Medieval Institute
Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute:
Jeff Wickes
Associate Director
Megan J. Hall
Director of Undergraduate Studies:
Christopher Liebtag Miller (Medieval Studies)
Fellows of the Medieval Institute:
Hussein Abdulsater (Classics: Arabic); Christopher Abram (English); Khaled Anatolios (Theology); Ann Astell (Theology); Rev. Yury Avvakumov (Theology); Laura Banella (Romance Languages: Italian); Alexander Beihammer (History); Judith Benz (German); W. Martin Bloomer (Classics: Latin); Jeremy Phillip Brown (Theology); Katie Bugyis (Liberal Studies); Thomas Burman (History); Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (Romance Languages: Italian); Therese Cory (Philosophy); Rev. Brian E. Daley, S.J. (Theology); Stephen D. Dumont (Philosophy) Margot Fassler (Music, Theology); Felipe Fernández-Armesto (History); Leonardo Francalanci (Romance Languages: Catalan, Spanish); Nina Glibetić (Theology); Robert Sean Griffin (Russian); Goulding (History and Philosophy of Science); Karen Graubart (History); Li Guo (Classics: Arabic); David Gura (Hesburgh Libraries); Marius Hauknes (Art History); Daniel Hobbins (History); Alexander Hsu (History); Peter Jeffery (Music); Robin Jensen (Theology); Claire Taylor Jones (German); Carlos Jáuregui (Romance Languages: Spanish); Johannes Junge Ruhland (Romance Languages: French); Mary M. Keys (Political Science); David Lincicum (Theology); Tim Machan (English); Linda Major (Medieval Studies); Rebecca Maloy (Music); Julia Marvin (Liberal Studies); Peter McQuillan (Irish Language and Literature); Margaret Meserve (History); Christopher Liebtag Miller (Medieval Studies); Hildegund Müller (Classics: Latin); Amy Mulligan (Irish Language and Literature); Classics); Stephen Ogden (Philosophy, Islamic Studies); Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (Liberal Studies, Theology); Gabriel Radle (Theology); Rory Rapple (History); Gretchen Reydams-Schils (Liberal Studies; Philosophy); Gabriel Said Reynolds (Theology); Denis Robichaud (Liberal Studies); Julia Schneider (Hesburgh Libraries); Deborah Tor (History); Alexis Torrance (Theology); Juan Vitulli (Romance Languages: Spanish); Joseph P. Wawrykow (Theology); Jeff Wickes (Theology)
Medieval Institute Emeriti:
Zygmunt G. Baranski (Romance Languages: Italian, emeritus); D’Arcy J. D. Boulton (Medieval Studies, emeritus); Maureen B. McCann Boulton (Romance Languages: French, emeritus); Calvin Bower (Music, emeritus); Robert R. Coleman (Art History, emeritus); JoAnn DellaNeva (Romance Languages: French, emerita); Rev. Michael S. Driscoll (Theology, emeritus); Kent Emery, Jr. (Liberal Studies; Philosophy, emeritus); Margot Fassler (Music, Theology, emerita); Alfred Freddoso (Philosophy, emeritus); Stephen E. Gersh (Philosophy, emeritus); Louis Jordan (Hesburgh Libraries, emeritus); Encarnación Juárez-Almendros (Romance Languages: Spanish, emeritus); Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (English, emerita); Christian R. Moevs (Romance Languages: Italian, emeritus); Mark C. Pilkinton (Theatre, emeritus); Charles Rosenberg (Art History, emeritus); Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez (Romance Languages: Spanish, emeritus); John Van Engen (History, emeritus)
Program of Studies
The Medieval Institute is one of Notre Dame’s oldest and most renowned centers of learning. Established in 1946, it was envisaged from the start to be a premier locus for the study of the European Middle Ages. Over the decades its scope has broadened to where it now embraces a global Middle Ages, incorporating a multiplicity of cultures, faiths, and traditions. The academic strength and stature of the institute are due not only to its faculty, students, and library, but also to its ongoing commitment to the original liberal arts ideal.
Medieval Studies prepares students to enter graduate school, law school, medical school, or various careers such as business, government, education, publishing, ministry, curatorship, and research. With an emphasis on close reading, precise textual analysis, careful writing, and vigorous discussion, the program is designed to foster critical thinking, oral and written communication skills, and a heightened appreciation for history, religion, and culture.
Far from being the “dark ages,” medieval civilization witnessed the dawn of many of today’s most vital institutions and traditions including not only universities and hospitals, but also crucial developments in legal and economic systems, religious communities and doctrine, architecture, engineering, science, art, and literature. Today, the Middle Ages remains profoundly relevant not only through its inheritance, but also through an on-going process of imagining and reimagining of the medieval that permeates our lives, from pop-culture to politics, and from escapist entertainment to international policy.
The Medieval Studies program offers four undergraduate tracks, each based on an interdisciplinary model. It draws courses from many departments, spanning nearly the entirety of the College of Arts and Letters. From these disciplines, students are encouraged to build a unique program of study, in consultation with a faculty advisor, around an area of concentration that captures an interest, prepares for a field, or contributes to an academic pursuit.
Students interested in Medieval Studies may elect one of the following four options:
- Major in Medieval Studies
- Honors Major in Medieval Studies
- Supplementary Major in Medieval Studies
- Minor in Medieval Studies
All three major tracks include two common components. Each student’s curriculum is built around a concentration chosen by the individual, in conjunction with a faculty advisor. The concentration requires a minimum of four interrelated courses reflecting an intellectual and curricular coherence. An advanced seminar (3 credits) is the second common element in each of the major tracks. Students in the seminar are expected to read widely and discuss vigorously a set of sources that present a particular issue from several points of view. In addition, they are also expected to write a substantial research paper. The goal of the seminar is to engage students in thinking critically and knowledgeably across the boundaries of traditional disciplines while maintaining a focus on a particular time, place, or issue.
The Medieval Institute offers their courses under the subject code of: Medieval Institute (MI). Courses associated with their academic programs may be found below. The scheduled classes for a given semester may be found at classearch.nd.edu.
Medieval Institute (MI)
MI 10247 Medieval Mediterranean Faiths (3 Credit Hours)
Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side for centuries in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages - the occupied the same towns, shopped in the same markets, dwelt in the same neighborhoods, read each others' books, and borrowed each other's stories. While covering the broad sweep of Latin-Christian, Islamic, and Byzantine civilizations that grew up in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea after the fall of Rome, we will focus especially the on-going interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this area. While doing so we will constantly ask how can we know--and what kinds of things we can know--about the Middle Ages, as we examine many types of medieval sources, including literary works, historical texts, religious and philosophical writings, and works of art.
The course lectures will provide the student with sufficient understanding of the medieval Mediterranean that they will be able to read with profit the assigned texts which are all primary sources, written in a variety of Mediterranean languages, in English translation. The course will proceed partly chronologically - especially when it comes to the politics and geo-politics of the region - and partly thematically.
Corequisites: MI 32247
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 13186 Literature University Seminar (3 Credit Hours)
The delight of a naughty tale well-told is a near universal human pleasure - even if it is often a guilty one. In this course, students will discover the Middle Ages from a new perspective as we eschew the frequently austere epic poetry of the aristocratic court sin favor of the enormously popular, commonly comedic, and often lewd short stories that emerged as a distinctive genre in Medieval Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. We will read a wide range of short tales drawn from English, French, German, and Italian sources, and in so doing will encounter boastful knights, cuckolded lords, defiant ladies, and quarreling couples alongside a dizzying array of bodily functions gone awry and genitalia endowed with the power of speech.
By learning to understand these tales not only as popular entertainment, but also as valuable documents of the anxieties, assumptions, prejudices, and values of the age and cultures in which they were produced and consumed. This will be achieved in part through comparison of the short narrative texts forming the focus of this class with other works of the medieval period, including scholastic debates, sermons, and codes of law, as well as with representations of related themes in the visual arts, including illumination and sculpture. In all this, we will directly address the challenges presented to readers by pre-modern literature and learn how modern scholarship engages with literature through the development and honing of analytical and close reading skills via seminar discussions, comparison of conflicting interpretations by modern scholars, and careful attention to the interaction of form and content.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: USEM - University Seminar, WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 20001 The World of the Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
The Middle Ages have been praised and reviled, romanticized and fantasized. The spectacular popularity of Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Narnia have brought a revival of interest in and curiosity about the Middle Ages. But what were they like, these ten centuries between Rome and the Renaissance? In this course, we will explore major themes and issues in medieval civilization in an attempt to offer some basic answers to that question. We will have in view three kinds of people: rulers, lovers, and believers. But we will also study carefully those who wrote about those kinds of people. We will constantly ask how can we know about the Middle Ages, and what kinds of things can we know? We will consider major literary texts as both works of art and historical documents. We will explore various kinds of religious literature. We will try to understand the limits, boundaries, and achievements of philosophy and theology. Some lectures will incorporate medieval art so as to add a visual dimension to our explorations. This course will constitute an extended introduction to the dynamic and fascinating world of the Middle Ages.
Corequisites: MI 22001
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKHI - Core History
MI 20020 Medieval Women's Writing (3 Credit Hours)
This course will investigate constructions of gender and authority in women's writing from late medieval Europe (c. 1200-1430). We'll read works written for the court, from religious houses, and on the road to explore how these different social locations shaped authors' access to resources and informed their creative decisions. Reading selected critical essays will help us analyze these works through a feminist lens to understand how medieval women authors engaged with patriarchal literary traditions and social structures. All works will be read in translation; no prior knowledge of medieval literature is expected.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 20021 From Medieval Romance to Modern Dystopia (3 Credit Hours)
Despite our tendency to distinctly divide medieval and modern thought and practices, our literature reflects
how deeply connected we remain to a medieval past. Medieval romance illuminates how our fascination
with alternative realities and dystopian worlds has endured since the Middle Ages. This course examines
the development of imagined worlds and the figures that inhabit them in medieval literature, then considers
how these elements continuously manifest and metamorphose through the historical periods that follow,
including our own. Where does our obsession with the otherworldly originate in medieval texts? What do
our constructions of alternative places and peoples suggest about the desires and anxieties of a particular
historical moment? How does dystopian literature draw its inspiration from the medieval imagination?
MI 20042 Witches, Warriors, and Wonder Women: Women, Power, and Writing in History (3 Credit Hours)
Explore the remarkable histories of women who refused to conform or submit: witches, warriors, rebels, heretics, and others who embraced their power and changed their worlds. In this course, we will read texts written by, for, and about some of these incredible women in medieval and and early-modern England and western Europe and the early American Colonies. We will analyze how these women’s experiences with power were reflected in their own writing, or in texts written about them: how gender and power dynamics shaped their identities, what they pushed back against or supported, and how they negotiated their cultural roles. Through critical analysis and creative expression, students will sharpen their writing and analytical skills while engaging in thought-provoking discussions that matter far beyond the classroom. Prepare to encounter stories of resilience, defiance, and untold heroism as we uncover the hidden voices of women who shaped the course of history.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 20102 The Fantastic in English Devotional Literature (3 Credit Hours)
This course will challenge us to take a less impoverished view of devotional poetry, eschewing texts and themes we find familiar or trite, but rather looking for what is weird, uncomfortable, and wonderful in Christian texts. We will find talking trees, shape-shifting, and levitation in our texts, as well as mind-bending plots and doctrines, which shake the soul of the devotee awake, not put it to sleep.
We will survey the strange and unusual in English devotional literature from its very beginning with the Christian missions to England in the sixth and seventh centuries, all the way to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien in the later twentieth. As we move through centuries of devotional poetry, we will consider questions like these: what is strange to us in these texts? What might their original authors have found strange? How does this strangeness increase devotion? How does it change, challenge, or strengthen belief?
Texts in Old English and all but the clearest in Middle English will be provided in translation. After the “Reformation” unit, there will be both Catholic and Protestant texts represented in the syllabus. Our timeline, however, will place some emphasis on the “Catholic Literary Revival” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as this movement was itself viewed in its time as quite strange and sometimes unchristian (or at least scandalous) by the Protestant majority in England. Our class sessions will revolve around lectures and seminar-style discussions, except on Fridays, which are reserved solely for discussions and student presentations on the readings.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 20121 Virgins, Wives, and Succubi: Women and Medieval Literature (3 Credit Hours)
Women have been associated with original sin since the temptation of Eve. They are redeemed through their connection with the Virgin Mary but condemned again by the conflicting demands of chastity and marriage. Christian misogyny merged with medical treatises during the Middle Ages to create a complex matrix through which female and male bodies were understood and women's and men's social expectations were constructed. This course investigates the ways in which Old and Middle English literature both reflects and resists the tropes that posited women as either properly chaste or overly sexed. It explores representations of women in writing and film and considers how medieval conceptions of women move forward into the modern era. What did it mean to be a woman in the Middle Ages? How have pre modern ideas about gendered bodies and behaviors come to bear on contemporary ideology? To what extent does the modern era remain in the shadow of its medieval past?
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 20160 Arthur through the Ages (3 Credit Hours)
King Arthur is perhaps the most well-known figure from medieval European lore. The sheer number of movies, TV shows, and books about Arthur and his court indicate a continued and flourishing interest in Arthurian legend. But what are these contemporary writers re-making? Who exactly was Arthur? The goal of this course is not to discover the “real,” historical Arthur (although this question will certainly arise during the semester), nor is it to find the most “accurate” source for the Arthurian legend. Rather, this course aims to explore Arthur from two different angles. First, we will examine some of the foundational medieval texts that discuss Arthur and his beloved Camelot: Chretien de Troyes’s Arthurian Romances and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. Second we will use more modern works—such as Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1596), Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Guy Ritchie’s film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), and the short story collection Sword, Stone, Table (2021)—as springboards for discussing how and why people continue to write about Arthur. Although the course centers around Arthur’s character, we will of course discuss Guinevere, Merlin, Lancelot, and other residents of Arthur’s court throughout the semester.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 20192 Dogs, Trial By Combat, and Other Medieval Animal Stories (3 Credit Hours)
Did you know that King Charlemagne had a pet elephant? Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Animals are everywhere in medieval literature: animals brought from far away, animals that speak with human voices, dogs that fight trial by combat, hunting hounds, roosters that are full of themselves, and foxes too clever for their own good. We will explore the literary significance of animals, and how animals influence and become integral to cultural ideas – up to and including what it means to be a human being. Animals will serve as our point of departure to learn about fundamental concepts and skills essential to the study of literature. Together, we will discuss a wide range of stories from the Middle Ages, practice literary analysis, and learn to hone our analysis and our skill at writing with essays and research about animals in the literature of the Middle Ages.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 20204 #Wanderlust: Medieval Pilgrims, Instagram, Influencers, and Self-Love (3 Credit Hours)
If a trip abroad doesn't end with a #wanderlust Instagram post, did it actually happen? From the medieval invention of travel writing to Kylie Jenner's most recent Instagram post, humans have always used art to capture their journeys. This course asks you to read narratives of travel produced by writers from the Middle Ages alongside examples from our own contemporary moment. A broad interpretation of the term "literatures" will allow us to recognize and read into deep veins of similarity that run between medieval manuscripts and today's Internet. You will have the opportunity to compare the earliest examples of travel writing, left to us by medieval pilgrims, with some of the most innovative kinds of travel writing being produced today. As we will see, the ways these pilgrims wrote about their travels and thought about the written word bear some striking similarities to (and some major differences from!) the ways we depict and narrativize our adventures today. At its core, the class asks you to explore whether engagements with places abroad are complete without representation, and so as we read and discuss the course literatures, you will be asked to produce both analytical work about the texts we explore as well as your own creative travel accounts on the Michiana area.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 20223 Western Civilization to 1500 (3 Credit Hours)
A survey of the central themes in Western civilization from ancient Mesopotamia to the Renaissance. Emphasis will be on problems of social organization, especially the mutual obligations and responsibilities of individuals and states; evolving concepts of justice; aesthetic standards; religious ideas and institutions; basic philosophical concepts; different kinds of states; and the ideologies that defined and sustained them.
Corequisites: HIST 22200
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 20227 Christianity, Commerce, and Consumerism: The Last 1000 Years (3 Credit Hours)
The capitalism and consumerism that now influences the entire world arose within a religious culture-that of Western Christianity-whose central figure extolled poverty and self-denial, and whose most important early missionary wrote that "the love of money is the root of all evils." How did this happen? This course takes a long-term view of the emergence of modern economic life in relationship to Christianity beginning with the upturn in commerce and the monetization of the European economy in the eleventh century and continuing through the relationship between markets and Christian morality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the religio-political disruptions of the Reformation era laid the foundations for the disembedding of economics from Christian ethics and thus made possible modern Western capitalism and consumerism.
Corequisites: HIST 12390
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKHI - Core History
MI 20276 Introduction to Islamic Civilization (3 Credit Hours)
This course is designed to introduce students to Islamic civilization and Muslim culture and societies. The course will cover the foundations of Islamic belief, worship, and institutions, along with the evolution of sacred law (al-shari`a) and theology, as well as various aspects of intellectual activities. The Koran and the life of the Prophet Muhammad will be examined in detail. Both Sunni and Shi`i perspectives will be considered. Major Sufi personalities will be discussed to illuminate the mystical, and popular, tradition in Islam. Topics on arts, architecture, literary culture, and sciences will be covered. Although the course is concerned more with the history of ideas than with modern Islam as such, it has great relevance for understanding contemporary Muslim attitudes and political, social, and cultural trends in the Muslim world today.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 20348 The Thought of Aquinas (3 Credit Hours)
This course provides an overview of certain central teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas with attention particularly to philosophical topics touching upon theological questions. 1) Faith and reason and the ways to God; 2) Human nature, particularly soul, body, and the image of God; 3) Law and Virtue; 4) Nature and Grace.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSP - Core 2nd Philosophy
MI 20362 Philosophical History of God (3 Credit Hours)
Many people believe in God, but just what is it that they are believing in? Just what do we mean when we talk about God? In this course, students will be introduced to various philosophical conceptions of God, and will consider what we can know about God given only the light of reason. Are there good reasons to assign to God the typical attributes we do, such as are omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence? Some additional recurring questions will be: Is God's creation of the world free or necessary? Does God know particulars, including us humans? Is God changeless, and if so, what is the point of prayer? Is there will in God? The course will take a broadly historical approach, moving forward from pre-Socratic ways of talking about the first principle into discussions about how we name God, debates about divine transcendence, as well as the question of whether we can consider God at all in philosophy. Goals for the class include developing a rigorous and coherent notion of God; to appreciate the difficulties of forming such a conception; and of understanding why certain ways of talking about God developed historically. Finally, although we will not be considering God in the context of religion, it will become evident that at least some conceptions of God are common to a wide swath of religious traditions, and that these philosophical ideas can spread from one cultural tradition to another.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSP - Core 2nd Philosophy
MI 20367 Philosophy of Religion (3 Credit Hours)
This course will examine principal questions in the philosophy of religion relating to the nature and existence of God, religious beliefs, religious experience, divine hiddenness, religious pluralism and exclusivism, immortality, the relationship between God and ethics, and other questions. For details about specific sections in a particular semester, see https://philosophy.nd.edu/courses/2nd-courses-in-philosophy/.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSP - Core 2nd Philosophy
MI 20408 The Eastern Church: Theology and History (3 Credit Hours)
The course provides an overview of the variety of the Eastern rite Churches belonging to different cultural traditions of Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean world. The students will be introduced to the theological views and liturgical life of the Eastern rite Christians, i.e., Orthodox, Oriental and Eastern Catholic, and their fascinating history. In the second part of the course we shall explore the Byzantine rite Churches in more detail, and discuss the challenges their theology and history present to the Christian world at large. Special attention will be given to Slavic Christianity and especially Russian and Ukrainian religious history. Reflection on the diversity of Christian traditions will lead to important insights into theological topics of central importance for today such as theology of culture, ecclesiology, sacramental theology and theology of history.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology, WKHI - Core History
MI 20423 Virgin Mary in Teaching, Tradition, and Art (3 Credit Hours)
This course surveys the figure of the Virgin Mary in doctrine, devotion, liturgy, and the arts. The course begins by examining Mary's role in the New Testament Gospels, and continues with studies of the apocryphal narratives of her birth, childhood, marriage, motherhood, death, and bodily assumption into heaven; the doctrinal debates regarding her title, God-Bearer, in the patristic period; her intercessory role in medieval Christianity; the sixteenth-century Catholic and Protestant Reformation challenges to and reaffirmations of her theological position. It finally considers her place in contemporary ecumenical dialogue. Special attention will be given to the rich and varied representations of Mary in the history of Christian visual art.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20428 Liturgy Across Time and Traditions (3 Credit Hours)
This course studies the history and meaning of liturgy and centers around three key areas, namely: (1) Anthropology: Why do humans pursue ritual activity as a means of interaction with the divine? What forms did religious ritual take in the ancient Jewish and pre-Christian Graeco-Roman worlds? (2) Theology: How does the Christian belief in the incarnation and paschal mystery enrich this anthropology of ritual? What are the ecclesiological underpinnings of the Church's liturgy? How does the Church understand its sacraments as an anticipation and actualization of the age to come? (3) History: How has the Church's sacramental life developed over time? What has remained constant in spite of historical change?
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20444 Aquinas, Faith, and Wisdom (3 Credit Hours)
This course offers a theological introduction to the main teachings of the Christian faith, through the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Throughout his theology, Aquinas is committed to identifying, proclaiming, and interpreting the principal Christian claims: about the triune God who is beginning and end of all existence; about Christ, who is God become human for the salvation of others; about humans, who are made by and for God, and who through Christ can attain to God as their end. Aquinas is concerned as well to show the overall coherence of the main affirmations about God,
Christ (and his sacraments) and humans. Supplementary readings will be drawn from throughout the theological traditions, both East and West, to confirm and undergird, occasionally challenge, Aquinas in his pursuit of understanding of the Christian faith. Included will be selections from conciliar documents; Augustine; Cyril of Alexandria; Maximus the Confessor; Anselm; Bonaventure; John Calvin; and, Karl Barth and Joseph Ratzinger.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20456 The Cross in the History of Christianity: Texts, Art, and Tradition (3 Credit Hours)
A historical survey of the cross and crucifix in Christian theology, popular piety, ritual practice, and art, from the New Testament though the sixteenth-century and in both eastern and western traditions. Topics include the discovery and dissemination of relics of the True Cross, the emergence and development of crucifixion iconography, hymns dedicated to the cross, and the liturgical feasts and veneration of the cross.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20467 Jewish-Christian Disputations to Dialogue (3 Credit Hours)
This course explores difficult theological questions attending the evolution of Jewish-Christian encounter from the adversarial disputations of the Middle Ages to the dynamic dialogues of the present day. How did medieval Christians understand Judaism, and the prophetic roots of the Church in the Old Testament? What doctrines and prophecies proved divisive for Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages? How did scripture and the Talmud mediate those disputes? Why did Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages resort to contemptuous theologies of the other? Did Christian anti-Jewish preaching contribute to modern antisemitism? What theological pathways to Jewish-Christian reconciliation have opened since the twentieth century? What remains in dispute? What conditions can promote authentic conversations about God between the two religions? These questions will help to assess the progress achieved by the theological dialogues between Jews and Christian since the Holocaust and Vatican II.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20473 Islam and Christian Theology (3 Credit Hours)
While many Christians have described Islam as a Christian heresy, many Muslims consider Christianity to be an Islamic heresy. Jesus, they maintain, was a Muslim prophet. Like Adam and Abraham before him, like Muhammad after him, he was sent to preach Islam. In this view Islam is the natural religion--eternal, universal, and unchanging. Other religions, including Christianity, arose only when people went astray. Therefore Muslims have long challenged the legitimacy of Christian doctrines that differ from Islam, including the Trinity, the incarnation, the cross, and the new covenant and the church. In this course we will examine Islamic writings, from the Qur'an to contemporary texts, in which these doctrines are challenged. We will then examine the history of Christian responses to these challenges and consider, as theologians, how Christians might approach them today. Regarding the Islamic Challenge to Christian Theology" is the second of two required theology courses at Notre Dame (the "development" course). These two courses are directed towards a number of goals. First, they provide students with information about the Bible and Christian theology that in itself is important. Second, they form the basis of a Catholic community at Notre Dame where all students (whether or not they are practicing Catholics) have a common experience of texts and questions that might be discussed not only in class but while eating mashed potatoes in North Dining Hall. Third, theology itself is meant as a guiding light for all other classes. As with the great European universities (Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge etc.), Notre Dame was founded by the church to be a community where students are strengthened in their faith and morals, and therefore more able to see the truth in other fields, whether biology, music, or history. Like the first required course (Foundations), Regarding the Islamic Challenge to Christian Theology has the same goals. This is not an Islamic Studies course. It is a course which takes Islam's challenge to Christian teaching as the starting point for Christian theological reflection.
Prerequisites: THEO 10001 or THEO 13183 or THEO 20001 or THEO 24805
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20485 C.S. Lewis: Sin, Sanctity, and the Saints (3 Credit Hours)
What is the path for each person through sanctification to the beatific vision? Using the fiction of C.S. Lewis for sign posts along that path, this course will consider the doctrine of sin (Screwtape Letters), sanctification as cooperating with grace (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Perelandra), and the final formation of saints (The Great Divorce, The Last Battle). Other authors will be helpful in understanding Christian spirituality as a struglle to overcome the passions and cultivate the virtues: St. Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Dorothy Sayers, Joseph Pieper, and G.K. Chesterton.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20492 God's Grace and Human Action (3 Credit Hours)
Salvation, according to St. Paul, is through grace that is freely given by God (Rom 3:24). Yet, humans are also enjoined to work out their salvation (Phil 2:12), as cooperators with God (1 Cor. 3:9). How do these two aspects, divine grace and human action, fit together in the initial gift and outworking of human salvation? Can humans work out their salvation if salvation is ultimately a gift from God? What are the theological ramifications of such a teaching? In the Western theological tradition, St. Augustine of Hippo, the 'Doctor gratiae' (Doctor of Grace) worked out an understanding of grace in terms of God's prior and continual work in humans. Augustine's doctrine, which underwent development in his own lifetime, was received and developed in significant ways throughout the high and late middle ages and into the period of the Protestant Reformation. In this course, we will explore the 'doctrine of grace' as it is received and developed by key thinkers in the Christian tradition of the West: Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20494 From Bernard to Bernadette: The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception (3 Credit Hours)
This course traces the development of the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception and its theological significance today. The course proceeds in four units. It first explores Christian teaching on Original Sin (the sin from which Mary is believed to have been preserved). It then examines key primary texts (Anselm, Aquinas, Duns Scotus) in the development of the Marian dogma. Third, it focusses on the Marian apparitions in 1858 at Lourdes, which occurred four years after the promulgation of the dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854. Fourth, it studies the contemporary significance of the dogma for Christian anthropology, ecclesiology, and ecumenism. The teaching on Mary's Immaculate Conception is shown to be interconnected to the Church's beliefs about human nature (creation, Fall, sexuality), Christ, redemption, the sacraments, and sanctification.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20503 Saints and the Theology of Warfare (3 Credit Hours)
The histories of sainthood, war, and theology are strangely intertwined. Accounts of violent warfare in the Old Testament led the Manichaeans and the Marcionites to reject the Old Testament and its God and to deny the holiness of Jewish patriarchs (Abraham, Jacob, Moses), prophets, and kings (David). Defending the unity of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, Saint Augustine defended the holiness of Old Testament battle-leaders and laid the foundation for a 'Just War' theory. Many Christian saints (Martin of Tours, Christopher, Guthlac, Francis of Assisi) became hermits and ascetics after quitting military service, turning battle against the enemy into a discipline of struggle against the devil and his temptations. Some former soldiers (e.g., Saint Ignatius of Loyola) adopted military discipline, language, and images in their striving for holiness. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux taught that Christian knighthood and the Crusades could be paths to sainthood, even as he warned against the spiritual dangers of warfare. Saints Joan of Arc and Saint George were warrior saints and are invoked by soldiers. In modern times, reflection on warfare has inspired extraordinary writings by mystically gifted souls (e.g., Teilhard de Chardin's Mass on the Altar of the World, Simone Weil's Iliad, Poem of Force) who served in war zones. Other saints, martyrs, and mystics (Dorothy Day, Franz Jagerstaetter, Franz Reinisch) have, however, refused military service as idolatrous. The Church's social teaching constantly proclaims the call to peace and peacemaking, the possibility of conscientious objection, and the criteria for just and unjust war. This course seeks to understand the diversity of saintly decisions and practices and to discern their faithfulness to Christian doctrine.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 20583 From the "Sea in the Middle": Medieval Mediterranean's Stories (3 Credit Hours)
The objective of this course is to explore the intricate tapestry of the multiethnic and multicultural Italian peninsula during the Late Middle Ages (12th-15th Centuries) and its interactions with Mediterranean societies. Throughout this course, we will dissect pivotal historical events, cultural and religious exchanges, gender and social issues, geographical implications, and the traditions of the primary populations inhabiting the region. Our journey through this rich history will be guided by Italian authors of short stories, offering us a profound insight into this captivating fusion of civilizations.
During the Late Middle Ages, Italians, particularly Venetians, Pisans, Genoese, and Florentines, reigned as the foremost commercial and naval powerhouses in the Mediterranean. Eminent Tuscan literary figures and intellectuals such as Giovanni Boccaccio, Franco Sacchetti, and Giovanni Sercambi (to name just a few) demonstrated a remarkable ability to capture and expertly convey in their narratives the multifaceted sociological, political, religious, geographical, historical, and psychological intricacies characterizing this enduring cultural crossroads.
Within the intricate and interconnected Mediterranean environment, the short story indisputably emerged as the most prevalent and esteemed literary genre, transcending cultural and geographic boundaries. This genre encompasses a vast array of themes, meticulously portraying courtly love, chivalric values, the far-reaching impacts of the Crusades, the interplay among the three Monotheistic Religions, the tensions between nobility and bourgeoisie, varying perspectives on women and their societal roles from Spain to the Arabic domains, encounters – and sometimes conflicts – between distinct cultures, pivotal Mediterranean historical events, and the initial ventures into geographical exploration. As our course unfolds, we will discover that these themes represent only a fraction of the myriad facets that the short story has adeptly embraced and narrated for generations of avid readers.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 20609 Reading and Writing Latin Prose (3 Credit Hours)
This second-year language course continues the review of grammar begun in CLLA 20003 and introduces students to stylistic analysis through close readings of Latin prose authors such as Cicero and the younger Pliny. A special feature of the course is that students learn to write classical Latin for themselves.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 20663 The 1001 Nights (3 Credit Hours)
The Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, is a collection of tales originated in the Arab lands that has become a masterpiece of world literature. These enchanting stories, framed by the tale of Scheherazade (or Shahrazad), have enjoyed a widespread and varied reputation over the centuries and across cultures. It is said that the Thousand and One Nights is the most read (or heard about) book in human history, second only to Bible. In this class, we will examine these stories from a variety of academic and cultural perspectives, taking advantage of the wealth of material available (both textual and audio-visual). We will examine issues of provenance: where did these stories originate and when? We will study the stories as literary texts as well as historical documents, asking what, if anything, they tell us about the cultures they reflect and the societies in which they are set. We will examine how these tales have been interpreted by later societies, both Arab and Western, and what those interpretations tell us about the interpreters. We will use this class and its content to introduce ourselves to the study of the Middle East, its languages, history, literature, and peoples. We will gain a better understanding of the analytical tools and techniques for the study and appreciation of literature in general.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 20670 Irish Literature and Culture I (3 Credit Hours)
Ireland produced one of the most unique, extensive, and oldest literatures in Europe. In this class we look at a wide range of stories -- saints' lives, political poetry, myth and legend, heroic epic, lament, and placelore -- from ca. 800-1800 C.E. We learn about the changing religious, political, cultural and intellectual contexts to which these Irish women and men responded with their powerful compositions. We ask: what did Irish writers record about their conversion from paganism to Christianity? How did they use Gaelic poetry to protest invasion and English colonization? How did texts created by and about remarkable women like St. Brigit, the warrior-queen Medb, and the keening poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, address issues of gender and power in a heavily patriarchal Ireland? In this class we think about the transformative potential of words, and ask the question: what is literature, and how do we recognize and appreciate it? What defines Irish literature, and what has made it so politically and culturally dynamic? By looking at authors ranging from saints and scholars to dispossessed poets and grieving women, we examine the voices from Ireland's past that still speak to us today.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 20705 Art/Arch., Medieval World (3 Credit Hours)
This course will survey the major objects, images, and monuments from Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East between circa 300 AD and circa 1400 AD. It will begin with the first examples of Christian art in the Early Christian period and end with the precursors of the Renaissance. The course will cover a fascinating variety of art historical, theological, and cultural topics relevant to medieval art: the origins of modern painting; politics and monumental art; pilgrimage, relics, and the cult of the Saints; manuscript making and the origins of the book; Iconoclasm; and the Crusades, among others. By the end of the course, students will gain concrete knowledge of the vibrant and varied artworks, figures, and concepts that have shaped the visual imagination of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East. Students will further acquire "visual literacy" skills that will allow them to interpret images and "read" visual objects and texts together.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 20772 Music Histories and Cultures I (3 Credit Hours)
A survey of music. The study of the major forms and styles in Western history. Required of music majors and minors, but open to students with sufficient musical background.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 20800 Christianity in the Roman World (3 Credit Hours)
Ancient Christianity developed and spread in the confines of the Roman World, both directly, under Roman rule, and in constant interchange with classical culture, Roman political and cultural institutions. As a result of its emergence, everything in the Roman world changed: thoughts, beliefs, norms, aesthetic preferences and social norms. But how exactly did that shift happen? What did it mean to become a Christian in the Roman world, and how was Christianity itself shaped by that interaction? In this course, we will explore the social, cultural and political preconditions and consequences of Christianization in late antiquity. We will begin with a look at the ancient Roman world at its height - the age of the Emperor Augustus, which also saw the emergence of the Christian faith - and will go on to consider important steps in the interaction between these two forces: from conflict and persecution to a redefinition of the ancient heritage and a new understanding of Roman-ness in the Western World. Along the way, we will encounter many of the focal issues that shape the interactions between the church and the secular world to this day, as well as challenge every Christian's views and ethical duties, such as: how did the early Christians/how do we react to phenomena of otherness (migration, minorities, heterodoxy)? How does/did Christianity shape our understanding of the social order, and of gender roles? To which degree should Church and State interact, collaborate, or keep apart (e.g. in the military, the Christian basis of secular power, Christian imperialism)? We will base our discussion on the extant primary sources: Objects of art and architecture, archaeological remains, inscriptions and literary texts. Thus, we will also discuss the theoretical approaches these various documents require, and the methods we employ to understand what they tell us about the past.
MI 20820 From Hannibal to Augustine: Rome and North Africa (3 Credit Hours)
The course explores the history, culture, religion and society of Roman North Africa, one of the centers of early Latin Christianity. Important authors such as Cyprian, Tertullian, Lactantius, Perpetua and above all Augustine of Hippo lived and wrote in the region dominated by the ancient Phoenician city of Carthage, and this is where some of the greatest writings of ancient Christianity were produced.
In this course, we will situate the culturally and economically fertile environment of 3rd to 5th -century North Africa in its context in terms of geography (surrounded by the Mediterranean, the Sahara desert, the African provinces to the East, first and foremost Egypt, and lastly the Iberian Peninsula, from where the Vandal invaders would arrive), politics and history (from the Phoenician colonization to the arrival of the Arabs), economics, multiethnicity and religious diversity. We will discuss literary works, works of art, archaeological relics and historical sources to gain a multifacetedunderstanding of a complex and fascinating era whose legacy would contribute so much to shaping the Christian Middle Ages.
Knowledge of Greek or Latin is not required. No prerequisites.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 20821 Architectural History I (3 Credit Hours)
This course provides a survey of architectural history from the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations to Europe during the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Also included are Islamic, pre-Columbian, and Far Eastern building traditions. Each period is studied in relation to physical determinants, such as climate, materials, technology, and geography, and historical determinants such as economics, religion, politics, society, and culture. Fall.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 20822 Buried Cities, Ancient Tribes: Mysteries of the Past (3 Credit Hours)
Can the secrets of the past help us solve our problems in the future? This course uncovers the clues that our ancestors left behind in ruins, abandoned cities, pyramids, and on the earth itself. We will discuss key issues facing humanity today through the lens of the past. How prone are we as a species to degrading our environment? How flexible are we in the face of environmental change? Are humans basically violent, and are we destined to keep killing each other? These are some of the big questions that can be addressed using the archaeological record. The anthropological and archaeological study of past failure (and success) can help us understand the urgent challenges our our own age.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSS - Core Social Science
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 20835 Ancient and Modern Slavery (3 Credit Hours)
This course aims at establishing a conversation between past and present and between the conceptions, justifications, laws, practices, and experiences of slavery in different cultures. To this goal, we will start from the Greeks and the Romans and then explore forms of contemporary slavery in Europe and beyond including a social ethics lens. An initial comparison between Greek and Roman conceptions of slavery will introduce the students to the variety of the phenomenon: for the Greeks, slavery depended on the superiority of some races over others, and this superiority was so self-evident that it needed no demonstration. It logically follows that they saw slavery as natural, racial, and permanent. Romans practiced slavery on a larger scale, but saw it as a necessary evil, which depended on the bad luck of single individuals and therefore was not necessarily permanent nor racially based. The contract between these two conceptions will provide a blueprint to look at later conceptions of slavery. It will also introduce an interdisciplinary approach, to explore slavery especially from a philosophical, moral, legal, economical, and human point of view.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKIN - Core Integration
MI 20886 Christian Spirituality (3 Credit Hours)
This course is offered as an introduction to the Christian spiritual tradition, from its roots in the Old and New Testaments, to representative figures of the Christian East (Orthodoxy) and Christian West (Catholic and Protestant). Particular attention will be devoted to the notion of "stages" of the spiritual life, culminating in what many saints have described as "mystical union." Other than the Scriptures, figures to be read include Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Thomas Merton.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKDT-Core Devlopment. Theology
MI 22001 The World of the Middle Ages: Tutorial (0 Credit Hours)
Discussion section accompanying MI 20001.
MI 30008 Medieval Violence (3 Credit Hours)
Violence and bloodshed have long been central to the modern conception
of the middle ages. In recent film and literature, the perceived "realism" of a given work tends, by
and large, to correspond directly with the willingness of the creators to depict brutality. Even in
the medievalism of popular fantasy, the depiction of violence in all its varied forms, from the
battlefield to the bedchamber, has been justified and excused by claims of representing past
realities of common experience. This course will question just how violent the middle ages were,
and for whom. More importantly, it will seek to understand how the varied cultures and peoples
of medieval Europe conceptualized and understood violence themselves, and what role it played
in their lives and imaginations.
In the course of our investigation, we will explore literary narratives of vengeance and
crusade and farcical tales of household bloodshed. We will read law codes and sermons
attempting to regulate and channel violence. We will read accounts, justifications, and
repudiations of torture, execution, and mercy. We will read about peace-making and peace-
breaking, and the stories that were told about it. We will question what constitutes violence, and
how violence relates to shifting categories of gender, class, and group identity. In all of this, we
will seek to identify the differences and similarities between their conceptions of violence and
our own can teach us not only about them, but about ourselves.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKHI - Core History
MI 30067 The Arabic Literary Heritage (3 Credit Hours)
This course introduces students to classical/medieval Arabic literature from its beginnings in the pre-Islamic period to the eve of the Ottoman Empire (600-1517). Its emphasis is on direct examination of Arabic literature through a close reading of the representative texts in English translation. Among the topics to be discussed: the impact of Islam on the Arabic literary tradition, the relationship between convention and invention, the emergence of lyric genres and the development of a concept of fiction. Readings include pre-Islamic Arabian poetry, the Qur'an (as literary text), lyric poetry and Sufi poetry, the Arabian Nights and medieval Arabic narrative romances. No knowledge of Arabic is required.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30195 British Literary Traditions I (3 Credit Hours)
This is an introductory survey of English poetic and prose texts written from the eighth to the mid-seventeenth century. We will study these literary artifacts as imaginative representatives of experience, as cultural maps, and as human messages-in-a-bottle, set afloat in the seas of time. As we read these selections composed in English from past centuries past, we will be looking for both familiarity and strangeness. We will also be forming a sense of the variety and differing uses of literary genres: epic and romance [Beowulf and Sir Gawain & the Green Knight]; short story [Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the Lais of Marie de France]; religious diary [excerpts from the mystical visions of Julian of Norwich in Revelations of Divine Love] and autobiography [from the first written in English, authored by Marjorie Kempe, a laywoman who records her business ventures, her negotiations of marital sex life, her adventures on pilgrimage, and her religious examination by the archbishop as a potential heretic]. We will also read lyric poems from the Old and Middle English periods, and from the Renaissance and seventeenth centuries, including some of Shakespeare's sonnets; political satire [excerpts from Utopia, a prose fiction authored by Sir/Saint Thomas More]; and at least on play - possibly two - from the Medieval and/or Renaissance performing tradition. The semester's literary pilgrimage will conclude by coming full circle, back to the epic revisited, with selections from Milton's Paradise Lost. Regular short quizzes. Midterm & final examinations. Two short (5-10 pp.) Essays, due at mid-term and end-term. Text: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. I, 7th edition.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30201 Byzantine History II: Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean, 1000-1500 (3 Credit Hours)
This course explores the major developments in Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean from the time of the crusades and the eastward expansion of the Italian naval powers until the rise of the Ottoman Empire to a new universal power unifying the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor under the rule of a Muslim sultanate. The encounter between Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians in the wake of the crusade led to political rivalries and religious discord, culminating in the Latin conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade of 1204. While the eastward expansion of Italian naval powers had already begun in the late eleventh century, it was mainly as a result of 1204 that Venice and, later on, Genoa became predominant political and economic factors in the Eastern Mediterranean, controlling much of the long-distance seaborne trade between Italy and the Syrian coast. The Anatolian Seljuk Turks initiated the gradual Turkification and Islamization of Asia Minor. In the thirteenth century, the Eastern Mediterranean endured increasing pressure from the Mongols and the Mamluk sultanate. One of the results of this development was the rise of the Ottoman principality to a leading political power incorporating large parts of the Balkan Peninsula and, in 1453, the city of Constantinople. We will discuss both socio-economic and political aspects of these developments.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30206 The Medieval Mediterranean (3 Credit Hours)
Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side for centuries in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages - the occupied the same towns, shopped in the same markets, dwelt in the same neighborhoods, read each other's books, and borrowed each other's stories. While covering the broad sweep of Latin-Christian, Islamic, and Byzantine civilizations that grew up in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea after the fall of Rome, we will focus especially the on-going interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this area. While doing so we will constantly ask how can we know - and what kinds of things we can know - about the Middle Ages, as we examine many types of medieval sources, including literary works, historical texts, religious and philosophical writings, and works of art. The course lectures will provide the student with sufficient understanding of the medieval Mediterranean that they will be able to read with profit the assigned texts which are all primary sources, written in a variety of Mediterranean languages, in English translation. The course will proceed partly chronologically - especially when it comes to the politics and geo-politics of the region - and partly thematically.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30222 Tudor England: Politics and Honor (3 Credit Hours)
The period from 1485 to 1603, often feted as something of a 'Golden Age' for England, saw that country undergo serious changes that challenged the traditional ways in which the nation conceived of itself. These included the break from Rome, the loss of England's foothold in France, and the unprecedented experience of monarchical rule by women. Each of these challenges demanded creative political responses and apologetic strategies harnessing intellectual resources from classical, Biblical, legal, chivalric and ecclesiastical sources. This course will examine these developments. It will also look at how the English, emerging from under the shadow of the internecine dynastic warfare of the fifteenth century, sought to preserve political stability and ensure a balance between continuity and change, and, furthermore, how individuals could use these unique circumstances to their own advantage.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 30235 Intro to Islamic History (3 Credit Hours)
This course offers a survey of Middle Eastern history from the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE until the rise of Mongol successor polities in the fifteenth century. The course is structured to cover political and cultural developments and their relationship with broader changes in society during the formative centuries of Islamic civilization. Specific topics include: the career of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of the earliest Muslim polity; the creation and breakup of the Islamic unitary state (the Caliphate); the impact of Turkish migrations on the Middle East; social practices surrounding the transmission of learning in the Middle Ages; the diversity of approaches to Muslim piety and their social and political expression; popular culture; non-Muslims in Islamic society; the creation of the medieval Islamic "international" cultural order. Among the more important themes will be long-term cultural and social continuities with the Islamic and ancient Near East, and concepts of religious and political authority.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30241 Ancient Japan (3 Credit Hours)
History is not a single "true story," but many competing narratives, each defined by values, interests, and political commitments. This course on ancient Japanese history provides an overview of three sets of competing narratives: first, the politically charged question of Japan's origins, when we explore archeological evidence and chronicles of the Sun Goddess; second, the question of whether culture (through continental imports of writing, religious forms, and statecraft) or nature (as disease and environmental degradation) defined the Yamato state from the sixth to the ninth century; and, third, whether Heian court power rested on economic, political, military, judicial, or aesthetic grounds and if its foundations were undermined internally or by the invasion of the Mongols. In examining these competing narratives, we aim to develop the disciplined imagination necessary to enter another culture and another time.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 30243 Experience of Conquest (3 Credit Hours)
The aim of this class is to try to understand what conquest, as we have traditionally called it, meant to the people who experienced it in some parts of the Americas that joined the Spanish monarchy in the sixteenth century. We'll concentrate on indigenous sources - documentary, pictorial, and material - and try to adopt the indigenous point of view, without neglecting sources mediated by Europeans. Although the class will concentrate on selected cases from Mesoamerica, the lecturer will try to set the materials in the context of other encounters, both within the Americas and further afield; and students will be free, if they wish, to explore case-studies from anywhere they choose in the Americas (in consultation with the lecturer and subject to his approval) in their individual projects.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30244 From Narratives to Data: Social Network, Geographical Mobility, & Criminals of Early Chinese Empires (3 Credit Hours)
This course will provide advanced undergraduates and graduate students with a critical introduction to digital humanities for the study of early China, the fountainhead of Chinese Civilization. Collaborating with the Center of Digital Scholarship, this course will focus on relational data with structured information on historical figures, especially high officials, of early Chinese empires. Throughout the semester, we will read academic articles, mine data from primary sources, and employ Gephi and ArcGIS to visualize data. Those constructed data will cover three major themes: how geographical mobility contributed to consolidating a newly unified empire over diversified regions; how social networks served as the hidden social structure channeling the flow of power and talents; and how criminal records and excavated legal statutes shed light on the unique understanding of law and its relationship with the state in Chinese history.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30247 Medieval Mediterranean Faiths (3 Credit Hours)
Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side for centuries in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean throughout the Middle Ages--the occupied the same towns, shopped in the same markets, dwelt in the same neighborhoods, read each others' books, and borrowed each other's stories. While covering the broad sweep of Latin-Christian, Islamic, and Byzantine civilizations that grew up in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea after the fall of Rome, we will focus especially the on-going interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this area. While doing so we will constantly ask how can we know--and what kinds of things we can know--about the Middle Ages, as we examine many types of medieval sources, including literary works, historical texts, religious and philosophical writings, and works of art.
Corequisites: MI 32247
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30271 Transformation of the Roman World (3 Credit Hours)
This course is designed as a general introduction into the early and middle Byzantine period, focusing on the various aspects of transformation from the late Roman Empire to Byzantium at the end of the so-called ‘Dark Ages'. The main topics are the Christianization of the Empire and the separation between East and West; reactions to the barbarian migrations, the Slavic expansion, and the Islamic conquests; patterns of social and economic change; iconoclasm; Byzantine relations with the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 30273 History of Science 1: Antiquity to Newton (3 Credit Hours)
This course is intended as the first of a two-part survey of Western science. We begin with a survey of the heritage of ancient (largely Greek) contributions to natural philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. We will continue with medieval studies of mathematics, motion, the heavens, living things, optics, materials, and alchemy in Arabic and Latin cultures. Given the importance of religion to the formation of these historical cultures, we will pay particular attention to the relations between broader philosophy, theology, and the emerging activities bearing the hallmarks of naturalistic and rational approaches we often distinguish as "science." Changing institutional homes for the study of nature also contextualize our study of key ideas and methods, from early philosophical schools to monasteries, universities, courts, and academies. Ultimately, we will consider whether there was such a thing as "the Scientific Revolution," and, if there was, what was so revolutionary about it.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30284 The Middle Ages on Film (3 Credit Hours)
This course will explore modern visions of the Middle Ages through film. We will view several feature-length films and numerous film clips, interspersed with readings from and about the Middle Ages. Together we will discuss and analyze both the texts and films. The films range from early silent films to Hollywood Golden Era classics to recent blockbusters. The course is divided into six segments: (1) the Crusades; (2) Eleanor of Aquitaine: wife and mother of kings; (3) Robin Hood; (4) King Arthur; (5) the Black Death; and (6) Joan of Arc. Students will write short daily assignments, two short essays, and a final paper or take-home exam. There are three required textbooks: Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (2002); Daniel Hobbins (trans.), The Trial of Joan of Arc; and Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph (2016).
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30286 The Crusades (3 Credit Hours)
In AD 1095, the Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Alexius Comnenus sent a letter to Pope Urban II, asking for succor from Latin Christendom in order to repel the Muslim invaders who were overrunning his empire. Pope Urban II did not merely comply with this request, but transformed it into a call to restore to Christendom the lands of Christianity's origin, which had been lost to Muslim rule in the seventh century. In doing so, Pope Urban inspired and unleashed an outpouring of religious fervor- and bloodshed- unique in the annals of Christian history. This course will be dedicated to the examination of this extraordinary movement, from the initial overwhelming response it aroused among Christians across Europe through the fall of Acre in 1291. Among the issues it will explore are the historical, political, and ideological background to the Crusades, in Byzantium, Europe, and the Islamic world; The Peasants' Crusade and the Children's Crusade; the Latin principalities in the Near East, their organization and societies; interactions between Muslims and Christians; the status and treatment of religious minorities; the legend of Prester John and how it inaugurated the beginning of the European exploration of Central and Eastern Asia; the Italian communes and growth of commerce; the military orders; the career of St. Louis in the Near East; the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates and the geopolitical consequences of the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century; and more. Students will spend the second half of the course researching and writing a capstone research paper utilizing primary sources in translation.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKHI - Core History
MI 30301 Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (3 Credit Hours)
This course will concentrate on major figures and persistent themes. A balance will be sought between scope and depth, the latter ensured by a close reading of selected texts.
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 30507 Contacts, encounters and exchanges: Iberian identities and (in)visible legacy of a Medieval frontier (3 Credit Hours)
As one of Europe?s main frontiers, Medieval Iberia was a space characterized by constant contacts, encounters, and exchanges between ?East? and ?West?, and between different political, national, cultural, linguistic, and religious identities. Long after the Spanish Reconquista was officially completed in 1492, and the actual frontier had disappeared, however, the notion of inhabiting a liminal space that emerged from the reality, as well as the idea, of being Europe's frontier continued to shape not only the Iberian imagination, but also the way in which different Iberian communities constructed and codified their collective identities. This course is devoted to exploring the legacy, both visible and invisible, of the Iberian past and how the notion of being a ?frontier? has shaped, and continues to shape not only Spain?s identity as a nation, but also other Iberian and Mediterranean national identities. Class materials will focus on Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary Iberian literatures and cultures, but will also include readings and/or films that explore the notion of ?frontier? as a theoretical framework by comparing Iberia with other ?frontiers?, both Medieval and Contemporary. Taught in Spanish.
MI 30561 Italy and Islam: Cultural Encounters from Dante to Today (3 Credit Hours)
The class will explore the representation of Islam and Muslims in Italian culture from the Middle Ages to the present, and will investigate how the perception of Islam has influenced and shaped the Italian identity. The course will start with an examination of the representation of the Islamic "other" in medieval Italian literature, especially in Dante's Divine Comedy and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Besides literature, we will also explore the impact of medieval Islamic architecture in Southern Italy, especially in Sicily. We will then deal with the Italian Renaissance and analyze both the relationship between Christian and Muslim characters in epic poems by authors such as Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, and the representation of the mori ("Moors") in some of the most relevant Italian paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries. We will then investigate nineteenth-century Italian culture, through the analysis of some influential lyric operas of the time. Finally, we will deal with the representation of the relationship between Italians and Muslims in 20th- and 21st-century Italian films and narratives by directors and writers such as Mohsen Melliti, Igiaba Scego, and Amara Lakhous. Students will appreciate how Islam has deeply influenced Italian culture and how Italy, a center of Mediterranean culture, has been meaningfully linked with Islam throughout the centuries. Students will develop an understanding of Italy in a global context thereby increasing their intercultural competency. Taught in English.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30577 Medieval-Renaissance Italian Literature and Culture (3 Credit Hours)
An introduction to the close reading and textual analysis of respresentative texts from the Duecento through the Renaissance, including Lentini, Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Poliziano, Machiavelli, and Ariosto.
Prerequisites: ROIT 20215 or ROIT 27500 or ROIT 20505
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 30578 What is Love? (3 Credit Hours)
What do we mean by the word Love? Is it passion? Madness? Is it friendship? Can it exist only among human beings? Love shapes communities, can promote war or peace, and raises fundamental questions about life. In the pre-modern world, love was conceived as a force that moved the individual and governed not only the body but the entire universe. Love was God and the quest for the Absolute. Love was also desire and the cause of many problems. By reading literature from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (from early lyric to Dante's universal love, Petrarch's exploration of the self, Boccaccio's legitimation of female desire, Michelangelo's homoerotic poetry, Machiavelli's comic impulses, Vittoria Colonna's spiritual rhymes), along with philosophical, religious, and rhetorical texts on love (from Plato and Augustine to Andrea Cappellanus, Richard of St. Victor, and Marsilio Ficino), we will see what has changed and what has persisted, and ultimately come to understand what we mean when we talk about Love.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 30659 Islamic Theology: From Classical Origins to Modern Challenges (3 Credit Hours)
This course studies the major themes of Islamic theology. It starts from the early debates concerned with Muslim views of God, the nature of the Qur?an, the prophethood of Muhammad and ends with current debates about the status of Islamic law (shari?a). It also discusses divine vs. human will, the role of politics in Muslim view of salvation and the limits of rationality. It traces how these topics moved from simple formulae to complex concepts due to socio-political controversies and conditions, whether they were sectarian or interreligious conflicts, crises of legitimacy, colonialism or modernity. The arguments of various schools are presented, and translated excerpts from prominent theologians are studied. As we read these texts we ask ourselves a number of questions. For example, what alternatives were possible for theologians other than what later became standard Muslim doctrines? What is the importance of imagination in the creation of these theological systems? Did modern Muslim theologians have better options to handle ancient traditions that most of them ended up adopting? Do some modern Muslim theologians have an alternative view to offer? The course is meant to help students see the problems of theology from an Islamic viewpoint that may deepen their understanding of wider religious questions.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30670 A History of Ireland: Language, Literature, People and Politics (3 Credit Hours)
The Irish language has a fascinating and turbulent history. From being the earliest and most copiously attested European vernacular outside the classical world of Greece and Rome, to a language on the verge of extinction in the late nineteenth century, few languages in Europe have endured such vicissitudes over a millennium and a half. Ireland is indeed unique in Western Europe in modern times in having been the colony of a neighboring country over a period of centuries. Not surprisingly, this colonial experience has left a profound and enduring imprint on the language and on its community of speakers. As much recent work on language endangerment around the world has brought to our attention, a language depends for its continued vitality on the entire material, social and cultural world, or "ecology", that sustains it. When this ecology is attacked and undermined, as occurs under colonialism, a language suffers as a result.
The history of the Irish language is therefore a case study in the complexity of a particular human experience over a period of 1500 years; it is a history not of linguistic forms and expressions per se but rather the history of the people who have used and who still use them, of the institutions that have nurtured and been sustained by the language and of the political slings and arrows of fortune that have undermined and threatened (but ultimately failed) to extinguish it. It is therefore a holistic history, a history of Ireland which foregrounds language (principally Irish but also those other languages and their speakers with which it has interacted and competed) as its overarching theme.
MI 30673 Celtic Literature: from the Middle Ages to the Modern World (3 Credit Hours)
In this class we will read and analyze a range of legends, myths, stories and more recent YA/ fantasy literature about the gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines of early Ireland and Wales. The original accounts, written in the Middle Ages (and read in English translation - no linguistic experience necessary!), provide insights into the medieval cultural contexts and goals behind these stories. However, we will also consider contemporary transformations of Celtic myth and legend in contemporary fiction and pop culture and ask how our expectations and tastes for the Celtic past speak to our worldview today. Requirements include an exam, multiple writing exercises, oral presentations, and 1-2 longer papers.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30684 Jews in European Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
In this seminar we will investigate the history of Jewish people living under Christian rule in Western Europe as well as under Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Most written source materials that are still extant today were produced by Christians (or Muslims respectively) who either ruled over their Jewish subjects or who most likely recorded atrocities against their heterodox neighbors. Very often these sources are distorted through an inversion of perpetrators and victims. They therefore need to be read with greatest attention and care. It is one aim of the seminar to enable students to deconstruct these distortions and reconstruct the real power relations which shaped the events and their recordings.
This of course also holds true for other individuals and groups which were presented as ‘others' to the respective mainstream society. As religion played an important role as a marker of identity and group formation throughout this period, we will also address the portrayal of alleged heretics and so-called ‘pagans' in Christian sources. We will use these medieval examples to critically analyze and discuss how these societies dealt with individuals and groups which they perceived and constructed as ‘other'. Finally, we will also discuss if certain forms and phenomena of anti-Jewish discrimination and violence might justly be understood as premodern forms of Anti-Semitism. All readings and discussions in English.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30715 Imagined Worlds: Now and Then (3 Credit Hours)
A survey of Spanish literature through 1700. Readings of selected texts in prose, poetry, and theater from the medieval, Renaissance, and baroque periods. Recommended prerequisite: ROSP 30310.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 30723 Art, High Ren in Florence/Rome (3 Credit Hours)
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bramante, and Raphael provide the basis for a study of one of the most impressive periods of artistic activity in Italy - the High Renaissance in Florence and Rome. It was Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary example that imposed extraordinary artistic and intellectual changes on an entire generation of painters, sculptors, and architects. Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, the new Republic of Florence, and the imperial papacy of Julius II recognized that the genius of Leonardo, Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others, could be brought into the service of the State. Under Julius, the Papal State became the supreme state in Italy, and for the first time in centuries, the papacy ranked as a great European power. With the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's (redesigned on a colossal scale by Bramante), the Vatican Palace (its city facade and Belvedere by Bramante, and papal apartments decorated by Raphael), and the Papal tomb (designed by Michelangelo), Rome, for the first time since the time of the Caesars, became the center of Western art.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30758 Kingdom, Empire and Devotion: Art in Anglo-Saxon, Ottonian and Romanesque Europe (3 Credit Hours)
This class explores the development of monumental mosaic and fresco in the Middle Ages through key monuments in places like Rome, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Palermo, and Venice. A central goal for the course will be to understand the ways in which mural paintings and mosaics distinguish themselves from other visual media in the medieval world. We will consider the relationship between murals and their architectural setting and how the relative size of wall paintings and mosaics impacts the way beholders relate to and understand them. We will also examine the many different functions of medieval murals, as media for story-telling, as liturgical instruments, and as vehicles for the transmission of knowledge, theological doctrines, or political propaganda
MI 30767 Medieval Murals and Mosaics (3 Credit Hours)
This class explores the development of monumental mosaic and fresco in the Middle Ages through key monuments in places like Rome, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Palermo, and Venice. A central goal for the course will be to understand the ways in which mural paintings and mosaics distinguish themselves from other visual media in the medieval world. We will consider the relationship between murals and their architectural setting and how the relative size of wall paintings and mosaics impacts the way beholders relate to and understand them. We will also examine the many different functions of medieval murals, as media for story-telling, as liturgical instruments, and as vehicles for the transmission of knowledge, theological doctrines, or political propaganda.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30769 Verbal Arts and Oral Traditions (3 Credit Hours)
This course will examine the practice, practitioners and different genres of the verbal arts: the folktale, legends, epic, proverb, riddle, etc., and will look at the different functions of these genres. It will also look at the research traditions devoted to the study of what has been variously termed folk narrative, oral literature, orature, as well as the verbal arts.
MI 30816 Chinese Ways of Thought (3 Credit Hours)
This lecture and discussion course on the religion, philosophy, and intellectual history of China that introduces the student to the world view and life experience of Chinese as they have been drawn from local traditions, as well as worship and sacrifice to heroes, and the cult of the dead. Through a close reading of primary texts in translation, it also surveys China's grand philosophical legacy of Daoism, Buddhism, "Confucianism" and "Neo-Confucianism," and the later religious accommodation of Christianity and Islam.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History, WKSP - Core 2nd Philosophy
MI 30817 The Samurai in Classical Japanese Literature (3 Credit Hours)
The sword-wielding samurai warrior is perhaps the most familiar icon of pre-modern Japan, one that continues to influence how the Japanese think of themselves and how others think of Japan even in modern times. Who were the samurai? How did they see themselves? How did other members of Japanese society see them in the past? How did the role and the image of the samurai change over time? To answer these questions, we will explore the depiction of samurai in various kinds of texts: episodes from quasi-historical chronicles, 14th-century Noh plays, 17th-century short stories, and 18th-century Kabuki and puppet plays. While some of these texts emphasize themes of loyalty, honor, and military prowess, others focus on the problems faced by samurai in their domestic lives during times of peace. The last part of the course will be devoted to the most famous of all stories, The Revenge of the 47 Samurai. Students will read eyewitness accounts of this vendetta, which occurred in 1702, and then explore how the well-known Kabuki/puppet play Chushingura (A Treasury of Loyal Retainers 1748) dramatizes the conflicting opinions surrounding it. All readings will be in English translation and no previ¬ous knowledge of Japan is required.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30820 Introduction to Japanese Civilization & Culture (3 Credit Hours)
This course provides an overview of the historical development of Japanese civilization and culture from the prehistoric era up through the 19th Century. Students will acquire a basic knowledge of Japanese geography, historical periods, changing class structure and political organization. The main emphasis, however, is on the development of the fine arts, such as painting, architecture, gardens, and sculpture. The course also introduces students to the important and continuous influence of Chinese art, literature, Buddhism and Confucianism. Through readings of selected literary works (prose fiction, poetry, essays on aesthetics), students will learn how shared aesthetic values changed over time in relation to their social and political context.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 30834 Chinese Civilization & Culture (3 Credit Hours)
This course surveys Chinese culture and civilization from the beginnings to the present time. Readings include traditional historical, philosophical, political, religious and literary texts as well as modern scholarship. Students are encouraged to bring in their experience, living or reading, of Western culture in order to form comparative and reflective perspectives.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History
MI 30836 Gendered Bodies in the Islamic Tradition (3 Credit Hours)
This interdisciplinary course offers a topical survey of the relationships between biological sex, culturally bound notions of "masculinity" and "femininity," and the gendered body in the Islamic tradition. The primary aim of the course is to explore the intersection of religion and social constructions of gender and the body in a variety of historical and cultural contexts in the Muslim World. Students read and interpret religious texts and commentaries, literary and legal texts, women's writings, and media in English translation. Coursework focuses on increasing students' understanding of the diversity of scholarly views on women's bodies as sites of piety and sites of political and social contestation (reproductive rights, public vs. private space, etc.).
MI 30837 Celtic & Viking Mythology (3 Credit Hours)
This course will examine the mythological and legendary traditions of the Celtic and Scandinavian worlds in the Iron Age and medieval periods. We will examine these traditions via the literary works produced by medieval Irish, Welsh, Scandinavian, and Icelandic writers, as well as in information recorded about them by foreign authors and in the archaeological record. We will also trace how these traditions impacted modern folklore and political ideologies. In so doing, we will aim to gain a better understanding of these historical peoples and the resonances and varied influences of their enduring literary traditions.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKHI - Core History
MI 30838 Women in the Celtic World (3 Credit Hours)
This course proposes to discuss the lives of Celtic women. To some, this might seem like an impossible task: if one is able to surmount the initial difficulty of defining just what a ‘Celtic woman’ is, then there remains the intractably spotty historical record to contend with. In this course, we will examine the historiographical difficulties of defining the Celtic World. We will undertake a broad and varied examination of the women who appear in the texts of ancient historians, of the historically attested women of the medieval political and ecclesiastical realms, and of literary and legendary women whose lives are placed in an ancient Celtic past by the medieval and modern authors who created them. Finally, a study of women active in the ‘Celtic Revival’ intellectual movement will demonstrate the continued significance of the ancient and medieval Celtic past into the modern era.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKHI - Core History
MI 32247 Medieval Mediterranean Faiths Tutorial (0 Credit Hours)
A required tutorial for students enrolled in MI 10247/30247 or its crosslists.
MI 33021 The Holy Roman Empire: From Beginnings to Interregnum (3 Credit Hours)
Although occupying a central position in the cultural, legal, literary, and political history of Europe, the Holy Roman Empire remains far too frequently sidelined within Anglophone surveys of the medieval period. This course is designed to serve as a corrective to this tendency, repositioning the Western Empire in all its diversity and geographic range at the heart of European development during the crucial millennium of the Middle Ages and its aftermath. Using a combination of primary and secondary sources, we will follow the development of the Empire in conception and reality from its Carolingian beginnings, through the heights of the Ottonian Renaissance, the fraught Salian age, and up through the great conflicts of the Staufer period, ending with the interregnum of the late-thirteenth century, during which an empire without an emperor was forced to both redefine and reinvent itself.
In this course we examine what the empire was and was not during the early centuries of its existence. To what extent was the empire understood to be a revival or extension of the Western Roman Empire? To what extent was Voltaire's 18th-century indictment of the empire as "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" an accurate assessment? What relevance does the early history of an institution long famed as a political anachronism have for us today?
Focusing on primary sources, we will trace both the institutional and cultural development of the empire and its varied peoples over the course of the Early and High Middle Ages, comparing our own interpretations with those of scholars both past and present. In so doing, we shall also seek to contextualize the history of the Holy Roman Empire alongside the contemporary kingdoms of France and England, while consciously eschewing normative models of institutional, legal, and (proto-)national development.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 33022 Towards a history of psychology. Ancient and medieval therapies of the soul (3 Credit Hours)
In ancient and medieval texts the soul is the principle of life, of sense-perception, emotions, passions, rational thought and ethical behavior. Throughout history, the investigation of the soul has been special in two ways. First of all, we are not addressing an external topic; we are treating ourselves. Secondly, this study of ourselves is not merely meant to describe and analyze, but to change and to form. Ancient philosophers thought of their work as "care of the soul." The soul is not a mechanism or machine, but something living which can err and go wrong. Pre-modern authorities often described this in the terms of sickness: The body may be sick and need the help of the doctor, and the soul may need therapy if it is sick. In the course, we will address a selection of texts and topics from ancient and medieval sources (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Neoplatonic authors and Christian authors from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages), and compare them with select contemporary texts. What constitutes a healthy soul? What are the sicknesses of the soul? What therapies are recommended? How can one build resilience and how much resilience is right? What role does gender play?
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKSP - Core 2nd Philosophy
MI 33023 Epic in the Heart of Europe: Medieval German Narrative (3 Credit Hours)
The epic narrative poems produced in Middle High German around the beginning of the thirteenth century stand amongst the greatest literary monuments of the Middle Ages. These tales have served as the inspiration for countless great works across the centuries, including the great operas of Richard Wagner, the films of Fritz Lang. What is more, the rediscovery of these narratives during the 18th and 19th centuries played a crucial role in the development of modern Philology and Medieval Studies as academic disciplines. Even divorced from their later legacy, these tales have lost little of their narrative power as entertainment and continue to be read for enjoyment to the present day.
In this course, we will encounter savage warriors, Amazonian queens, giants, dwarves, mysteries of faith, over-whelming passion, the tragic downfall of entire peoples, and the apotheosis of noble knights. Amidst these wonders, we will find stories and characters that feel at once familiar and profoundly alien. Our analysis of these texts will explore both their content and their form as we engage medieval epics are imaginative spaces in which the great anxieties and concerns of their creators and audience may be problematized and resolved through the trials and triumphs of larger-than-life figures battling against supernatural forces. At the same time, we will work to situate the impetus for the creation of these tales within a world undergoing profound cultural and political upheaval, standing in a liminal space between orality and literacy and witness to rapidly shifting understanding of authority, class, and gender.
Each term, the course will focus upon two longer works, complemented by a great variety of shorter works and excerpts from other medieval narratives. All texts will be available in English translation and no prior knowledge of German is expected or required.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 33685 Medieval Women’s Mysticism (3 Credit Hours)
How did the medieval Church’s great women mystics create a space where they could connect with God? Despite enclosure in convents, many medieval nuns held religious authority and contributed to the life and literature of the Catholic tradition. Paradoxically, the convent was a privileged space of female culture, where women authors and mystics flourished. This course will explore the spaces, both architectural and spiritual, where medieval nuns explored their relationship with God and wrote to help the souls of others. Focusing on Germany and on remarkable women such as Hildegard of Bingen, students will contextualize medieval women's mysticism in its historical milieu, including the realities of female enclosure, the daily round of convent life, and liturgical worship. We will compare mysticism in the convent to the writings and social context of women mystics in the city or at noble courts.
In Spring 2025, this course will make a class trip to Germany during Spring Break to visit the sites of medieval convents and continuously active communities of nuns.
Students must apply to the instructor to participate in this course.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKHI - Core History, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 33800 Japanese Monsters and Magic in Film and Literature (3 Credit Hours)
Vengeful spirits, foxes that turn into alluring women, green and red ogres, Godzilla, and Pokémon: these are some of the monsters that have spooked and beguiled Japanese people across time. This course explores how medieval legends and local histories of monsters and gods play an important role in identifying and resolving social anxieties throughout Japan's cultural history, from the 8th to the 21st century. The materials we will examine include literature, manga, film, and anime, in addition to scholarly essays and historical texts.
MI 33824 Chinese Literary Traditions (3 Credit Hours)
A survey course introducing students to the major themes and genres of Chinese literature through selected readings of representative texts.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 40003 Introduction to Christian Latin Texts (3 Credit Hours)
This class surveys the development of Christian Latin language and literature from their origins through Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. It introduces students to the various important linguistic, stylistic and literary influences that contributed to Christian Latin poetry and prose. Students will also be introduced to the varieties of Christian Latin texts and the bibliographical and research skills needed to pursue research into these texts. All along we will be concerned to improve our abilities to read and understand the Latin of the tradition that stretches from the first translations of scripture to the treatises of Jerome and Augustine. The survey of Medieval Latin language and literature in the spring semester follows and builds upon this course.
Prerequisites: CLLA 20004
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 40004 Medieval Latin (3 Credit Hours)
Students will develop the ability to read and comprehend Medieval Latin prose and poetry in a variety of genres (e.g., epic, history, hagiography, school texts and glosses, lyric poetry, drama, scholasticism). The course emphasizes the acquisition of the morphological, grammatical, and orthographic forms used in post-classical and medieval texts. Students will also augment and supplement their Classical Latin vocabulary with extended late antique and medieval vocabulary and idiom. Through reading a selection of texts from the fourth through fifteenth century, students will also acquire advanced translation skills to render Latin prose and poetry into smooth, readable English.
Prerequisites: Latin at the Intermediate level or above.
NB: The Medieval Academy of America's Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) offers competitive stipends for students taking either Medieval Latin for credit through the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame. Application details and eligibility information are available on the Medieval Academy website: http://www.medievalacademy.org/?page=CARA_Scholarships
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 40005 Latin Paleography (3 Credit Hours)
The course is an intensive survey of Latin scripts from antiquity through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Students will be able to accurately read and transcribe Latin scripts, expand systems of abbreviation, identify, date, and localize (when possible) different hands, and defend their interpretations. There will be a strong emphasis on the different varieties of Gothic script (textualis, cursiva, hybrida, etc.). Once the class reaches the twelfth century, students will work extensively with Notre Dame¹s medieval collection of 288 manuscripts and fragments. Aspects of practical applications and textual criticism will be addressed at the end of the course. All meetings will be held in the Special Collections Seminar Room.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 40009 Medieval Metamorphoses: Ovid in the Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
Ovid's Metamorphoses enjoyed a wide circulation from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages, and the poem's influence on later Latin poets such as Claudian and Ausonius as well as vernacular authors like Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, John Gower, Petrarch, and Chaucer remains unparalleled. This course will focus on the ways the Metamorphoses was read over time spanning its literal, allegorical, historical, and moral interpretations. A survey of major Ovidian expositors and commentators such as Ps-Lactantius, Arnulf of Orléans, the "Vulgate" Commentator, John of Garland, Giovanni del Virgilio, and Pierre Bersuire will illustrate the poem's movement throughout different contexts and milieus. We will read selections of the Metamorphoses together with medieval texts to understand the exegetical workings of paratextual genres such as glosulae, tituli, allegoriae, integumenta, and prose paraphrases. This course also has a material culture component where students will work with manuscripts and early printed books which transmit Ovidian paratexts to further appreciate the utilitarian traditions of the objects in tandem with the texts used to explicate perhaps the most stylistically innovative Roman poem ever written. Recommended for students who have completed intermediate Latin.
MI 40036 Neoplatonism and its Medieval Transformations: The Latin, Byzantine, and Arabic Traditions (3 Credit Hours)
Neoplatonic philosophy is one of the or maybe even the most influential intellectual movement in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and into modern times. Neoplatonic ideas shaped philosophical, theological, mystical and literary texts and art and architecture.
The course will study a wide range of Neoplatonic texts and of texts inspired by Neoplatonism from Antiquity into the Middle Ages, including the Byzantine, Latin and Arabic tradition.
As the intellecutal basis of the course, we will first study pagan Neoplatonism in late Antiquity. We will focus mainly on the founder of Neoplatonism Plotinus who transforms Platonic thought and combines it with Aristotelean ideas without neglecting Stoic input as well. Later developments in Neoplatonism will be dicussed as well, since they are the basis of Christian transformations of Neoplatonism (e.g. Porphyry, Proclus).
Then we will move to the first Christian transformations of Neoplatonic thought in late Antiquity, especially Dionysius the Areopagite, but also Boethius and Augustine.
After a briefer detour to Neoplatonism in Byzantium we will focus on the neoplatonic traditions in the Middle Ages, focusing especially on the first translations of Dionysius the Areopagite and his reception in philosophy, theology, mysticism and art. Furthermore, we will take a look at the Arabic tradition.
Topics dicussed in the course will include: 1) The Good, the One and God; 2) Intellect; 3) Soul; 4) Self, person, self-consciousness; 5) the intelligible realm and the visible world; 6) body; 7) matter 8) evil; 9) freedom; 10) the ascent of the soul and the union with the divine; 11) art and its anagocial power
Most texts will be read in translation, but we will also look at selected passages in Greek or Latin (for those who read these languages; they are not a requirement for the course).
The course is by design a graduate course, but could be opened to well-qualified undergraduates.
MI 40039 Demonology in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
A belief in daemons has been and is even still, in some places and cultures, widespread. The course will address human understanding of the daemonic as a cultural, theological and philosophical phenomenon. The main focus will be on Late Antiquity. After considering the philosophical tradition from the Presocratics to Plato and the Stoics, we shall focus on later thinkers, especially Plutarch, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus. Furthermore, we will read some Christian authors in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
Central questions are: What are daemons? How do they differ from gods or human beings? What is their function in the universe and what effect do they have on human beings and the world? Are they supplementary to standard ideas of the divine or in some sense contrary to such ideas? Are daemons good or evil? What is a guardian spirit? Is the guardian spirit internal and external? How do daemons affect human beings? What is Socrates' daimonic sign? Why and how do daemons become evil forces in Christianity?
Most texts will be read in translation, but we will also look at selected passages in Greek or Latin (for those who read these languages; they are not a requirement for the course).
The course is by design a graduate course, but is open to well-qualified undergraduates.
MI 40040 Ancient and Medieval Theories of Self (3 Credit Hours)
Ever since Foucault's groundbreaking studies on the history of sexuality, and especially the third volume, Care of the Self, the notion of ‘self' has become ubiquitous—even though the French original was careful not to use the definite article in its title, and thus would better be rendered as ‘the care of self' (le souci de soi). In this course we will examine what is considered the core of a human being in ancient Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions. What do we mean when we apply the notion of ‘self' to these views, and is it adequate? Is there such a thing as ‘the' self, and how is this notion related to other concepts such as ‘person,' ‘subject,' or ‘individual'? What does it mean to be a human being, an embodied being, an ethical being, a responsible agent, an individual, a member of a community or even the cosmos? The course will combine a range of themes that throw light on these issues, such as the models of the soul, the relation between soul and body, the role of striving towards some kind of perfection, or ‘becoming like god,' and sociability. We will examine these themes with close readings of key texts by ancient (p. ex. Plato, Aristotle, Stoics), late antique (p. ex. Plotinus) and Christian authors (p. ex. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Teresa of Avila).
MI 40102 History of the English Language (3 Credit Hours)
This is a course on the history of the English language from its elusive but largely reconstructible roots in Indo-European to more or less the present, with a heavy bias towards the earlier pre-modern periods. The goals of the course are to acquaint students with the development of English morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, graphics, and vocabulary, and to explore the cultural and historical contexts of the language's transformation from the Anglo-Saxon period onward. In working toward these goals, we'll spend time rooting around in the dustbins of English etymology, lexicography, onomastics, and dialectology, and we will explore some current problems in usage and idiom. The course is by nature heavily linguistic, which is to say we'll be spending a lot of time talking about language, grammar, and the forces that act upon spoken and written English. Students can expect to achieve a basic understanding of the cultural and linguistic phenomena that have shaped the language we now speak and write; they will become versed in the fundamental methodology and terminology of historical and descriptive linguistics; they will learn to effect a reasonably credible pronunciation of Old, Middle, and Early Modern English (including something very close to Shakespeare's probable pronunciation); they will discover the true meanings of their own given name and surname; and they will gain experience researching a couple of aspects of the language that interest them. In addition to regular reading and workbook assignments, the course's requirements include two exams, three essays, and responsible attendance.
MI 40107 Introduction to the Gothic Language (3 Credit Hours)
Gothic, the subject of this course, might be considered a distant relative of not only English but also modern German, Dutch, and the various Scandinavian languages. It is in fact the oldest recorded Germanic language, and was spoken, in one form or another, by related groups who spread southward, eastward, and westward across Europe from the first to the sixth centuries, remaking much of the political landscape but leaving a very small written record. Gothic survives primarily in a late-fourth-century translation of the New Testament, prepared by Ulfila, an Arian bishop of the Goths. This is primarily a language course, in which we will learn the grammar of Gothic and translate passages from the New Testament and the Skeireins (a fragmentary commentary on the Gospel of John). We will also ponder the peculiar purple manuscript with silver script in which Ulfila's translation survives (the Codex argenteus), speculate on the character of the Crimean Gothic recorded over a millennium after Ulfila's death, explore the structural relations among Gothic and the other Germanic languages, and discuss the conceptual roles the Goths have been made to play in the formation of European states, Germanic ethnicity, nationalism, horror fiction, and modern racial separatist movements. No prior knowledge of an older language is required, although, since this is a language course, curiosity and an agile mind are.
MI 40108 Books and the World of Early Modern England (3 Credit Hours)
This invention of the printing press was, according to Francis Bacon, a technology that changed and altered the whole face and state of things throughout the world. In this course, we will read and examine a selection of books that are considered to have had a major impact on the literary and political culture of the Anglophone world. In each case, we consider the book in question as a material object and as a literary text. Syllabus will include More, Utopia; Bacon, Essays; Shakespeare, Hamlet and The Tempest; Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
MI 40109 From Pastoral to Ecopoetry (3 Credit Hours)
The Pastoral has been one of the longest-lasting and frequently most prestigious genres (or modes) of poetry in English-language traditions. This course explores how and why poetry that extols the virtues of rural life became so pervasive; how it adapted in the face of changing social, economic, and environmental contexts over more than a thousand years; what problems Pastoral poetry addresses and what problems it causes; how modern and postmodern poets have responded to the Pastoral tradition in a decidedly post-pastoral age; last but not least, what work Pastoral poetry can still do for readers today, and where this genre (or mode) can still do important cultural work.
MI 40110 Introduction to Old English (3 Credit Hours)
In this course - in just one short semester! - students will acquire a reading knowledge of Old English, the form of English used in Anglo-Saxon England. We begin with an intensive introduction to Old English grammar (interspersed with short readings) and move quickly to the translation of representative poetry and prose about battles, visions, journeys, and hope. Though our focus is Old English language, attention is also given to Old English literary strategies and to Anglo- Saxon culture.
Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Medieval Studies or Medieval Studies (Supp.).
MI 40111 Beowulf (3 Credit Hours)
Beowulf is often called the first great poem in English. But why? In this course, we will explore the nature of Beowulf: is it really English? Is it really a masterpiece? Is it really a poem? (The answers to these questions are by no means simple.) We will read all 3182 lines of Beowulf over the course of the semester--mostly through the interpretations of modern translators, but with an eye on the original text as well. Our main goal in our discussions and writing will be to work out where Beowulf's aesthetic and emotional force comes from, and how it persists: why does this work continue to move and inspire us more than a thousand years after it was written down? As well as the poem itself, this course will look at modern adaptations of the Beowulf story across many media, including movies, music, and comic books. No prior knowledge of the Old English language is necessary: Students will pick up the basics as they go along, but there will be no assessed language work in the course.
MI 40153 Chaucer: (3 Credit Hours)
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in a time of great social, political, and religious upheaval, a time in which the stakes of English writing were uncertain. This course examines Chaucer's efforts during that period to create sustained fiction in English through his most ambitious and experimental work, The Canterbury Tales. Ultimately, we will find out what earned Chaucer the title "Father of English poetry."
MI 40196 Introduction to Old Norse (3 Credit Hours)
‘A person should be wise enough—but never too wise; life is most pleasant for those who know just enough'. Old Norse proverb, from Hávamál.
In this course, students will come to grips with Old Norse—a term that encompasses the medieval vernacular languages of Scandinavia and the vernacular literatures that flourished in Norway and Iceland between the Viking Age and the Reformation. The Old Norse literary corpus is remarkable for its breadth and variety, its literary quality and its cultural value: Norse manuscripts preserve our fullest record of pre-Christian mythology from northern Europe; traditional Germanic narrative and poetic traditions are uniquely well-represented in Old Norse versions, some of which date back to well before the Conversion; in the Icelandic sagas, one of Europe's most distinctive medieval genres, we see an unprecedented forerunner of ‘realistic' prose fiction. Knowledge of Old Norse also gives access to many primary sources relating to the perennially controversial and fascinating Vikings, who took their language as far afield as Russia, Rome, Reykjavik and Rouen. (And Old Norse was probably the first European language spoken in North America.)
Over the course of a semester, we will learn the fundamentals of Old Norse grammar, syntax and vocabulary. Although it has some quirks, Old Norse is not a particularly difficult language to pick up, and students will soon be able to read a saga in the original. We will introduce students to the history and literature of medieval Scandinavia, using translations at first but gradually bringing in original language material as our mastery of Old Norse increases.
This course will be assessed by means of regular grammar quizzes and translation exercises, and a final exam.
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 40200 Medieval Romance (3 Credit Hours)
We will begin with ancient precursors to medieval romance and then track the development of the genre through key Arabic, French, and English sources. All texts will be available in English. We'll start with Xenophon and the earliest Alexander romances, then move on to parts of the Thousand and One Nights, literature from the Layla and Majnun tradition, Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Sir Orfeo, Floris and Blancheflour, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, among others.
MI 40202 Legends, Gods, & Heroes (3 Credit Hours)
Why did the Middle Ages produce so many legends, so many stories about gods, heroes, and fantastic events? What do the origins of these stories tell us about medieval European culture and the way it used both writing and the fantastic? What do the differences between different versions of the same story reveal about the stories' audience and composition? Why do some of these stories still resonate powerfully today? These are the kinds of questions we will ask as we survey a range of medieval works representing a variety of literary traditions, including Anglo-Saxon (Beowulf), Norse (the Poetic Edda and Hrolf Kraki's Saga), French (the Song of Roland), Italian (the Inferno), Welsh (the Mabinogion), and Finnish (Kalevala).
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 40204 Demons, Tyrants, and Villains in Early English Drama (3 Credit Hours)
In the medieval play The Castle of Perseverance, a stage direction indicates that the Devil should go to battle against Mankind with gunpowder burning out of his hands, ears, and arse. The spectacle must have been at once terrifying and hilarious. But how on earth was it staged? This course will consider early English dramatic representations of the Father of Lies, pondering whether audiences were meant to laugh at the Devil or with him. In the first half of the semester, we will study demons and the characters who invoke them in traditional sacred drama, from the earliest surviving play written in England through the three major genres of medieval English theater: the cycle play, the saint’s play, and the morality play. We will see the Devil prosecute Adam, Satan tempt Jesus, King Herod slaughter the Innocents, and the Vices lure Mankind to damnation. Combining demonic dissimulation with cunning craft, they make sin appear glamorous, not only to other characters in the play but also, perhaps, to the audience. In the latter half of the course, we will turn to the crafty villains of early modern commercial theater and closet drama. The new genres of history and tragedy confront the audience with diabolical characters that nevertheless seem charismatic or sympathetic. Spanning nearly 300 years of dramatic performance, our readings will push us to consider how medieval and early modern playwrights represent the nature of evil and the bounds of human freedom. Course Readings: Le Jeu d’Adam; The York Corpus Christi Plays; The Digby Mary Magdalene Play; The Castle of Perseverance; Mankind; Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge; Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; William Shakespeare, King Richard III, King Henry IV Part I, Othello; Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Miriam; Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass; John Milton, Comus.
MI 40404 Syriac Christianity (3 Credit Hours)
Historical Christianity is commonly depicted as a Western European religion. According to this view, Christianity, though born among Aramaic-speaking Jews in Palestine, quickly moved westward – from Rome to the North – where it eventually split into European Catholic and Protestant varieties. Underlying this geographic shift, moreover, was a shift in theological discourse, moving from a Semitic emphasis on poetry, metaphor, and symbol, to a Greco-Roman emphasis on philosophical questions and legal answers. The purpose of this course is to offer an alternate history of Christian theology that looks East rather than West, one which focuses on Christianity as it developed and was propagated in Syriac—a dialect of the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke. The course will focus especially on the great Syriac theological masters, the unique genres of poetry in which they wrote, and the rich liturgical contexts in which they worshipped.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 40405 Liturgical History (3 Credit Hours)
Survey of liturgical history and sources with regard to both Eastern and Western rites. Fundamental liturgical sources including basic homiletic and catechetical documents of the patristic period and the liturgical books of the Middle Ages. Basic introduction to the methodology of liturgical study.
MI 40407 Introduction to Byzantine Theology (3 Credit Hours)
This course introduces students to major theological sources, themes, and debates of the Byzantine Christian East. Beginning with formative texts of the Greek patristic era, students proceed to cover key areas and "moments" of Byzantine theology: Christological debates in the aftermath of Chalcedon; iconoclasm and icons; ascetic and monastic theology; developments in Liturgy and sacramental theology; approaches to Scripture; East-West relations; theological interactions with Islam; Hesychasm; and Byzantine Theology after 1453. The goal of the course is to equip upper-level undergraduate and Master's-level students with an accurate overview of this vast, intricate, and fast-growing field of study.
MI 40408 Islam and the Abrahamic Faiths (3 Credit Hours)
In 1965, the Second Vatican Council issued a "Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions", which contains a statement that Muslims "submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God." While the Declaration can be understood as recognizing the possible validity of Islam's claim to Abrahamic status, some scholars have introduced the notion of "Abrahamic religions" as a way of associating Judaism, Christianity and Islam as related faiths. This course will explore the defining features of the Abrahamic religions that tie them closely together as well as their particularities and differences. As the youngest of the three Abrahamic religions, Islam has a lot of things to say about Abraham which largely correspond to the Biblical story although the Qur'an also contains some novel features, including the claim that Abraham, together with Ishmael, built the Ka‘bah. This course will discuss how the scriptures of the three religions emerged within the same cultural milieu, and explore their intertwined histories and the ways in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims developed their own independent religious identities from their early encounters to the present. Students will also be introduced to some basic teachings of Islam. No prior knowledge of Islam is required.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 40411 The Christian Theological Tradition I (3 Credit Hours)
This course offers a survey of Christian theology from the end of the New Testament to the eve of the Reformation (well, almost). Taking the theological idea of "Mystery" as our theme, we will acquaint ourselves with theologians or theological developments of major significance in the period covered by the survey. Thus, students will be invited to think about the character and nature of the theological task while investigating major issues, challenges, and questions at the intersection of faith and reason.
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 40452 St. Maximus the Confessor (3 Credit Hours)
This course examines the life and thought of St Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 - 662), widely regarded as one of the most important and influential of all Byzantine Theologians. The course will move progressively through a large swathe of the Confessor's corpus, which includes an abundance of interconnected ascetic, mystagogical, cosmological, eschatological, and Christological material. The aim is to get a handle on the Confessor's complex and multi-layered theological vision, discuss his sources, as well as his ongoing relevance for the discipline of theology.
MI 40457 Deification in Christian Theology (3 Credit Hours)
Deification, Divinization, or Theosis (literally "becoming god") is a theological concept that has gained widespread attention in recent years. It is often associated with Eastern Christian theology, usually with the sense that it represents an exotic view, one which is at best an optional extra or at worst an utter abrogation of the Christian faith. The idea, however, that the sanctification of the human being can in some way be described as deification is not as marginal or alien to the Christian tradition as many assume. Beginning with Scripture and moving through early, medieval, and modern Christian texts, this course will explore the ways in which Christians have talked about holiness as connected with deification. The aim of the course is to introduce a rich, multifaceted, and increasingly debated topic in Christian Theology as well as spur reflection and discussion of its meaning and relevance.
MI 40462 Saints & Stories (3 Credit Hours)
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has said that the two greatest evangelical tools we have are the Arts and the Saints. This course examines the lives of the saints and the way their stories have been told through the ages. Part of our larger goal, then, will be retrieving this particular art of storytelling. Students will be asked not only to read the lives of the saints, but to write the life of a saint, too. In order to examine these stories most fully, we will spend time thinking about topics such as scriptural exegesis, martyrdom, relics, the communion of saints, medieval legends, art, and modern vitae or novels.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 40463 Spiritual Journey (3 Credit Hours)
What must be done to reach eternal life, to come into the inheritance of the Son that will be shared with those who attain to God as their end? Theologians in the thirteenth century, whether "scholastic" or "spiritual", were much concerned with the journey to God as beatifying end, and in their writings displayed considerable variety in teaching the way to God, and in teaching the final state itself. The course will consider the theologies of journey of such scholastics as Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Aquinas, and of such spiritual authors as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Marguerite Porete. While treatises and systematic writings will receive their due, attention will also be paid to the treatment of journey, discipleship, and human flourishing in thirteenth-century preaching and exegesis, and in visionary accounts.
MI 40466 Eucharist in the Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
The Eucharist stands at the heart of western European Christianity in the high middle ages. The insistence of church officials on regular reception of the Eucharist; the numerous scholastic treatments of the theoretical issues associated with the Eucharist; the recourse by spiritual authors, especially women, to the Eucharist to express their most profound religious and devotional insights; the pointed reference to the Christ Eucharistically-present to establish Christian identity and to distinguish the members of Christ from others, both within and outside of western Europe; the development of new rituals focussed on aspects of the Eucharist; the burgeoning of artistic representations of Eucharistic themes—all testify to the centrality of the Eucharist in medieval theological and religious consciousness. Through the close reading of representative texts by a wide variety of 13th-century authors, and the study of the different kinds of 'Eucharistic' art, this course examines the uses made of the Eucharist by a broad spectrum of high medieval Christians. A special concern of the course is the relation between Eucharistic doctrine and religious practice—to what extent have teachings about transubstantiation and real presence shaped religious expression? How has religious experience itself occasioned the refinement of these doctrines?
MI 40469 The Holy Land (3 Credit Hours)
In our course "The Holy Land" we will investigate the place of the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, in the religious ideas of Christians and Muslims through the centuries. The first half of the course is designed to give students an introduction into the historical events that shaped the religious identity of the Holy Land, including: the Christian reception of Jewish veneration for the land of Israel, the triumph of the Byzantine Church and the legend of Saint Helen's discovery of the Cross, the Islamic conquest of Palestine, the rise and fall of Crusader States, the centuries of later Islamic rule, and the religious fervor after the founding of Israel in 1948. In the second half of the course we will turn to the memories and visions of individual believers, Christian and Muslim. To this end we will study the personal accounts of pilgrims to the Holy Land, the descriptions of geographers, the writings of Eastern Orthodox monks of the Palestinian desert, and the popular religious pamphlets and websites/videos of the Muslim and Christian faithful today. Through our studies we will both examine the place of the Holy Land in Christian-Muslim Relations, and reflect theologically on the meaning of the Holy Land to the Church.
MI 40478 Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations (3 Credit Hours)
In our course we will consider Christianity's encounter with Islam, from the Islamic conquests of the 7th century to the internet age. The first section of the course is historical. We will examine how various historical contexts have affected the Christian understanding of Muslims and Islam, from the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad to September 11 and beyond. The second section of the course is systematic. How are Christians today to respond to Islam, in light of recent world events and recent Church teaching? In addressing this question we will analyze primary theological sources that express a range of responses, from pluralism to dialogue to evangelism. Students in this class will be introduced to the Quran, to the life of Muhammad, to the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam, to Church teaching on Christianity's relationship with Islam, and to trends in the theology of religions.
MI 40483 The Song of Songs in Jewish and Christian Exegesis of the Song of Songs (3 Credit Hours)
The Song of Songs is the great love song of the Bible. It occasions intensive reflection on the affective and especially amorous nature of the divine-human relationship. This course, which will be co-taught by two scholars of medieval Jewish and Christian theology respectively, provides an historically-nuanced theological survey of major trends in the interpretation of the Song of Songs developed by Jewish and Christian readers throughout the formative medieval period. Students will learn about allegorical, typological, philosophical, eschatological, pietistic, and mystical/symbolical modes of interpretation, and also the mutually polemical tensions that characterize Song of Songs exegesis across traditions.
Jewish readers to be considered will include Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (i.e. Rashi), the Andalusian figures Abraham Ibn Ezra and Moses Maimonides, and Ezra of Girona, whose range of innovative readings are indebted to earlier rabbinic approaches to the Song as a national-historical allegory concerning Israel's unfolding redemption. Christian exegetes will include Hippolytus of Rome, Origen, Bruno of Segni, Honorius Augustodunensis, Alain de Lille, Rupert of Deutz, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Aelred of Rievaulx. Originally closely tied in Christian exegesis to sacramental mystagogy (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist), the Song of Songs came to be read by Christians in additional contexts: the consecration of virgins, the Investiture Controversy, ecclesiology, Marian devotion, bridal mysticism, and marriage as a sacrament.
MI 40485 Codifying Jewish Theology in the Medieval Islamic World (3 Credit Hours)
This course provides an introduction to medieval rabbinic theology through the close study of The Book of Knowledge, a canonical work that defines the curriculum of Jewish thought. This foremost work, composed in twelfth-century Cairo by the Andalusian emigre Moses Maimonides, distills the vast domain of rabbinic theology into a concise legal code. The book treats central topics of religion - divinity, prophecy, cosmology, angelology, character formation, education, idolatry, and repentance (among others) - in a philosophical vein. Students will not only gain access to these central topics in medieval Jewish theology, but also study Maimonides's codification of these topics within the evolution of rabbinic thought, and its broader intellectual context within the medieval Islamic world. Maimonides (who was studied by a host of Christian scholastics) is of central importance for students of medieval theology and philosophy, and similarly relevant for students of comparative theology, systematic theology, as well as those researching the cultural history of the medieval Mediterranean.
MI 40487 Liturgy and the Female Body (3 Credit Hours)
From antiquity to today, Christian women have shaped and been shaped by liturgy. This course examines the relationship between ritual and the female body across history and Christian traditions, from the biblical period, through late antiquity and the middle ages, to the present,. Topics covered include the female body in sacred space (veils, gender separation, etc.), the issue of bodily (im)purities (menstrual and postpartum blood), medieval rites for childbirth and child loss, representations of the female body in liturgical texts and iconography, and women's ritual agency and authority in monastic communities and beyond. Our methods will be interdisciplinary and draw from liturgiology, theology, history, and anthropology. Class field trips will include a visit to a female monastic community.
MI 40493 Jewish Piety (3 Credit Hours)
In this course students will survey aspects of Jewish piety from late antiquity to the present. Special attention will be paid to the medieval period. Among other topics, students will explore ancient rabbinic asceticism, contemplative and penitential practices in Rhineland communities, Kabbalah, Sufi-influenced spirituality, sacred fellowships, and Hasidism. Students will distinguish basic patterns of Jewish piety, such as contemplative worship, the approximation of divine attributes, exertion in Torah study, night vigils, examination of conscience, subduing anger, subjugation of the evil inclination, seclusion, silence, and more. The survey will also aid students researching Jewish theology and practice, Jewish-Christian acculturation, forms of medieval piety, and Judaism in the medieval Mediterranean.
MI 40494 Jewish Piety & Mysticism (3 Credit Hours)
Course surveys major traditions of Jewish piety and wisdom from the Ancient Period to the Middle Ages, with an emphasis on the novel modes of exegesis and theology developed in late thirteenth-century Iberia that are synonymous with the medieval kabbalah. Students will explore writings by Moses Nahmanides, Ezra of Gerona, Joseph Gikatilla, and examine the homilies of the Zohar. Themes include repentance, contemplative prayer, Torah, prophecy, knowledge of God, imitatio dei, God's male and female attributes, divine names, and the Hebrew language.
MI 40540 Why Arguing Is Good for You: Debating Love and Gender in Medieval French (3 Credit Hours)
In this course, taught in French, you will examine how love and gender were debated in French and Occitan literatures from before 1500. Debates appear everywhere and they often convey the idea that arguing is intellectually, socially, and emotionally beneficial to those involved. So in this class, we will ask ourselves: How might arguing be good for you? Through the lens of debates on love and gender, we will survey some of the most important works of medieval French literature and unpack a range of thought-provoking texts. Questions that we will examine include: What does a woman know that a man doesn't? Is it better for a man to be faithful while being cheated on or should he be promiscuous? What are the limits of mansplaining? Can a man convince a woman to love him through reasoning? Is the best type of man brave or wise, pushy or patient, braggy or humble? What are the terms of an open relationship? Where does happiness fit in with love and marriage?
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 40541 When Humans Meet Animals in Medieval French Literature (3 Credit Hours)
This advanced undergraduate seminar examines the fluid boundaries between humans and non-human animals in medieval French and Occitan literatures. Combining literary texts and manuscripts with modern scholarship and theoretical thinking, we will explore how medieval people thought about animals and placed themselves in relation to them through texts and books. Sources will range from lyrics, bestiaries, and encyclopedic treatises to romances and fables in text and manuscript, and the course includes an optional, free trip to the Newberry Library in Chicago, where we will examine relevant medieval manuscripts and rare prints. The course is taught in French, with readings in modern French or modern English translation.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 40552 Dante I (3 Credit Hours)
An in-depth study, over two semesters, of the entire <i>Comedy</i>, in its historical, philosophical, and literary context, with selected reading from the minor works (e.g., <i>Vita Nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia</i>). Lectures and discussion in English; the text will be read in the original with facing-page translation. Students may take one semester or both, in either order.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines
MI 40553 Dante II (3 Credit Hours)
An in-depth study, over two semesters, of the entire <i>Comedy</i>, in its historical, philosophical and literary context, with selected readings from the minor works (e.g., <i>Vita Nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia</i>). Lectures and discussion in English; the text will be read in the original with facing-page translation. Students may take one semester or both, in either order.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WKCD-Core Cathol & Disciplines, WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 40564 Boccaccio's Decameron: God, Sex, Money, and Power (3 Credit Hours)
In this course students will make a close and critical reading of Giovanni Boccaccio's collection of one hundred short stories, the Decameron. A founding work of Italian literature, recognized for centuries as its best example of prose writing, its author wanted it to be an ethical manual for critically understanding reality and its political, social, and religious tenets, under the appearance of a mere entertaining work. From the experience of the 1348 Black Plague to daily issues in protocapitalist Florence, from tales of magicians and enchanted gardens to tongue-in-cheek stories, from relationships between husbands and wives, children and parents, to those between kings, sultans, and their subjects, Boccaccio's stories allow us to better understand our past, while challenging our views on the self, faith, society, and the other.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 40565 Dante's Divine Comedy: The Christian Universe as Poetry (3 Credit Hours)
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.
MI 40612 From Ennius to Egeria: the History of Latin (3 Credit Hours)
This course will examine the phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and stylistic development of the Latin language from Proto-Italic to early medieval Latin. Analysis of sample texts will alternate with discussion of relevant topics, which will include the principles of historical and comparative linguistics, Latin and its sister languages, the creation of the Latin inflectional system, the varieties of classical Latin, the development of Latin poetics and metrics, and the influence of Greek on Latin. Recommended for students with advanced Latin skills.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 40632 Medieval Latin Survey (3 Credit Hours)
The aim of this course is to experience a broad spectrum of Medieval Latin texts. Readings representative of a variety of genres (literary and subliterary), eras, and regions will be selected. Students planning to enroll in this course should be completing Introduction to Christian Latin Texts or they must secure the permission of the instructor.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKLC-Core Adv Lang & Culture
MI 40701 History of Christian Architecture (3 Credit Hours)
A broad survey of purpose-built spaces for Christian worship, from the beginnings to the present. The course will attend to questions of form and aesthetics and the functionality of these spaces for liturgy or other church activities. Finally, the course will consider the social, economic, and political dimensions of church building projects.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature, WRIT - Writing Intensive
MI 40703 Introduction to Early Christian and Byzantine Art (3 Credit Hours)
This course will introduce students to Christian visual art from its evident beginnings (ca. 200), attend to its transformation under imperial patronage, and consider the aftermath of controversies regarding the veneration of icons during the eighth and ninth centuries. Working with both objects and texts, core themes include the continuity between Christian and pagan art of Late Antiquity, the influence of imperial ceremonies and style, the emergence of holy icons, the development of Passion iconography, and the divergent styles, motifs, and theological perspectives on the validity and role of images from the Byzantine East to the early Medieval West.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 40766 Art, Science, and Myth in the Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
This class explores medieval representations of scientific ideas and mythological stories.
MI 40801 Augustine's Confessions (3 Credit Hours)
A reading of Augustine’s Confessions, partly in Latin and in its entirety in English, with a special emphasis on close reading and precise grammatical and stylistic analysis. We will focus on understanding Confessions as a work of Latin literature and Christian philosophy, part of the great late ancient endeavor to develop new genres and styles to mirror the new belief system, yet connected to the classical world in multiple ways. In addition to the narrative itself, Augustine’s personal experience, Confessions allows the reader to gain insight into his major philosophical tenets and the conversations and controversies of his life. We will also discuss important scholarly questions (origin, historical setting, sources and parallels, biblical framework, structure, philosophical background, modern readings, etc.) and read selections of scholarly literature.
MI 43126 The Vikings (3 Credit Hours)
This course will be devoted to the history, culture and literature of Scandinavia during the age of the Vikings. Our concerns will be both with the social and political events of the period and with the ways in which medieval Scandinavians used fiction, history, and mythology in order to present and interpret the world in which they lived. The issues we will consider include Viking religion and mythology; the unification of the individual Scandinavian kingdoms; the Christianization of a heroic warrior culture; the Vikings' own concerns with history and self-representation; the raids and colonizing missions that they effected in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic; and the reception of the Vikings in the post-medieval era.
Readings will include selections from Norse sagas and poetry (all in translation) as well as secondary works on history and art.
MI 43302 Dante and Aristotle (3 Credit Hours)
In this course, we will be reading Dante's Commedia as well as works by Aristotle and various ancient and medieval philosophers. Our aim will be to understand the way an Aristotelian worldview informs the Commedia. We will look at the cosmology of the work and how it responds to ancient and medieval theories of the cosmos. We will also investigate the ethics of Dante's famous journey to hell, purgatory, and heaven with a view to identifying its Aristotelian elements. For instance, what is the role of pleasure in the ethical life? What is the highest good of the human being? How should human beings live in such a way as to achieve their highest end? All readings will be in translation.
MI 43341 Aquinas' Philosophical Theology (3 Credit Hours)
A close examination of the philosophical arguments within the first thirteen questions of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, including arguments about the distinction between philosophy and Sacred Theology, the existence of a god, divine simplicity, divine perfection, divine goodness, divine infinity, divine immutability, divine eternity, divine unity, how God is known by us, and how God is spoken about by us.
MI 43364 History of Medieval Philosophy (3 Credit Hours)
The course offers a survey of medieval philosophical thought from Augustine to William of Ockham, although emphasis will be given to the principal figures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The development of medieval thought will be treated within the institutional and historical framework of the period, including the reception of Greek and Arabic thought, the educational programs of universities and religious orders, and the role of ecclesiastical censure.
MI 43682 Illuminating the Dark Ages: Contemporary Adaptations of Medieval German Texts (3 Credit Hours)
his course explores how and why German-speaking authors of the 20th and 21st century, respectively, have adapted Middle High German texts for their contemporary audiences. We will discuss representative texts from a variety of literary genres ranging from a children's book (Hoppe) to young-adult/all-ages fiction (Grzimek) to literature for an adult readership (A. Muschg) and compare them to their source texts. Readings and discussions will be in German.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 43760 Topics in Medieval Art: Art & Science in the Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
This class will explore the relationship between art and science in the Middle Ages. In particular, we will examine the ways in which medieval painters, sculptors, and architects engaged with the cultural phenomenon of "encyclopedism" by creating artworks that sought to capture all the world's knowledge in a single visual program. In our exploration of this topic we will consider a wide range of works, from medieval maps and scientific manuscripts to large-scale tapestries and the architectural programs of the great Gothic cathedrals. Central themes include text-image relationships and the role of pictorial tech-niques, such as allegory, personification, & analogy for visualizing complex ideas. We will also examine the representation of knowledge in medieval poetry and see how medieval authors employed ekphrasis to create visual artworks within their texts to serve as placeholders for encyclopedic learning.
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 43764 Topics in Medieval Art: Art & Science in the Middle Ages (3 Credit Hours)
This class will explore the relationship between art and science in the Middle Ages. In particular, we will examine the ways in which medieval painters, sculptors, and architects engaged with the cultural phenomenon of ?encyclopedism? by creating artworks that sought to capture all the world?s knowledge in a single visual program. In our exploration of this topic we will consider a wide range of works, from medieval maps and scientific manuscripts to large-scale tapestries and the architectural programs of the great Gothic cathedrals. Central themes include text-image relationships and the role of pictorial techniques, such as allegory, personification, and analogy for visualizing complex ideas. We will also examine the representation of knowledge in medieval poetry and see how medieval authors employed ekphrasis to create visual artworks within their texts to serve as placeholders for encyclopedic learning. 3 credits
Satisfies the following University Core Requirements: WKAL - Core Art & Literature
MI 43831 Archaeology & Material Culture (3 Credit Hours)
We usually think of field work and excavation as being the essence of archaeology, but much of what we know about the past is learned in the laboratory, where we study the artifacts brought in from the field. A rough rule of thumb states that two hours of lab time are needed for every hour spent in the field, so in reality, lab work may be even more important than field work in archaeology. This course is a laboratory class that will use many different activities to teach you about how archaeologists organize, preserve, and study archaeological artifacts to learn about the past. This class provides an in-depth introduction to basic laboratory methods for the organization, curation, and analysis of pottery, stone tools, metals, soil samples, and floral and faunal remains. By the end of the semester, you will engage in a hands-on application of course principles by conducting a research project on materials from Notre Dame's archaeological collections.
MI 45999 Medieval Institute Internship (3 Credit Hours)
This internship provides students with the opportunity to gain real world experience in the organization, management, and teaching of a Medieval Studies course for advanced High School seniors. Students will assist in running the Medieval Institute's class at Adams High School in South Bend, meeting with the course instructor on a weekly basis to plan future lessons, reviewing and evaluating classwork from the Adams students, and leading class discussions once per week. The culmination of the semester will see the student write a post for the Medieval Institute's Medieval Studies Research Blog evaluating the course design and instructional format, assessing student learning based on evidence from weekly responses, considering the impact of this public humanities initiative for both the high school and the university and reflecting upon their own learning outcomes.
MI 46020 Directed Readings-Undergrad (1-3 Credit Hours)
Offers advanced undergraduate students a possibility to work closely with a professor in preparing a topic mutually agreed upon.
Course may be repeated.
Enrollment limited to students in the Medieval Studies department.