Spring 2017 MEDREN Courses
MEDREN 2211, “Medieval Kyoto: Portraits and Landscapes”
Description: This course examines the cultural, political and economic life of Kyoto, Japan, ca. 900-1467, with emphasis on role of imperial court and rising warrior class. Taught in English.
Prereq: Not open to students with credit for Medieval 211. GE Culture and Ideas and Diversity-Global Studies course.
Class: 32343
Time: Tues/Thurs 12:45PM - 2:05PM
Room: McPherson Lab 2017
Instructor: Naomi Fukumori (East Asian Languages and Literatures)
MEDREN 2215, "Gothic Paris: 1100-1300"
Description: This course explores the arts, architecture, poetry, history, music, theology, food, and fashion of Paris in 1100-1300, the age of Gothic cathedrals and the birth of the university.
Prereq: Not open to students with credit for Medieval 215. GE Culture and Ideas and Diversity-Global Studies Course.
Class: 27340
Time:Wed/Fri 12:45PM - 2:05PM
Room: Hagerty Hall 062
Instructor: Kristen Figg (Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
Required Texts: The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, ed. Michael Clanchy, rev. 3rd edition (Penguin, 2004) ISBN: 9780140448993
John Baldwin, Paris: 1200 (Stanford UP, 2010) ISBN: 9780804772075
The Honey Suckle and the Hazel Tree trans. Patricia Terry (University of California Press, 1995) ISBN: 9780520083790
MEDREN 5631, “Survey of Latin Literature: Medieval and Renaissance”
Description: This course will provide a survey of the major periods and genres of medieval Latin literature using Keith Sidwell’s text Reading Medieval Latin. The focus will be on reading medieval Latin with attention to grammar and style. There will be no paper requirement.
Prereq: Latin 1103, or equiv. Not open to students with credit for Medieval 631.
Class: 32834 (UG), 32835 (G)
Time: Tues/Thurs 11:10AM - 12:30PM
Room: Cockins Hall 228
Instructor: Frank Coulson (Classics)
MEDREN 5695, "Capstone: European Renaissance"
Description: Fourteenth-century Italians felt they were living at the dawn of a new era, a rebirth of the glories of Classical Greece and Rome. Classical writings that had been lost for centuries were rediscovered in monastic libraries, and works that had been known were re-edited with more sophisticated historical and philological scholarship. This textual and literary scholarship—Humanism—led to reforms in education that spread across Europe and influenced kings and courtiers as well as scholars. Spurred by technological advances in printing, military armaments, navigation, and finance, Europe experienced a cultural golden age, as the Renaissance moved North and West to France, Spain, the Netherlands, and finally England. But was this really a rebirth or just another stage in developments already underway in the so-called “middle” ages? Was this “renaissance” experienced by everyone—women? common folk? new world peoples”—or was it confined to a privileged few? Was the Protestant Reformation part of the Renaissance or a movement antithetical to it? And how long did it last?
This course will explore these and other questions in the literature and culture of this period, in the writing of early Humanists like Petrarch (who virtually invented love), Lorenzo Valla, and Pico della Mirandola, and in masterpieces like Luis de Camões’s epic of Portuguese exploration, Os Lusiadas, Montaigne’s Essays (the form he invented), Thomas More’s Utopia, and Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly. We will sample stories by Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Cervantes, poems by Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, Pierre de Ronsard, Louise Labé, and Thomas Wyatt, as well as Calderon’s great play, Life is a Dream. We will look at paintings, sculpture, and architecture by Raphael, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Dürer, and Holbein, and multimedia forms like emblems and hieroglyphs. The Reformation will take us to vernacular Bibles and the debate on free will between Luther and Erasmus.
Evaluation will be based on a final research paper and several short assignments including critical analysis, paintings, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and the history of Classical texts.
Prereq: 6 credit hours in MedRen coursework at the 2000 level or above, or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Class: 26097 (UG), 26096 (G)
Time: Weds/Fr 9:35AM - 10:55AM
Room: Hagerty Hall 455B
Instructor: Hannibal Hamlin (English)
MEDREN 7899, "Medieval and Renaissance Colloquia"
Description: This course consists of 1 credit hour per semester for attending CMRS lectures, faculty colloquia and subsequent discussions. This will amount to: 5 1-hour+ lectures by visiting professors and at least 1 internal lecture and subsequent discussion (total 3 hours per event); at least one lunch with visiting faculty member (2 hours); active involvement with MRGSA and its activities; and meetings with the Center director (one hour once per term). With permission of the Director, other professional activities (such as attendance at appropriate conferences, on or off campus) may be substituted.
Prereq: Grad standing. Repeatable to a maximum of 3 cr hrs. This course is graded S/U.
Class: 19891*
Time: Fri 4:00PM - 6:00PM
Room: 070/090 18th Ave. Library
Instructor: Graeme Boone (Music)
MEDREN 4193, 8193 – Individual Studies
Description: Students may register for individual directed study under this number for work not normally offered in courses.
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. Repeatable to a maximum of 9 cr hrs or 3 completions. This course is graded S/U.
Class: TBD
For more information about the Center’s Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization and Graduate Certificate programs, please visit this page.
*Enrollment open to graduate students, undergraduate students only with permission from the Center and the Graduate School. Attendance based upon lecture series schedule; see the CMRS Events webpage for more information.
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