MEMS Graduate Courses for Winter 2016
Architecture 633 / HistArt 689: Vision and Mathematics in Baroque Architecture / Soo
This seminar examines the curvilinear forms and theatrical spaces of Baroque architecture in
terms of vision—formal, aesthetic, and symbolic goals driven by certain cultural values, and
mathematics—the geometrical methods, carried out using simply a straight edge and compass,
by which these goals were achieved. We will focus on Bernini and Borromini and their followers
in and outside of Italy, considering the cultural context in which they worked (political, social,
religious) as well as the technical means available to them (drawing techniques, materials,
construction methods). In order to create a foundation for understanding the phenomenon of
Baroque form, during the first half of the course we will investigate the ways in which
mathematics drove the creation of architecture during the classical, medieval, and Renaissance
periods: how proportion and geometry were understood and how they were applied in
design. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to draw parallels between the
mathematical basis of form creation in past architecture, including the Baroque, and the
methods for creating complex geometries in today’s architecture.
English 641: Poetry before Print: Lyric Traditions in Premodern England / Sanok
This class surveys short-form poetry in England up to and including the first printed collection of
poetry, Tottel’s Miscellany, printed in 1557. We will read widely in poetry from a range of
registers—ballads and popular political poetry, courtly love poetry, meditations on mortality,
religion, and nature, debate and dialogue poetry—along with some occasional and instrumental
poems that challenge modern critical definitions of poetry. We will attend to the many ways in
which premodern poems are shaped by their medium—above all the manuscripts in which they
were written and survive to us, but also oral performance and other material media. How does
medium influence the formal and thematic concerns of premodern poetry? How do the contents
of manuscripts, which are usually miscellaneous, influence the meaning of particular poems and
the cultural status of poetry itself? A basic introduction to medieval paleography (handwriting),
as well to recent approaches to book history and current scholarly discussions about the
category of form will ground our discussion. Turning at the end of the term to Tottel’s Miscellany,
the first substantial volume of lyric verse to be printed in England, we’ll consider how the
technology of print changes poetic tradition by reshaping ideas about the poet, the reading of
poetry, and poetry’s status as literature.
History 594 /Latin 860 / Judaic 517 / Schultz & Neis
This course introduces students to theoretical approaches to the study of ritual in the ancient
Mediterranean. We will investigate the value of ritual theory for the study of ancient history and
ancient religion, and vice versa: the possible contributions of a deeper history of ritual for
contemporary and broader theories of ritual. As such, we will read standard works on ritual
theory from fields in the social sciences and the humanities (such as those by Catherine Bell,
Clifford Geertz, Jonathan Z. Smith), as well as more recent interventions (such as those by
Ronald L. Grimes, John P. Hoffman). We shall draw on approaches ranging from the
anthropological and sociological, to the archaeological, and historical. We shall also focus on
several topics including prayer, sacrifice, meals, purity practices, domestic rituals, and magical
and mystical practices, while at the same time drawing on scholarship on ritual in ancient
Roman and Jewish culture, as well as on Greek religion and early Christianity. These readings
will be accompanied by some study of ancient sources such as selection from the elder Cato,
Livy, and the Mishnah.
HistArt 646 / W 16 MEMS PROSEM / Sears and Timmermann
This seminar offers a multi-faceted investigation of the medieval and early modern city, actual
and ideal. We will not only study given cities in Europe and the Levant as functioning social
spaces but also consider the city as a concept that fed the popular and literary imagination. In
part the course will be historical and archaeological. The expansion of urban centers in the
twelfth/thirteenth century will be situated within larger trajectories, and we will study both new
foundations and sites with deep and remembered pasts, all the while making an effort to
reconstruct the character and quality of urban life. Another aspect of the course will involve
analysis of texts and images: descriptions and depictions of cities (past and present),
cartographic representations, and literary evocations of real and fictional urban environments.
Cities under discussion will be many, including Constantinople, Rome, Jerusalem, Paris,
London, Prague, Florence, Lübeck, and Nuremberg. Students from the widest possible range of
fields are encouraged to participate. It is expected that research projects will be diverse in terms
of chronology, geography, theme, and approach.
Italian 533 - Dante's Divine Comedy / Mallette
Dante’s Divine Comedy is a poem and more than a poem: an encyclopedia of accumulated
human knowledge of this world and the next at the close of the Middle Ages and the beginning
of the Renaissance; the story of a single man’s life; a daring and deeply thoughtful meditation
on the relationship between human beings and God. This course is dedicated to a guided
reading of the Divine Comedy in its entirety. The text will be read in facing-page translation for
the benefit of those who know some Italian and those who do not. Lectures and discussion are
in English. Students will learn about the historical, philosophical and literary context of the poem
as well as how to make sense of it in modern terms.
Latin 233 / 507 Late Latin / Markus
This class is an alternative to LAT 232 (Virgil, Aeneid) and fulfills the final semester of the
language requirement in Latin. A pre-requisite for the class is the successful completion of
LATIN 231 or the equivalent (three semesters of college Latin). Graduate students can
elect the course after a year of college Latin or an intensive Latin class that covers the
basics of Latin grammar. The primary text read in the course is Augustine’s Confessions,
also called ‘spiritual Aeneid’. Excerpts from Jerome’s Vulgate and Letters, Ambrose’s
Letters and Hymns and from other Late Latin - Early Medieval authors are also included.
While solidifying control over the essentials of Classical Latin grammar, the course will
highlight the differences between Classical Latin and Late Latin and will enable you to
handle Late Latin texts with confidence and appreciation for language, style and rhetorical
technique.
Latin 436 / MEMS 440: Post-Classical Latin / Markus
The main goal of the course is to acquire the knowledge, skills and tools necessary to read a
wide range of post-classical Latin texts written between AD 400-1300 with comprehension, ease
and enjoyment. This is a survey course in which we will attend to the changes in post-classical
Latin grammar, syntax, and orthography by reading representative excerpts from a variety of
authors and genres, mostly prose, but also some poetry. A prominent theme in the course will
be the medieval reception of Vergil and Ovid. After properly situating the texts and their authors
within their historical contexts, we will explore the European reception of Greco-Roman antiquity
and the surprising ways in which the legacy of the ancient world lived on. While this is not a
course in paleography, students will be exposed to the basic and most common orthographic
conventions and abbreviations in the Latin texts of the surveyed period. Students will have the
opportunity to explore their own interests within the framework of the course and to gain deeper
familiarity with the texts and genres that they are most interested in. Pre-requisite: 2 years of
college Latin or the equivalent. This course is more advanced than Latin 507.
Musicology 520: Topics in Baroque Music / Stein
This course offers an opportunity to engage with selected musical repertories and genres of the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (roughly 1570-1750). It will not offer a strict or
complete survey of baroque music. Particular emphasis will be given to the invention and
definition of musical genres, the development of an expressive musical language and
conventions, and the place and function of music (secular and sacred, vocal and instrumental,
for court, chamber, church, and theater) in early modern society. In addition to music by such
composers as Monteverdi, Lully, Corelli, Vivaldi, Handel, and J. S. Bach, the course will also
include two special units: one will focus on the Roman baroque with music by Corelli and
Alessandro Scarlatti, while the other will bring in music from Spain and its Latin American
colonies. The course will also introduce students to writings about music, musical sources,
aesthetic theories of the period, and issues of performing practice.
Musicology 643: The Castrato / Stein
This seminar is focused on the history of the castrato singer, the sites of the castrato’s
professional activity in the early modern period, the voices and repertory of individual castrati,
their employment in choirs and as soloists, the ways in which singers collaborated and shaped
the work of composers, the contrasting cultural understandings of the castrato across the
geography of early modern Europe, together with some questions raised by scholars from fields
of study beyond music. The seminar will be focused on music; materials for study include both
primary sources (unpublished music in manuscript, unpublished archival documents) and
secondary sources (published scores and modern editions, as well as readings from a class
bibliography). This seminar is open to scholars, performers, singers, accompanists, composers,
music theorists, and early music enthusiasts. Graduate students from outside the SMTD with an
interest in early modern culture are encouraged to enroll as well.
NearEast 490: Romancing the Mediterranean / Cross
The topic of this course is a literary genre that we often call the “romance,” a genre marked by a
number of distinctive themes and motifs: union and separation, quests and long journeys, love
affairs both licit and illicit, chastity, chivalry, and worthy comportment in the face of temptation.
Although they are often dismissed as conventional and formulaic, these themes are capable of
generating profound tensions between the natural and the artificial in both inner (psychological)
and outer (social) subjects, producing a literary space in which competing ideologies inherent in
love and the act of loving are brought to the foreground to be contested and negotiated. In this
class, we will read three literary works that were instrumental in the formation of this genre in
their respective traditions, Vis & Ramin (Persian), Leucippe & Clitophon (Greek), and Cligès
(French), to consider the touchstone features of the romance genre and the social, ethical, and
political questions it raises for its audience. An extra section for reading the original Persian text
will be available to interested students.
Philosophy 460: Medieval Philosophy / Schmaltz
This course concerns the development of philosophy during the medieval period. The focus is
on three leading figures of this period:
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Augustine (354–450), who attempted to reconcile a broadly Platonic outlook with an
emerging Christian orthodoxy;
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who attempted to reconcile an entrenched Christian
theology with an Aristotelian philosophy that was just becoming available in the West;
and
William of Ockham (1287–1347), who was a prominent defender of a "nominalist"
outlook that deviates from more traditional Platonic and Aristotelian views.
There will also be some consideration of the contributions to philosophy during this period of
thinkers in the other two great monotheistic traditions, namely, Judaism and Islam.
Topics for discussion include:
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the compatibility of pagan philosophy with religious revelation;
the nature of time and eternity;
the problem of universals;
the possibility of knowledge of the nature and existence of God;
problems involving evil, human freedom and divine foreknowledge; and
the nature and destiny of human beings.
This course should be of particular interest to those who wish to have a historical perspective on
the interrelations among various philosophical, theological and moral issues.
Spanish 859: The Baroque Wunderkammer / Garcia Santo-Tomas
This seminar approaches the Hispanic Baroque from the vantage point of a number of objects
that populated household spaces in early modern Spain and its colonies, such as hats, gloves,
shoes, farthingales, snuff-boxes, chocolate cups, telescopes, guitars, and portraits. We will
explore their literal and symbolic reverberations with the aid of literary, legal, political, medical,
and pictorial sources. For the midterm report and final essay the student is required to do a bit
of window-shopping and a good amount of reading beyond the confines of the syllabus. Active
participation is expected. We will supplement the theoretical discussion with readings from
Christopher Tilley, Webb Keane et al., eds. Handbook of Material Culture (SAGE 2013)—
purchase is mandatory.