historical research.

This course offers an investigation of the literary, medical and philosophical treatment of women and men in Medieval and Early Modern Spain. We will consider fundamental works by both male and female authors, thereby enabling us to compare the ways in which each gender was regarded in and of itself and by comparison with the other. Cultural and literary contexts from the 12th to the 17th centuries will reveal a wealth of perspectives. We will encounter such topics as the cult of women, misandry and misogyny, as well as debates centering on such crucial matters as childbirth, witchcraft, and the evil eye will be explored. Taught in Spanish