MEMS Graduate Courses -- FALL 2008
AAPTIS 411 / Classical Arabic Grammar / Jackson
The main objective of this course is to investigate areas of Arabic grammar from a
modern linguistic point of view. The issues dealt with will include syntax and
morphology. In broad terms, the areas investigated will include verb and noun
morphology, and from a syntactic perspective, phrase and sentence structure. To this end,
appropriate selections will be made from Clive Holes’ Modern Arabic Structures
Functions and Varieties. It is possible that additional selections from Arabic texts will be
introduced as a way of comparing modern and orthodox presentations of specific
linguistic features. Based on the readings and class discussions, modern text chunks —
media and/or modern literature — will be selected for the purpose of participants locating
and examining actual manifestations of the areas under study.
AAPTIS 451 / Ottoman Turkish / Hagen
The first part of the departmental sequence in Ottoman Turkish, this course will introduce
students with intermediate or higher-level Modern Turkish to original texts from a wide
variety of printed sources. Based on those, it will teach the Arabic script and the essential
elements of Arabic and Persian origin in Ottoman Turkish grammar.
AAPTIS 465 / Islamic Mysticism / Knysh
Beginning with the Qur’anic origins of Islamic mysticism and its early Christian and
ascetic influences, this course explores the central themes and institutional forms of
Sufism, a stream of Islam which stresses the esoteric (mystical) dimensions of religious
faith. It reflects upon the inward quest and devotions of Muslim mystics as these have
been lived and expressed in art, theology, literature, and fellowship since the 8th century
CE.
AAPTIS 567 / Readings from Classical Islamic Texts / Jackson
This course focuses on the analytical reading of classical Arabic texts from different
fields of the Islamic tradition. This academic term the topic will be Muslim theology.
This will include a brief historical survey of the development of the theological discourse
in medieval Islam along with a thematic treatment of some of the most salient issues
debated among theologians. Selections will be drawn from both the traditionalist (Ahl alhadith and Hanbalites) and rationalist (Mu'tazilite, Ash'arite, Maturidite) traditions.
Reading knowledge of Arabic required. Course lectures will be in English.
ENGLISH 503 / Middle English / Smith
We’ll learn the rudiments of Middle English diction (then a new and evolving blend of
English and French), syntax, and phonology, with limited attention to the different
dialects. We’ll briefly compare Middle English to Old English and Early Modern
English, touching on such historical phenomena as the Great Vowel Shift. Most of our
time will be spent reading literature of various kinds and from various contexts, poetry
and prose, high culture and popular. By reading is meant that we’ll study sample texts,
translate them, interpret them, and discuss their features and meanings—and that we will
read aloud often, becoming familiar with the sounds and cadences of Middle English.
Some of the best poetry in English comes from the late 14th century (Chaucer, Langland,
the anonymous works of the Gawain-poet), and we’ll spend a fair amount of time on
these authors, paying equivalent attention to the prose of Dame Julian of Norwich and
Margery Kempe. We’ll also study some manuscript facsimiles and speculate on the
nature of literacy before the invention of printing. Everyone will take up some research
task involving the transmission and analysis of primary texts. At the end of our time
together, we should all be able to read—and read aloud—Middle English with
understanding and pleasure, with sufficient competence to teach a segment on, say,
Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale.
ENGLISH 560 / Chaucer: The Major Texts / Taylor
This is an introductory Chaucer course at the graduate level. We treat Chaucer's major
works, focusing especially on the incomparable classical romance Troilus and Criseyde
and the joys of variety in the Canterbury Tales. A few of the shorter poems also help us
get a sense of Chaucer's poetic career as French, classical, and Italian materials were
melded together into something new: serious, ambitious literature written in English.
Historical, social, and literary backgrounds.
ENGLISH 642.001 / Early Modern English Poetry / Schoenfeldt
Some of the finest lyrics in the English language were written during the Early Modern
period. Subsequent writers have continually found a source of inspiration, not to mention
competition, in the works of this period. The purpose of this class is to examine the
immensely productive tension that emerged between formal accomplishment and
passionate expression in the poetry of early modern England. Understanding form
widely, as both the necessary vehicle and the restricting container of desire, we will look
at a range of short and long poems written in England between 1500 and 1680. We will
read a wide variety of poetry, largely lyric and narrative, from Wyatt and Surrey in the
early sixteenth century through Milton, Dryden, and Katherine Philips in the later
seventeenth century. We will spend a lot of time on Shakespeare, whose remarkable
accomplishment in 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. We will also explore the various ways that issues of class and gender
mark lyric utterance? We will investigate the range of possible motives for putting into
fastidiously patterned language the unruly vagaries of emotion and appetite. Reading
poetry amid the continuing philosophical dispute between the respective claims of reason
and passion in the formation of an ethical self, we will look at how the poets of early
modern England created models for articulating and manipulating inner desire.
FRENCH 653 / Repetition / Ibbett
In this seminar we will consider repetition and related concerns – rereading, rewriting,
imitation, performance, serial production – both in seventeenth-century France and in
recent theoretical writing. What can be repeated? What should be? What does repetition
leave behind, and what does it bring about? Texts will include Molière, Dom Juan;
Racine, Iphigènie; Corneille, Horace; Descartes, Discours de la méthode; critical readings
from, amongst others, Auslander, Butler, Cavell, Deleuze, Esposito, Felman, Girard.
HISTART 646 / Medieval Encyclopedias / Sears
This seminar circles around the phenomenon of encyclopedic learning in the Latin
Middle Ages, thereby opening up paths for exploring medieval perspectives on the world
and the order of things. Attention will focus on physically concrete witnesses to these
perspectives: manuscript copies of compendia that collect and re-present useful
knowledge. Often carefully structured, regularly illustrated with images as well as
astonishingly complex and artful schematic diagrams, they bear such titles as “On the
Nature of Things,” “Image of the World,” “Mirror of the World.” Students will become
acquainted with medieval cosmology, geography, ethnography, time theory, etc., as they
read classics of school learning (well known to medieval and early modern writers and
artists). Authors to be treated include: Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Isidore, Rabanus
Maurus, Honorius Augustodunensis, Lambert of St.-Omer, Herrad of Hohenburg,
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Thomas of Cantimpré, Vincent of Beauvais, etc. A host of
issues will emerge: concepts of memory, theories of the image and the complementarity
of text and image, pedagogical theory (liberal and mechanical arts), attitudes toward the
pre-Christian past (Greek and Roman learning) and the Islamic present (translated tracts).
We will focus on concepts of “spatiality” as these affect the placement of data in schemes
of knowledge and the organization of textual and visual information in schemata.
HISTART 754 / Early Modern Art Theory and Practice / Holmes and Willette
Artists, poets, academicians, secretaries and prelates in early modern Italy exploited the
resources of diverse literary genres to find words suitable for discussion of the visual arts.
Among the forms most often adopted, depending upon the occasion, were the treatise, the
discourse, the dialogue, the Vita, the epistle and the sonnet. Like other kinds of inquiry in
this period, literary exploration of visual art drew upon both Latin and vernacular
traditions and often borrowed principles and methods from poetics, grammar and
rhetoric. The Humanist revival of ancient letters was centrally important for this
development, but the ideas and values expressed in courtly love poetry and in various
“sub-literary” cultural forms, such as the craftsman’s book of secrets and the merchant’s
memoir, also contributed importantly to discussions of art. A considerable body of
theological writing about images came into play as the indirect source of much general
knowledge about how pictures and statues work. Some of the most powerful ideas about
art in this period are framed by other concerns, in stories about common people, or in
poems in praise of female beauty, or in prayers devoted to the saints.
We will trace the development of some of the major topics in early modern artwriting and consider the implications of favored metaphors, such as the window, the mirror,
the shadow and the veil. Classical topoi were often invoked, both to dignify the subject and
to suggest figurative ways of thinking about the origin of art or about the power of a work of
art to move the beholder: thus the petrifying effect of Medusa, the animation of Pygmalion’s
ivory statue of Galatea, the image-seduction of Narcissus. At an early point we will examine
views about the Christian imago, and throughout the term we will consider how Christian
image theory informs or contrasts with Humanistic art-writing and how both contributed to
artistic practice in the service of religious reform. Readings will be drawn from Petrarch,
Alberti, Leonardo, Castiglione, Ficino, Aretino, Michelangelo, Vasari, and Dolce, among
others—as well from critical and interpretative studies by Michale Baxandall, Stephen
Campbell, Elizabeth Cropper, Charles Dempsey, Anthony Grafton, Robert Williams,
Gerhard Wolf, et alia.
HISTORY 592 / Topics in Asian History: Islam in South Asia / Mir
This is an opportunity for graduate students to get a broad overview of the history of
Islam in South Asia. This course examines the history and historiography of the
expansion of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, the nature of Muslim political authority,
the interaction between religious communities, Islamic aesthetics and contributions to
material culture, the varied engagements and reactions of Muslims to colonial rule, the
partition of British India and the creation of Pakistan, and the contemporary political
concerns of South Asia’s Muslims.
HISTORY 638 / Rome After Empire / Squatriti
The Eternal City is unique in several regards, but perhaps above all in its being
simultaneously a distinctive actual place and a powerful set of ideas. This course
investigates how Rome's physical plant developed in the centuries after the end of Rome's
Mediterranean hegemony. It also explores the afterlife of the idea of Rome, as locus of
law and justice, symbol of empire and universal rule, and focus of religious devotion.
'Rome After Empire' seeks to understand the nature of the dialectic between an
increasingly desolate, then Christian topography, and the mystique that Rome had,
especially far from its walls, throughout the Middle Ages.
HISTORY 642 / Studies in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Exploring/Interrogating
Cultural History / Goodman
Cultural history has become the dominant paradigm for historians of eighteenth-century
France and in many other fields of history as well, but what exactly does that mean? This
course is intended to explore the range of histories that are called “cultural,” the theories
and methods that cultural historians draw upon, the questions that cultural historians try
to answer, and the ways they go about doing so. At the same time, we will interrogate
cultural history, asking what its limits and limitations are. What can it not do? What does
it do badly? Which critiques are legitimate and which are not? We will thus seek to
understand and evaluate the practice of cultural history through the reading of individual
cultural histories on a wide range of eighteenth-century topics by Anglophone and French
historians (in English translation), relevant theoretical and methodological texts, and
critiques. In doing so, we should also learn quite a bit about eighteenth-century France.
HISTORY 668 / Early Chinese History / Chang
This is a proseminar in premodern Chinese history before 1800. The main focus of the
course is on the examination of the development of the field, the current state of research,
and the various methodological approaches in the studies of premodern Chinese history.
HISTORY 680 / Envisioning Colonial America / Juster
Historians of early America have become increasingly accustomed to thinking of the
colonies as participants in a transatlantic exchange of ideas, peoples, goods, and
institutions. The larger Atlantic system of which the American colonies formed an
important node shaped the particular experiences of the inhabitants of these colonies,
who were simultaneously marginalized residents of the periphery and central actors in a
global enterprise. This course will explore several important aspects of the history of the
American colonies from a transatlantic perspective: the formation of new settlements and
the process of migration from the Old to the New Worlds; the encounter with the native
cultures of the Americas; the phenomena of war and captivity; the role of women in
colonial ventures; the African slave trade and the formation of slave societies; the
proliferation of religious sects and the culture of revivalism in the 18th century, to name
just a few.
HISTORY 698.004 / ASIAN 500 / The History and Historiography of the Tang and
Song Dynasties / de Pee
This course offers a topical survey of the history and historiography of the Tang (618907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties. It is intended in the main to convey an impression
of the shape of the field of Middle-Period history in the United States, with its small first
generation of economic, intellectual, and political historians, its second generation of
social historians, and its budding third generation of cultural historians. This
historiographical disposition of the course not only lends form to the succession of topics,
but offers an opportunity for the development of a wider range of academic skills. The
reading assignments for the course will provide a basic knowledge of the history and
historiography of the Tang and Song dynasties, but class discussions will also address the
conception of research projects, inventive approaches to sources, style and argument in
prose composition, the politics of publishing, the nature and development of academic
fields, and the shape of academic careers. In short, this seminar is intended not only as an
introduction to the history and historiography of the Tang and Song dynasties, but also as
an opportunity to reflect on graduate education and to develop some of the critical and
practical skills required therein.
LING 517 / ANTHRCUL 519 / GERMAN 517 / Principles and Methods of
Historical Linguistics / Thomason
This course is an introduction to the theories and methods that enable linguists to describe
and explain processes of linguistic change and historical relationships among languages.
The major topics to be covered are the emergence of language families and means of
establishing family relationships; sound change; grammatical change, especially analogy;
language change caused by culture contacts; the Comparative Method, through which
prehistoric language states can be reconstructed with an impressive degree of accuracy;
internal reconstruction, a less powerful but still important method for gaining information
about linguistic prehistory; and ways in which the study of current dialect variation offers
insights into processes of change.
MUSICOLOGY 413-513 / Topics in the Early History of Opera, 1590-1790 / Stein
This course is devoted to the study of opera in the first two centuries of its existence,
from its beginnings to nearly the end of the 18th century. Here opera is to be studied
critically as music, as theater, as spectacle, as performance medium, and as cultural
expression. Special aspects of the course include a consideration of operatic eroticism,
opera's arrival in the Americas, and a focus on the staging practices of early operas.
While some of the lectures and listening assignments will be organized around excerpts,
others will be designed to focus on whole operas, their musical dramaturgy, historical
significance, economics, modes of production, and impact and reception in performance.
Composers to be studied include Monteverdi, Cavalli, Lully, Purcell, Hidalgo, A.
Scarlatti, Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, Piccinni, Sarti.
SPANISH 456 / Golden Age Spanish Literature: Rethinking the Classics / 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, entre otros, Juan Ruiz, Marqués
de Santillana, Fernando de Rojas, Garcilaso de la Vega, Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan
de la Cruz, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Góngora, Tirso de Molina, Quevedo, Sor Juana y
Calderón de la Barca. El curso se completará con proyecciones audiovisuales sobre
Velázquez, la Inquisición, Don Quijote y Fuenteovejuna. La clase será en español.
SPANISH 666 / Cervantes' Exemplary Novels / Garcia Santo-Tomas
A survey of Cervantes' collection of short stories in relation to the literary, sociopolitical,
and philosophical background of the time. Class conducted in English and Spanish.
SPANISH 842 / Barroco Transatlantico / Del Valle
The Baroque is an especially interesting historical period that saw the convergence of
various forces that would shape the world’s future geopolitical order. The beginning of
modernity and scientific exploration, the colonial expansion in America, and an artistic
production of great scope and significance are among the phenomena that mark this era.
The strong connections between aesthetics and politics make the Baroque a fruitful
period for reflection about contradictions and problems whose importance continues
today. For example, various Baroque writers are the first to propose a kind of social
engineering to form subjects in accordance with a specific political program. With this in
mind, this course proposes to explore the paradoxes of the term “Baroque modernity” that
has recently been used to characterize the era. Although the majority of the course’s
readings will be by authors from Spain and New Spain, we will also examine other
meanings of the term that relate it not to a determined epoch but to a recurrent aesthetic
style or to an ethos that defines entire nations.