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Course Flyers

Please click on blue course names to view flyers, or view the full list of available flyers at the bottom of each section. Professors, you may post course flyers here by sending them to Michele Fuchs, fuchs.38@osu.edu; or mailing paper copies to the CMRS office in 308 Dulles Hall.

Summer 2011

All Summer Courses (PDF includes CMRS and all Affiliate Departments)

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Autumn 2011

All Autumn Courses (PDF includes CMRS and all Affiliate Departments)

MRS 217 Early Modern London

Christopher Highley, Department of English

MW 9:30-11:18, University Hall 082, Course #26284

GEC Culture and Ideas, GEC International Issues Western, non-US

This interdisciplinary course, will explore roughly one and a half centuries of the history, politics, and culture of London, beginning with the religious upheavals of the Protestant Reformation, moving onto a civil war that saw King Charles I lose his head, and culminating with the devastating plague and Great Fire of London in 1666. We will begin by studying the factors behind London’s phenomenal growth in the sixteenth century, a growth that quickly made London the center of economic and political life in Britain. By reading a range of primary documents including urban surveys, plays, and pamphlets we will consider the opportunities and problems spawned by urbanization (social mobility, poverty, disease) as well as the institutions and structures that regulated the life of the city.

In our tour of this vibrant but lost world we will encounter an extraordinary range of figures: alongside the great and the good like Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Shakespeare, we will also meet prostitutes, vagabonds, and gulls (!). We will become familiar with the layout and buildings of London, its churches and cathedrals, its palaces and thoroughfares, and of course its iconic river Thames. We will linger especially at the theaters, bear gardens, cockpits, and brothels that made up London's burgeoning entertainment industry. Required Texts: Most of the materials will be available on Carmen. Books to buy: Liza Picard, Elizabeth’s London, Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girl. Assessment: Students will be assessed by a combination of quizzes, examinations, and papers.

MRS 504 Arthurian Legends

Karen Winstead, Department of English

MW 3:30-5:18, Journalism 375, Course #26155

This course will explore the rich tradition of Arthuriana that flourished in the Middle Ages and continues to thrive in modern popular culture. We will sample a few of the earliest accounts of King Arthur in British histories, then look at the development of some of the most famous Arthurian legends, including the quest for the holy grail and the tragic love stories of Tristan and Isolde and of Lancelot and Guenivere. The authors we will study include Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, and Thomas Malory. We will also consider the incarnation of Arthurian characters and themes in modern literature and film. Requirements: a midterm, a final exam, a final project, and a series of on-line quizzes. Prereq: 10 cr hrs in literature. Not open to students with credit for CompStds 504 or 510

Autumn Course Flyers

MRS 217 Early Modern London  ·  MRS 504 Arthurian Legends  ·  MRS 694 Group Studies: Christians, Jews and Muslims in Spain and the Mediterranean World  ·  PHILOS 602 Topics in Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy in the orbit of al-Ghâzâlî

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Winter 2012

All Winter Courses (Word Doc includes CMRS and Affiliate Depts.)

MRS 211 Medieval Kyoto Portraits and Landscapes

S. F. Quinn, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literatures

Class Number: 26381, TuTh 10:30AM-12:18PM (Journalism Bldg 0375)

GEC Cultures and Ideas, GEC International Issues Non-Western or Global

Kyoto was Japan’s capital from the 8th to the 19th centuries. Today its many surviving monuments–its shrines, its temples, its gardens–continue to play a part in the lives of residents and to bear witness to enduring cultural values. MRS 211 will introduce you to 500 years in the life of the city, from the flourishing of the imperial court as of ca. 900, to the devastation inflicted by battling warrior clans in the fifteenth century. We will also consider ways in which cultural values and images from this time have contributed to a collective sense of Japanese cultural heritage.

MRS 212 Culture of a City-State in the Renaissance: Venice

Robert Davis, Dept. of History

Class Number: 26383, MoWe 10:30AM-12:18PM (Journalism Bldg 0304)

GEC Cultures and Ideas, GEC International Issues Western, Non-US

Course Description: This course is designed to acquaint you with one of the most peculiar and fascinating cities in the world. We will follow Venice from its earliest beginnings, in a desolate swamp in Italy during the sixth century AD, through its rise to become one of the great world powers by the Middle Ages. We will meet some of the more intriguing explorers, warriors, painters, courtesans, and thinkers that the city has produced, and we will get to know one of the most cosmopolitan communities in all of Renaissance Europe. We will conclude this survey by following Venice into its long decline, as the Venetian Republic lost first its empire and then its independence, emerging finally in our own time as one of the most used – and abused – tourist destinations on the globe.

Course requirements include a half-dozen or so short papers, along with a mid-term and final. Readings: Patricia F. Brown. Art and Life in Renaissance Venice (Prentice Hall, 2005), ISBN-10: 0131344021 ISBN-13: 978-0131344020; Robert Davis & Garry Marvin, Venice, the Tourist Maze (University of California, 2004), ISBN-10: 0520241207, ISBN-13: 978-0520241206; Elizabeth Horodowitch, A Brief History of Venice (Running Press, 2009), ISBN-10: 0762436905 ISBN-13: 978-0762436903

MRS 218 Colonial Mexico: The Medieval and Renaissance Legacy Cancelled

Students, please consider one of our other two GEC courses offered next quarter: Medieval Kyoto and Renaissance Venice.

MRS 631 Survey of Latin Literature: Medieval Latin Verse

Leslie Lockett, Dept of English

Class Number: 26386, MoWe 9:30AM-11:18AM (University Hall 0043)

Course Description: This survey of medieval Latin verse forms will provide training in a set of skills that are indispensable to all medievalists. Even if you typically focus on historical prose, the visual arts, or music, it is extremely useful to be able to undertake formal analysis and source study of the poetic texts that you will inevitably encounter in your research.

Readings for this course will include medieval Latin poems representing a wide variety of quantitative and rhythmic verse forms, as well as medieval Latin prose discussions of why and how to compose poetry. We will spend time with the sober dactylic hexameters of the biblical epics, the dazzling variety of the meters of Boethius, the experimental rhythms of Augustine’s Psalm Against the Donatists, the octosyllabic verses of Irish monks, the ridiculous mock-liturgical Song of the Ass, and even word games such as acrostics and palindromes, among many other types of poetry.

While translation will remain a major component of the preparation for each class meeting, you will also practice scansion and other categories of formal analysis, and you will learn to use research tools that facilitate formal analysis and source study, such as the Hexameter-Lexikon and the Library of Latin Texts. Preparation for each class meeting is extremely important and will include translation, scansion, secondary readings, and other brief assignments in formal analysis and source study. Written work will include two or three brief translation and scansion assignments, a final exam, and a final project consisting of an annotated translation of a verse text. No matter what field of medieval studies your specialty may be, this class will sharpen your skills in close textual analysis and open new avenues of research! You will also come away with a better historical understanding of Latin literacy and education from late antiquity through the late Middle Ages.

Required Books: A medium or large Latin dictionary and a course pack. Additional readings will be posted on Carmen; some of these must be printed and brought to class.

Students with questions please e-mail Dr. Lockett, lockett.20@osu.edu.

MRS 792 Interdepartmental Studies in the Humanities: Palaeography of Gothic Script

Frank T. Coulson, Dept. of Greek and Latin

Cross-listed with CLASSICS 880 Topics in Roman Antiquity

Class Number: 26379, Th 12:30PM-3:18PM (University Hall 448)

Interdisciplinary graduate seminar in palaeography of Gothic script: 1200-1500. Of the multiplicity of book hands which survive in manuscripts, perhaps none was so influential as that referred to as “Gothic.” Yet the script is also fraught with problems: how to account for its genesis in the early thirteenth century out of the legible and clear Caroline minuscule? How to describe the multiplicity of variations in the script (textualis, cursiva, semi-cursiva, hybrida, secretary, bastarda etc.)? How to localize and date regional variations of the script (anglicana, bononiensis, parisiensis)? The publication of Albert Derolez’s The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books has placed the study of the script on a firmer footing. The forthcoming publication of my own Handbook of Latin Palaeography will further serve to incorporate many of the advances made in the last decade.

In this course, students will learn to transcribe, date and localize different types of Gothic script from its genesis around 1225 to the year 1500. We shall examine both textualis and cursive varieties, and we shall look at numerous examples of the script from England, France, Italy and Germany. The final weeks of the course will be taken up with individual research projects selected by the student with a view to publication.

This course should be of great value to all medievalists working in the later Middle Ages. Few universities offer an intensive course in Gothic (in spite of its evident importance)–Toronto does not. Students should leave the course with a relatively secure knowledge of how to date their manuscripts, and an ability to transcribe accurately various types and grades of Gothic. While a previous course in paleography is beneficial, the first class will introduce the background necessary for the seminar. An ability to work with Latin is required.

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Spring 2012

All Spring Courses (Word DOC includes CMRS and Affiliate Dept.)

MRS 214 Golden Age of Islamic Civilization: Medieval Baghdad

Bruce Fudge, Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures

Class Number: 26423, TuTh 9:30am-11:18pm (147 University Hall)

GEC Cultures and Ideas, GEC International Issues Non-Western or Global

This course surveys political, social and intellectual history of the period that is widely regarded as the greatest and most glorious age of Islamic history: the early period of the ‘Abbasid empire. Although the empire ranged wide and far, we focus on the the newly-founded capital of Baghdad and its environs. The main topics of the course are three: (1) the Arab, Persian and Greek heritages that preceded and contributed to the shaping of ‘Abbasid society; (2) the changing and competing visions of what constituted correct Islamic belief and practice; and (3) the courtly and literary culture that coexisted (and often conflicted) with those visions of Islam, exemplified here by the libertine poet Abu Nuwas.

MRS 240 Magic and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Richard Firth Green, Dept. of English

Class Number: 24856, TuTh 11:30am-1:18pm (0160 Mathematics Tower)

GEC Cultures and Ideas, GEC International Issues Western, Non-US

Course Description: In this interdisciplinary course, students will explore the history and culture of witchcraft and magic from ca. 400 to 1700 C.E. within sociological, religious, and intellectual contexts. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of the practice, persecution, and social construct of magic and witchcraft in the medieval and early modern periods and its far-reaching impact on society. Required Text: Brian P. Levack (ed.) The Witchraft Sourcebook (Routledge, 2004)

MRS 611 History of the Book

Alan Farmer, Dept. of English

Class Number: 26424, TuTh 1:30pm-3:18pm (043 University Hall)

Course Description: This course will introduce students to the history of the book in the hand-press period from the 15th to the 18th century. We will focus on developing the essential skills of descriptive and analytical bibliography (the description of books as physical objects and the analysis of their manufacturing and production) and consider how the material forms of texts are shaped by non-authorial agents like printers, compositors, proofreaders, pressmen, publishers, booksellers, readers, and collectors. The course will thus involve lots of hands-on research of books in the impressive collections of OSU’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, but we will also consider larger theoretical and historical questions related to the effects—religious, political, cultural, literary, economic, intellectual, etc.—of the spread of the printed book in Renaissance England and Europe. This course is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students working in any field

Required Texts will probably include Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography, 2nd printing (Oak Knoll, 2000) (ISBN 978-1884718137); Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, new ed. (Cambridge UP, 2005) (ISBN 978-0521607742); Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (Yale UP, 2010) (ISBN 978-0300178210); and readings on Carmen. There will also be several recommended texts.

Assignments: Several bibliographical exercises and a longer paper.

MRS 695 Medieval and Renaissance Women

Jennifer Higginbotham, Dept. of English

Class Number: 26425, TuTh 3:30pm-5:18pm (056 University Hall)

Course Description: Chaste, silent, and obedient? Not likely! In this class we’ll examine some of the eloquent and defiant literature produced by medieval and Renaissance women. In what ways did they help shape their cultures, and what strategies did they use for self-authorization? At a time when writing was considered the privilege of men, a surprising number of women laid claim to the right to write, producing literary works in a wide variety of genres, including autobiography, religious meditation, letters, short stories, and poetry. Our focus will be on texts written, dictated, inspired or commissioned by women, plus texts written against or forced upon them: texts, in short, that helped shaped the possibilities of pre-modern women’s lives. In the process, we’ll question the traditional division between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in light of women’s cultural history. Readings will include French writings by Marie de France, Abelard and Heloise, Christine de Pizan, and Louise Labe, the work of Italian women humanists and poets, and sonnets by the English aristocrat Mary Wroth and the nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in New Spain. Requirements include enthusiastic class participation, regular discussion postings, an oral presentation, and a final research project. All readings will be available in translation.

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