Winter 2014 MEMS Graduate Courses
ARCH 518 / HA 460 // Renaissance Architecture / Lydia Soo
The course examines the architecture of the Renaissance--the buildings and cities of the 15th and 16th
centuries in Italy, France, and England. They will be discussed in relationship to contemporary
theoretical writings, addressing issues of function, structure, and beauty, as well as in relationship to the
cultural context of the Renaissance, including philosophical, religious, political, economic, and
environmental factors.
ARCH 633 / HA 689.002 // Vision and Mathematics in Baroque Architecture / Lydia 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. Focusing on Bernini and Borromini and their followers in and outside of Italy, we will consider
the cultural context in which they worked (political, social, religious) and the technical means available
to them (drawing techniques, materials, construction methods). At the same time the nature of
proportion and geometry in architecture, and their primacy in the making of buildings, particularly in
classical, medieval, and Renaissance periods, will be investigated as a basis for understanding the
phenomenon of Baroque form and the complex geometries found in today’s architecture.
New! ASIAN 494 / HART 495 Ocean of Stories: Telling Tales in the Indian Subcontinent // Chanchani
This course investigates painters' engagements with India's literatures. Beginning with storytelling in
contemporary artworks, this course proceeds to examine the emergence, refinement, and dispersion of
literary and pictorial conventions in cosmopolitan early India and their transformations in later periods
when book arts interacted with vernacularization, performative traditions, and eventually print culture.
New! 439 / HART 492 Himalayas: An Aesthetic Exploration // Chanchani
Studying Himalayan art and architecture offers an opportunity to embark on expeditions to distant
frontiers, acquire critical appreciation of the impact of geography on cultural production and gain
deeper understanding of historical processes that have transpired in this region and continue to exert an
influence in our own times.
ENGL 503 // Middle English / Tom Toon
ENG 541 // Literature of the Medieval Period / Cathy Sanok
This course investigates the categories of the secular and the sacred as they are explored in a
wide range of important late medieval literary texts. “Premodern” culture is often defined as a
thoroughly “religious,” against the putative secularism of modernity. But medieval writers and
their audiences had a rich and complicated idea of the secular, which they understood as a
category of time--the time of human history and causality, of individual identity, ethics, and
mortality, defined against various notions of sacred timelessness. We will think especially about
the role of form in the way that literary texts address these categories: how, for example, does
love lyric explore a secular condition of identity and experience of time? We will also seek to
chart how emerging ideas of the “literary” and especially claims for its transhistorical status or
value respond to a shifting relationship between some forms of secular and religious
jurisdiction shift in the early fifteenth century. We will read late medieval lyric, romance,
drama, and religious visionary literature, including the Harley lyrics, the lyric poetry of Audelay,
Pearl, the morality play Mankind, and writings by major fifteenth century writers such as
Hoccleve, Lydgate, Kempe, and Malory. In addition to our exploration of the literary questions
provoked by the categories of the sacred and secular, we will think about their definition and
deployment in recent methodological and conceptual frameworks: especially criticism that
participates in the “religious turn” in literary studies and some of the theoretical texts on which
it draws (Agamben, Nancy), and in the active debate around the category of the “secular”
(Asad, Taylor, Viswanathan).
ENG 630 // English Literature and Its Global Contexts, 1600-1800 / David Porter
While the legacy of Saids' Orientalism has profoundly shaped the study of intercultural relations in
colonial and post-colonial contexts, it has also informed scholarly perspectives on early modern
encounters, real and imagined, that conform less neatly to colonial or even proto-colonial paradigms.
Recognizing the potential hazards of Eurocentrism and anachronism attendant upon such readings, this
seminar will explore a variety of alternative, post-Saidian models for thinking about Englands' place in an
increasingly globalized early modern world, and, in particular, their implications for reconsidering the
literary history of the period. We will interrogate a number of contemporary English authors —
Shakespeare, Behn, Defoe, Pope, Montagu, Addison, Cook, and others — who grapple with these
questions, while at the same time surveying relevant recent scholarship from the fields of comparative
literature and cultural studies, world history, and East-West studies. We will consider questions of
influence, reception, and imaginative geography, but will also explore methodological problems raised
by more explicitly comparative approaches, including questions of commensurability and meta-historical
modeling. Specific topics to be addressed include early modern travel writing, race and enlightenment,
captivity narratives, the anxiety of empire, material culture history, and historical cosmopolitanism.
HART 694 // Visualizing the Art Historical Past in Early Modern China / Martin Powers
This is a seminar about the Song period visualization of earlier art historical moments. It is not about the
imitation of the past but rather the re-imagination of a foreign art historical past. It is part of a larger
project intended ultimately to take shape as a conference and exhibition focused on the art historical art
of the Song dynasty. The analysis of visual interpretations of foreign visualities is a powerful method for
the study of art history. Song artists had early on conquered the depiction of deep space, light, texture,
and scale, so when Song artists and critics looked back to the pre-naturalistic art of the medieval period,
they imagined it as more naive but also more imaginative and liberated from rules than the art of their
own period, not unlike the way the English Romantics imagined the art of Medieval England. We will
read and discuss secondary sources on the evolution of art historical art in Song China, along with
readings about comparable phenomena in other times and places (such as the English Romantics), as
well as theoretical studies of historical visuality. In addition we will read numerous primary sources in
translation, essays and poems in which Song critics analyze the difference between the art of the
medieval period and their own time. Topics discussed will include Song theories of naturalism,
expression, and art historical citation, as well as modern theories regarding naturalism, visuality, and
pastiche. Students will contribute to the project by writing a paper on a particular painting in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, or the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, as these scrolls can be
viewed in fine detail online. In addition to an analytical paper on a scroll painting of their choice,
students also will write a catalogue entry for one of the scrolls to be included in the exhibition, in
addition to the painting they’ve chosen for their research paper. We will view scroll paintings in the
collection at UMMA and, resources permitting, visit the MFA as well. All reading materials will be online.
HART / WS 720 MEMS prosem // Material Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe / Pat
Simons w/ Kit French
This course considers historiographic trends and current scholarship that places material culture and
visuality at the center of accounts of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Since Burckhardt in 1860,
the Renaissance has been associated with naturalism and materialism. Marx and others found
explanatory models in capitalism, class difference, and wealth. Using gender analysis, curatorial practice
and so-called “thing theory,” how might we reconceive of materiality, in the light of the dynamics of
consumption, issues of tangibility, user interaction, and household agency? We will consider practices
and spaces such as clothing, domestic interiors and culinary culture. Some attention will be paid to
“popular” or “mass” culture, including the carnivalesque, the ephemeral (e.g., graffiti), and the
inexpensive. One or two meetings will be held with curators and conservators, especially at the DIA. This
course meets the MEMS Proseminar requirement. Cost: $0-50. Co-taught with Prof. Katherine French
(History).
HIST 481/594 / French 340/654 // Translating the Enlightenment / Dena Goodman
ITAL 533 // Dante’s Divine Comedy / Alison Cornish
Graduate students interested in following the course on Dante's Divine Comedy (Italian 333/MEMS 333)
can enroll in 533. They will attend lectures, participate in discussion and take bluebook exams.
Additional discussion sessions and final projects will be arranged on the basis of students' needs and
interests.
LATIN 507 // Late Latin / Donka Markus
The main goal of the course is acquiring 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 palaeography, 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.
MEMS 898 // Interdisciplinary Writing Colloquium / Alison Cornish
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. Types of writing welcomed: Dissertation
chapters, conference presentations, articles in draft stages, prospectus drafts, job talks, methodological
statements, research statements, project narratives, book reviews, grant proposals
.
MUS 621 // History of Music Theory I / James Borders
Covers the history of musical thought from Antiquity through about 1600 C.E.
SPAN 859 // Framing Don Quijote / Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas
Don Quixote remains the most popular, sought-after text in Spanish literature classes. Whether in its
original or in translation, it is taught in colleges and universities every year to students young and old. It
is also a book of enormous appeal to doctoral students and concentrators of English, Classics,
Comparative Literature, Philosophy, History, Music, Opera, Theater, Latino Studies, and History of Art; it
is taught in courses of World Literature/Great Books, and its countless visual adaptations are excellent
teaching tools in any introductory classes on Hispanic cultures. If you are a student in any of these
disciplines, this class is for you. This seminar will attempt to redefine the traditional notion of student
participation, since you will not only read the text and discuss it with your peers, but will also teach it as
well. In order to get the most out of Cervantes’ masterpiece, I will provide the necessary background
and most effective tools in the form of introductory lectures, presentation of key theoretical questions,
identification of unresolved difficulties, along with a weekly review of the most exciting bibliography on
the subject(s) at stake — including some of the most influential readings of the last century, from Ortega
to Foucault — while you will prepare a master class on your topic(s) of choice. By the end of the term,
you will have read the text in its entirety, will have taught as many as three sessions (depending on the
enrollment), and will possess a thorough understanding of what it means to write on and teach
Cervantes — and, for that matter, early modern Spanish literature — in the 21st century.