Medieval Studies
- ART 311/MED 311/HUM 311: Arts of the Medieval BookThis course explores the technology and function of books in historical perspective, asking how illuminated manuscripts were designed to meet (and shape) cultural and intellectual demands in the medieval period. Surveying the major genres of European book arts between the 7th-15th centuries, we study varying approaches to pictorial space, page design, and information organization; relationships between text and image; and technical aspects of book production. We work primarily from Princeton's collection of original manuscripts and manuscript facsimiles. Assignments include the option to create an original artist's book for the final project.
- ART 430/MED 430/HLS 430: Seminar. Medieval Art: Hagia Sophia: The Politics of Built SpaceOn July 10, 2020 the Turkish government ordered that Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, one of the great buildings of the world, be converted from a museum into a mosque. This building has served as an Orthodox and a Catholic cathedral, a mosque, and a museum. Each iteration can be read as an articulation of changing political and cultural circumstances that inscribe themselves in turn upon the fabric of this building. This course will map this changing history taking students from the fourth to the twenty-first century.
- EAS 206/HIS 206/MED 206: Medieval Asian Worlds: Korea, Japan, China, Inner and South Asia 300 CE-1700 CEThis course explores the Middle Ages (300-1700) of the East Asian world (China, Japan, and Korea) as well as the varying links between these polities and Inner and South Asia. Particular focus will be devoted to the rise of Buddhist notions of kingship in South Asia and their transmission to the major states of Inner and East Asia, as well as the rise of notions of ethnicity, and the creation of distinct states and cultures of China, Korea and Japan. Topics will be chronological, emphasizing the movements of ideas and peoples, with a framework centered on influential figures who propagated the spread of goods and ideas across borders.
- ENG 312/MED 312: ChaucerMany challenges we face today are expressed in Chaucer's works but in a form different enough to shake us out of our heads so we can think honestly about what beleaguers human societies. On the one hand, his poetry is unfamiliar--high art from the fourteenth century cast in a language not ours, Middle English. On the other hand, his poetry is familiar, putting before our minds serious subjects we encounter today like military (and police) violence, sexual assault, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, class conflict, political protest, and social autonomy. This Chaucer class is about the politics of art and the art of politics.
- ENG 313/MED 315: Worlds Made with Words: Old English Poems that PerformThis course concentrates on constitutive problems in OE literature: the "making" or "makers" of the OE poetry and its performers. How were these roles shaped and learned? How was performance depicted? What powers does a poem assume when it makes an inanimate object speak? When it stages a sensorium of sound and sight? We'll actively fabricate 21st-century approaches to how words made worlds in this early medieval poetic tradition.
- HIS 344/CLA 344/MED 344: The Civilization of the High Middle AgesIn lectures, to provide my interpretation (and a conspectus of differing interpretations) of the civilization of Western Europe, 11th-14th century; by readings, to introduce students to the variety of surviving sources; through the paper, to give students a taste of doing medieval history.
- ITA 303/MED 303: Dante's 'Inferno'Intensive study of the "Inferno", with major attention paid to poetic elements such as structure, allegory, narrative technique, and relation to earlier literature, principally the Latin classics. Course conducted in English in a highly-interactive seminar format.
- NES 387/MED 387: The Nature of Reality in Classical Arabic LiteratureThis course looks at a variety of canonical texts and genres from the Classical Arabic literary heritage and examines them through the question of "truth" and "representation." In a culture that is often said to frown upon fictional writing, we will explore attitudes towards language as a means of gaining knowledge about the world, on the one hand, and as a way to depict "reality," on the other. The texts we will be reading range from pre-Islamic poetry to 13th century shadow plays and cover a wide range of topics, including philosophy, mysticism, and historiography. Readings will be in English. No prerequisites.
- NES 502/MED 502: An Introduction to the Islamic Scholarly TraditionThe course offers a hands-on introduction to such basic genres of medieval scholarship as biography, history, tradition, and Koranic exegesis, taught through the intensive reading of texts, mostly in Arabic. The syllabus varies according to the interests of the students and the instructor.
- REL 251/HLS 251/MED 251: The New Testament and Christian OriginsHow did Jesus' earliest followers interpret his life and death? What were secret initiation rites and love feast gatherings about? How did women participate in leadership? How did the Roman government react to this movement and why did Jesus' followers suffer martyrdom? How did early Christians think about the end of the world, and what did they do when it did not happen? This course is an introduction to the Jesus movement in the context of the Roman Empire and early Judaism. We examine texts in the New Testament (the Christian Bible) and other relevant sources, such as lost gospels, Dead Sea scrolls, and aspects of material culture.
- SPA 376/MED 376/COM 366: The 'Other' in CervantesWhen the name Miguel de Cervantes is mentioned, readers tend to think of the character Don Quijote-his idealism or madness. But beyond that, the book stages daring critiques of ethnicity, race, religion, gender, class, and human nature. Such Cervantine works as the 'Persiles' and the 'Novelas ejemplares', as well as his theater offer equally challenging responses to the hegemonic structures of the Spanish empire. By means of these texts and their historical and philosophical contexts, this course will examine Cervantes' questioning of many of the contested social and political structures in place during the turbulent times in which he lived.