MEMS Grad Courses W2015
Asian 527 History of Buddhist Studies. Lopez
The focus of this graduate seminar will be the biography of the historical Buddha. The course will begin
with the evolution of the biography in India before going on to explore various versions of the biography
and the purposes that it served in a number of Buddhist cultures. The seminar will conclude by
examining some of the more influential biographies of the Buddha produced in the West during the
colonial and post-colonial periods.
Asian / HART 577 Bodies and Buildings. Chanchani
Indian temples are among the great architectural traditions of the world. Erected by Hindus, Buddhists,
and Jains since the early centuries CE, they display an extraordinary array of sophisticated forms,
layouts, and functions. This seminar initially traces the formal, social, and symbolic origins of the
important traditions of temple architecture. It then maps their regional expressions and their dispersion.
In doing so, it emphasizes some of the remarkable ways in which humans and temples have shaped and
reflected one another. Encounters between temples and human communities have ranged from a
patron’s limb providing the unit of measure for a shrine, to the design of the temple as the dwelling and
body of a gendered, juridical, and permeable being. Thereafter, the seminar graphs pivotal moments in
lives of individual temples — their conception, construction, the infusion of prana (vital energy) into
them, their mutilation, restoration, total destruction, and eventually re-creation — alongside rituals and
festivals performed around them. Course opportunities include visits to museums and special
collections.
Asian 582 / HART 505 Himalayan Aesthetics. Chanchani
The Himalayas are the world’s longest and loftiest mountain range. This course will commence with a
review of influential Indic and Western perceptions of the Himalayas. Thereafter, we will proceed to
glean some of the many ways in which the shaping of objects and the crafting of identities are linked in
this region today. Subsequently we shall embark on a series of armchair expeditions to recover
interconnections between ‘art’ and ‘life’ in the Himalayas in centuries past. Traveling in arcs stretching
from the Brahmaputra valley in the east up to the upper reaches of the Indus in the west and in along
axes extending from the sub-montane Terai in the south to the frosty Tibetan plateau in the north, we
will repeatedly cross China, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Resting at sites sought out
by explorers, traders, conquerors, and Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims we will query the distinctive forms,
layouts, and functions of temples, monasteries, palaces, necropoles, water-structures, and the medley
of objects found in them including sculptures, paintings, silk embroideries, ritual objects, and fountains.
Arch 633 / History of Art 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, architecture 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 642 Renaissance Pleasures and Pains. Schoenfeldt
Renaissance literature begins in pain, with Petrarch’s artful account of the agonies of unfulfilled longing.
And it lingers in agony for most of the period. In this class, we will ask why the formal articulation of pain
and erotic frustration became such a popular mode of expression. And by what means does pleasure
enter the vocabulary of lyric and epic? We will explore some profound historical and cultural changes in
the medical explanation and ethical status of pain and pleasure. We will spend some time on the
splayed and tortured bodies of tragedy, but we will be even more interested in the internal agonies of
unrequited desire and quotidian disease. The goal of this class, then, is to track some of the eruptions of
the bodily sensations of pleasure and pain into the fabric of early modern poetry. We will read a wide
variety of poetry, largely lyric, narrative, and epic, beginning with Wyatt’s importation of Petrarch in the
early sixteenth century, and extending through Spenser, Donne, Herbert, Wroth, Lanyer, Milton,
Rochester, and Philips. We will spend a good amount of time on Shakespeare, whose unflinching
account of pain and pleasure in the sonnets and narrative poems is sometimes overshadowed by his
dramatic works. We will work to situate poems amid the careers and the historical situations of their
authors, but we will also aspire to keep questions of form and genre well in our sights, interrogating the
range of possible motives for putting into fastidiously patterned language the ineffable and unruly
sensations of pleasure and pain. Reading poetry amid the continuing philosophical dispute between the
respective claims of pain and pleasure in the formation of an ethical self, we will look at how poets in
early modern England created models and vocabularies for articulating and manipulating inner
sensation. Requirements include attendance, participation, two short papers (one on a critical work, and
one on a poem), and one longer research paper.
English 842 When God Becomes a Prop: The Reformation of Medieval Drama. Tinkle
When God enters a fifteenth-century English play to speak his Word, he authorizes a particular
interpretation and in theory precludes questions about what he means. His meaning is motivated and
explained by the context. These plays continue to be performed and circulated into the late sixteenth
century. At the same time, Protestant reformers re-invent medieval dramatic genres. They create
biblical drama and saints’ plays that discount medieval legends and rely wholly on authoritative biblical
texts. These are not always successful innovations: a play meant to illustrate Calvinist predestination
lacks a certain dramatic tension, and a saint drawn entirely from Scripture has little substance.
Protestant morality plays are usually more successful and become extraordinarily popular by the midsixteenth century. In keeping with Reformation iconophobia, these plays remove God from the stage.
God becomes a prop: the Bible. As a silent prop, the Word provokes irresolvable hermeneutic questions
and ambiguities. At times, characters’ references to the Bible disclose an acute epistemological crisis.
This course tracks the development of medieval and early modern genres in order to reveal the doctrinal
and representational controversies, epistemological uncertainties, and hermeneutic difficulties that
surface in the late Middle Ages and Reformation. We will examine plays in their manuscript, print, and
performance contexts. We will analyze the life of props and study staging conventions. We will above all
cultivate seminar participants’ own interests. Texts will likely include the York Corpus Christi cycle,
samples of other cycles and individual biblical plays (the Digby Killing of the Children, Jacob and Esau,
selections from John Bale), the Digby Mary Magdalene, Lewis Wager’s Life and Repentaunce of Mary
Magdalene, Mankind, Mundus et Infans, Nice Wanton, and Lusty Juventus. Secondary literature will
sketch out recent conversations in the field and hopefully inspire new research questions. Course
requirements will be tailored to students’ interests and training. PhD students will likely work on
projects such as writing a book review, putting together a grant application, writing a research essay,
and writing a course description for a teaching portfolio. MFA students might prefer to work on analyses
of craft, poetics, staging, and narrative strategies.
HIST 450.001 Japan to 1700: From Origin Myths to the Shogun Dynasty
“Samurai,” “bushido,” “geisha,” “uniqueness,” “seclusion,” and “homogeneity”—these
are popular words that often describe Japan’s premodern past (ca.300BCE-1700CE). In
this class, we question the simplistic and often mistaken notions represented by these terms and gain a
critical understanding of the history of the Japanese archipelago from prehistoric times through the age
of the samurai. The course highlights the significance of the sea lanes that shaped the history of the
Japanese archipelago, the ancient rise of the (still reigning) imperial family; the arrival of the age of
violence and changing meanings of warfare, the power of aesthetics and material culture, and shifting
gender relations. We analyze primary sources and evaluate scholarly (sometimes conflicting)
interpretations of significant events, and appreciate select modern historical figures and situations in
films and TV documentaries.
HIST 642 Premodern European History. French
History 642 will be a readings course designed to help graduate students in European history prepare for
prelims. This course explores the ways that the recent turn toward global perspectives in historical
research and pedagogy have changed the way we think of "pre-modern European" history. In the past
few decades, the conventional narratives that long served to connect the broader strands of medieval
and Early Modern European history--“dark ages,” "feudalism," "rise of the Western Church" “overseas
expansion,” “Renaissance” and “Reformation”--have come under sustained criticism. In the process,
Europe's place in world history has evolved, and many historians no longer think of Europe as the cradle
of a universal history, but rather as one global region among others. What do these developments mean
for how we teach pre-modern European history? Should we look for new narratives to replace those
that no longer seem as relevant? How does a more nuanced vision of pre-modern of Europe's
complicated past change what we think of Europe and the challenges that it faces in the present?
Readings will explore key moments in the evolution of these historiographical debates, ranging broadly
over fundamental works of medieval and Early Modern European history written since the end of WW2
to the present. The class is intended for graduate students in all disciplines who intend to prepare a field
or a research project dealing with some aspect of European culture or history.
HIST 673 Pre-Modern Japanese Historiography. Tonomura
This course introduces major English-language works on Japan's premodern history (before 1700).
Readings are selected to promote our familiarity and critical appreciation of the key themes and trends
which have shaped the historiography. We evaluate individual works in terms of their approach,
methodology, sources used, and argumentation as well as the actual historical "knowledge" or
“content.” By discussing these works, we hope to understand their merits, limitations and relative
significance to the way the field has developed. We also consider unexplored issues and problems as
well as possible alternate approaches and methods which might be employed to conduct historical
inquiry in this field. The course may serve as the first stage of preparation for taking the Ph.D. prelim
examination and for teaching Japanese history at a college level.
HIST 698.003 Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia. Lieberman
This course will examine critical problems in the history of Southeast Asia, one of the world's most
original, culturally diverse, and exciting areas, from earliest times to c. 1850. It seeks to understand both
developments internal to Southeast Asia and the region's relation to the wider world of Europe and
Asia. The course assumes no specialized knowledge, but seeks to familiarize students with different
approaches to history and with the merits of various interpretations.
HART 689 / MEMS Prosem Knowledge and Visuality in Early Modern Europe. Brusati, Nelson
Four of the nine prestigious Kavli prizes awarded in 2014 went to scientists focusing on techniques of
visualization. The critical importance of visual technologies to scientific inquiry has long been
recognized, but in the past few decades historians of art and of science have put visuality at the heart of
a major rethinking of the foundations of modern scientific knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Recent science studies have shifted focus from theory and idea-driven narratives of scientific
“firsts” to accounts of the collaborative exchanges and material practices in which changing
understandings of the natural world took shape. This work has underscored how pictorial and visual
technologies function not simply as mimetic aids to communicating existing knowledge, but also as
transformative and translational processes that actively participate in the production of new knowledge
and epistemologies. This course looks at the early modern study of nature through the lens of its visual
forms—from painting, prints, drawings, and book illustrations to diagrams, maps, globes, charts,
measuring instruments, and optical devices. How did the making and use of these artifacts uniquely
integrate technical know-how, artisanal knowledge, and text-based learning in natural philosophy,
medicine, cosmology, geography, and other (proto)scientific fields? How can we compare the ways
people visualized knowledge in the overlapping worlds of the workshop, the collection, and scholar’s
study? Drawing on university collections, we will especially attend to the role of print media in enabling
a greater degree of standardization and sharing of visual information, prompting new forms of visual
argument, and generating debates on the authority and evidentiary status of images. In conjunction
with our shared survey of canonical case studies, each participant will contribute new scholarship
concerning what visual knowledge looked like and how it functioned during the strange and exciting
emergence of so-called modern science in Europe.
HART 750 History of the History of Art. Sears
The “image” became an object of rigorous academic study, historical and philosophical, only in the later
nineteenth century, first in Germany and Austria. In the earlier 20th century some of the discipline’s
most sophisticated work was conducted, certain of the texts regularly referred to in our present. This is
a seminar about classic problems and solutions, about standing critiques and counter-critiques. We will
come to know the work of a number of key figures in the development of “looking” as an investigative
act (Wölfflin, Goldschmidt) and devote time to considering the strategies developed by members of the
first and second Vienna schools (Riegl to Pächt) and the Hamburg art history seminar (Warburg,
Panofsky, Wind), and other significant thinkers. We will study networks of art historical exchange, the
place of religious confession and gender, the role of institutions, and correlations between art history
and artistic production, and also think about the application of “European” method to non-European
art. Students, as they choose their research topics will be encouraged to focus on the work of a thinker
or thinkers whose thought informs their own work. The seminar is open to students in any discipline
who are incorporating a visual component into their study and would like to add depth to their analyses.
Latin 507 Late Latin. Markus
The purpose of the course is to read a representative selection of post-classical texts (200 AD and later)
and to teach you to appreciate the language, style and the rhetorical techniques of Late Latin authors.
While solidifying your control over the essentials of Classical Latin grammar, the course will highlight the
differences between Classical and Late Latin. We will read selections from the New Testament in Latin
and other early Christian texts (Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, the Latin translations of Athanasius’ Life of
Antony and the Anonymous Navigatio St Brandani). Grading in the course is based upon short quizzes,
two projects and a final exam. For more information, contact Donka Markus at markusdd@umich.edu.
Musicol 507 Late Renaissance Motet. Mengozzi
The course explores the genre of the motet in the late-16th century from a variety of perspectives that
range from religious and social function (liturgical, devotional, ceremonial), to strictly musical (harmony,
texture, rhetoric, text/music relationships, etc.). Although we will concentrate primarily on the motets
by Palestrina, Victoria, and Lasso, our analyses will occasionally involve the works of other authors from
that period, as well as other musical genres. The increasing number of available recordings of this
repertory will enable participants to engage in fruitful discussions of issues of musical performance. A
course pack containing a representative sample of motet scores will be made available at the beginning
of the term. The course is open to all seniors and graduate students in SMTD. Renaissance Music (578) is
not a pre-requisite for the course.
Musicol 577 Medieval Music. Borders
This course surveys medieval European sacred and secular repertories of monophony and polyphony
from the advent of Gregorian Chant through late fourteenth-century motets and chansons. It is
organized around five important sites of medieval musical activity—the monastery, the cathedral, the
castle, the urban square, and the palace. Students who complete this course successfully will gain
knowledge of representative examples of medieval music, basic familiarity with medieval musical
notation and music theory, and an understanding of medieval compositional techniques. The ability to
read standard Western musical notation is required.
Musicol 643 Studies in Baroque Music: Operas, Singers, Patrons, Institutions. Production,
Collaboration, and the Marketplace c. 1700. Stein
This seminar is devoted to exploring the intersections between the history of singing, the history of
musical theater, and the early modern economics of production. The seminar investigates both the
influence and activity of those producing and financing opera (institutions and patrons), and the ways in
which singers shaped the production and composition of opera around 1700. We will study the operatic
market place (in baroque Rome, Naples, London and other sites to be determined by student interest),
the development of the "star" system, the da capo aria, the travels of opera, and how singers
collaborated in the production process during this formative period for both serious and comic genres.
The seminar will include work with primary sources as well as modern editions and readings from books
and articles on reserve or on C-Tools. Students will be introduced to various kinds of primary sources--archival documents, printed libretti, manuscript musical scores, and so on. The repertory will include
(but not be limited to) operas and arias by Alessandro Scarlatti and other late seventeenth-century
composers, as well as operas of G. F. Handel. The work of the course will involve reading, listening, score
study (for those in music), class presentations, papers (whose length and character will be determined in
class), and possible performance projects. Attendance and class participation are required. The course
is open to scholars, performers, composers, etc. Some reading ability in foreign languages (Italian,
Spanish, German) will be useful.
MEMS 898 Interdisciplinary Dissertation Colloquium. de Pee
This workshop provides advanced students in Medieval and Early Modern periods with the
opportunity to present work in an interdisciplinary context bringing together participants from
all disciplines that engage with pre-modern materials. The colloquium supports students in
commitments that they have already undertaken, with the small, but pleasurable responsibility
of responding to colleagues’ work. It addresses three needs: 1) to help you to frame and to
convey the larger significance of your research with the help of a supportive group from a wider
range of methodological points of view than would normally appear on a dissertation
committee; 2) to provide you with practice in articulating your ideas in an oral format; and 3) to
explore how interdisciplinary dialogue can enrich our research. The MEMS colloquium is an
integral part of the Graduate Certificate Program in MEMS, but students do not need to be
admitted to the Certificate Program to take the course. The course will meet regularly on a
schedule to be determined by the needs of the group; you may register for 1-3 credit by
permission of the instructor (graded S/U).
Philosophy 610 Spinoza’s Ethics. Schmaltz
We will critically examine Spinoza's philosophical system, as presented in his masterwork, the
Ethics. We will pay particular attention to the controversial interpretations of Spinoza in
Jonathan Bennett's Study of Spinoza's Ethics. We will discuss, for instance, Bennett's claim that
Spinoza adopted a "field metaphysic" account of extended substance, that he is a "causal
rationalist," that he radically resisted all teleological explanations, and that his argument for the
eternity of the mind "has nothing to teach us and is pretty certainly worthless." Along the way
we will consider Spinoza's views concerning substance monism, causal determinism,
parallelism, psychological egoist, virtue ethics, and the intellectual love of God.
Polish 525 Early Polish Literature. Paloff
This course considers how Polish culture’s response to statelessness, solidified with the country’s Third
Partition in 1795, evolved throughout a turbulent nineteenth century. Reading major works of
Romanticism and Positivism, we also examine Poland’s deep interconnection with European culture, as
well as enduring questions about ideology, activism, and the author’s role in society. Texts include works
by Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Bolesław Prus, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and others.
Russian 551 Old Russian Literature. Makin
This course provides an introduction to the culture of the Eastern Slavs from the ninth century until the
seventeenth, and looks at the employment of elements of that culture in Russia from the nineteenth
century until the present day. It requires no special historical or linguistic knowledge and is intended to
be of interest to anyone curious about medieval and early-modern culture. While the primary emphasis
will be on Old Russian literature, the course will also examine art, architecture, folklore, and other
cultural forms. The course will help students to develop the analytical skills required for the examination
of medieval and early-modern cultures (including basic tools of textual criticism and instrumentation to
read symbolic languages very different from ours) and to develop an understanding of cultural premises
radically different from those on which post-Enlightenment Europe has relied. The course will look at
the East Slavs of Rus’ and Muscovy in comparison with the peoples around them and will also look at
how post-Petrine Russia has turned again and again to “Old Russia” and, indeed, has, in some areas,
shown remarkable continuity with that Old Russian past. Students will also develop skills in analytical
writing, in treating both very specific, materials-based topics and broader, conceptual issues.
Spanish 456 Golden Age of Literature. Garcia Santo-Tomas
El presente curso estudiará una serie de textos canónicos desde una perspectiva contemporánea,
enfatizando su contextualización socio-política, histórica y literaria, además de nuevos acercamientos
que se adapten a la sensibilidad moderna. Se analizará poesía, teatro y narrativa, en un diseño que
prestará atención cuestiones como el 'yo' poético en su transición del Renacimiento al Barroco, la
creación de una dramaturgia nacional de sabor autóctono, y la inauguración de nuevos modos
narrativos como la picaresca o la novela corta. Los autores a estudiar serán Garcilaso de la Vega, Luis de
León, Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Luis de Góngora,
Francisco de Quevedo y María de Zayas. El curso se completará con proyecciones audiovisuales sobre
Velázquez, la Inquisición, Don Quijote y Fuenteovejuna. La clase será en español.
Spanish 460 The Spanish Comedia. Morillo
Readings in the Spanish drama of the late 16th and 17th centuries.
Spanish 822 Religion and Culture: Mediterranean Empires. Green-Mercado
The early modern period saw the rise of two great empires in the Mediterranean (the Ottomans and the
Habsburgs), whose competition for the territorial and commercial control of the Mediterranean was
bolstered by universalist claims that were often formulated in religious and messianic discourses. Yet
amidst this intense imperial competition (and perhaps propelled by it), a different set of actors —
Moriscos, Sephardic Jews and Conversos, interpreters, spies, corsairs, merchants, renegades, and
captives — negotiated spaces for interaction and exchange and played just an important role in the
formation of imperial identities. What picture of the sea do we get when we center on these “other”
actors? This graduate seminar will study the lives of diaspora communities and trans-imperial subjects
who were caught between the imperial competition in the Mediterranean. Through a close reading of
literary texts, travel narratives, soldiers’ tales, ambassadors’ reports, captivity stories, as well as
biographies of merchants and go-betweens, this course will examine the politics of identity in the
eastern, southern, western, and northern shores of the Mediterranean in the ‘Age of Empires.’