FALL 2024
Courses normally open to first-year students without prerequisites are starred (*).
ART HISTORY
*ARTH110Y: First Year Seminar: Michelangelo: Artist and Myth
This first-year seminar examines the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1474-1564). Although he is best known as a sculptor and painter, Michelangelo was also a poet, architect, civil engineer, and diplomat driven by complex artistic, religious, political, and economic motivations. His long career provides a framework for understanding the Italian Renaissance, and the mythology surrounding that career provides insight into changing perceptions of the artist and the individual during that time. We will focus on works of art and contemporary texts, as well as real or virtual visits to Wellesley’s Special Collections, Papermaking Studio, and Book Arts Lab, as well as Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
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Instructor: Musacchio MR 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM
*ARTH227: Art in the Age of Crusades: Visual Cultures of the Mediterranean 1000-1400
This course introduces students to the visual cultures of the Mediterranean in the centuries of the Crusades. It approaches the distinct local, religious, and imperial visual cultures of the Mediterranean as interlocking units within a larger regional system. Focusing on the mobile networks of patrons, merchants, objects, and artisans that connected centers of artistic and architectural production, it covers a geographical territory that includes Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Italian Peninsula. Readings emphasize the theoretical frameworks of hybridity, appropriation, hegemony, and exoticism through which Medieval Mediterranean art and architecture have been understood. Discussions will highlight the significant connections that existed among the Western Medieval, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds.
Instructor: Brey MR 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM
*ARTH299: History of the Book from Manuscript to Print
A survey of the evolution of the book, both as a vessel for the transmission of text and image and as evidence of material culture. Through close examination of rare books in Clapp Library's Special Collections, we will explore the social and political forces that influenced the dissemination and reception of printed texts. Lectures will cover the principle techniques and materials of book production from the ancient scroll to the modern codex, including calligraphy, illumination, format and composition, typography, illustration, papermaking, and bookbinding. Weekly reading, discussion, and analysis of specimens will provide the skills needed to develop a critical vocabulary and an investigative model for individual research. Additional sessions on the hand press in the Book Arts Lab and in the Pendleton paper studio.
Instructor: Rogers TF 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM
ARTH328: Dining with Michelangelo: Art and Food in Renaissance Italy
This seminar will analyze the role of food in the art and life of early modern Italy. We will examine the historic and economic context of food as the basis of our investigation of its representation in paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from circa 1300 to 1800. This will entail a close look at food as subject and symbol, as well as the material culture surrounding its production and consumption. The seminar will investigate illustrated herbals and cookbooks in Special Collections, dining habits and etiquette, and food as sexual metaphor through a wide range of interdisciplinary sources; Wellesley's Botanic Gardens will grow Italian fruits, vegetables, and herbs for us to incorporate in Renaissance-era recipes.
Instructor: Musacchio R 2:20 AM – 5:00 PM
*ARTH347: Beyond Iconoclasm: Seeing the Sacred in Islamic Visual Cultures
The production and use of sacred images has provoked a wide variety of responses within the Islamic world. This class explores how sacred images have been created, viewed, destroyed, and reused within Islamic cultural contexts ranging from the Arab-Muslim conquests of the seventh century to the present day. Rather than progressing chronologically, it examines sacred images from thematic and theoretical perspectives. Topics include iconoclasm and aniconism, depictions of sacred figures and places, talismans and images on objects imbued with divine agency, and articulations of new attitudes towards images at key historical moments.
Instructor: Brey R 9:55 AM – 12:35 PM
EAST ASIAN STUDIES
*CHIN 211/311: Dream of the Red Chamber in Chinese Literature and Culture (in English)
Variously known in English as Dream of the Red Chamber, A Dream of Red Mansions, and The Story of the Stone, Honglou meng is the most widely discussed Chinese novel of all time. Written in the mid-eighteenth century, the novel offers telling insight into Chinese culture as it once was and as it remains today. The novel is still wildly popular due to its tragic love story, its sensitive depiction of the plight of the talented woman in late imperial culture, and its narrative intricacies. The goal of the course is to understand the novel both as a literary text and as a cultural phenomenon. Optional extra sessions will accommodate those who wish to read and discuss the novel in Chinese. This course is also offered at the 300-level as CHIN 311.
Instructor: Widmer W 12:30 PM – 3:10 PM
*CHIN220/320: The Fall of Ming in 1644, An Event in World Culture (in English)
The Ming (1368) was a glorious dynasty, and its fall was “heard round the world." The course approaches its glory and fall through novels (such as The Water Margin and The Plum in a Golden Vase), short stories (by Feng Menglong and others), and dramas like Peach Blossom Fan. Elsewhere in East Asia, too, the Ming was a theme in literature, especially at the time of its fall. Works by Chikamatsu (Japanese) and Ho Kyun (Korean) serve as illustrations. Additionally, dramas from Holland and England provide some measure of the impact of this event in Europe. In the last third of the course we will survey this group of writings by non-Chinese and use them to show how reactions varied, depending on the nationality of the observer. Finally, we will read a Cantonese opera composed in the twentieth century. It is one sign of the topic's continuing currency throughout the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and it highlights south China's longstanding resistance to the Qing.
Instructor: Widmer MR 2:20 PM – 3:35 PM
ENGLISH
*ENG210: History of the English Language
In 1774, an anonymous author wrote of "the perfection, the beauty, the grandeur & sublimity" to which Americans would advance the English language. In this course, we will explore the complex history that allows us to conclude that American English is not perfect and is but one English among many. We will study Old English, later medieval English, the early modern English of Shakespeare's day, and the varying Englishes of the modern British isles as well as those of modern America. We will read linguistic and literary histories along with literary passages from multiple times and places. We will ask, how does the history of the language affect our views of the world and our selves? And how are we continually shaping English's future?
Instructor: Whitaker MR 2:20 PM – 3:35 PM
*ENG213: Chaucer
What happens to the medieval Christian community when the unity of the Church breaks down? How does a narrative position its author and its characters within contemporary political controversy? Which characters are inside the traditional bounds of community? Which are outside? And how should we interpret the differences between them? In this course, we will examine these and other questions about medieval English literature and culture through the lens of Chaucer's writing. The course focuses on Middle English language and poetics as well as medieval structures of community-political, cultural, religious, and economic. The course will give special attention to how differences and conflicts, including those born of physical disparities and religious heresies, are managed within communities and portrayed in literature.
Instructor: Whitaker MR 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM
ENG224: Shakespeare Part II: The Jacobean Period
The great tragedies and the redemptive romances from the second half of Shakespeare's career, during the reign of James I, such as Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter’s Tale. These plays portray humans pushed to the limit of endurance and raised to the heights of blessedness, and also find Shakespeare challenging the limits of genre. Study of the plays’ language and poetry will be complemented by a survey of their stage histories and an immersion in their present incarnations in performance and in adaptations across the world.
Instructors: Ko MR 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM
FRENCH
FREN210: From the Middles Ages through the Enlightenment
Major authors from the Medieval period through the Enlightenment studied in their historical and cultural contexts, with emphasis on close reading, critical analysis, and writing in French. Attention to literary genres, including the constraints and innovations they engender, and study of key notions that will inform students' understanding of French literature and history-galanterie, courtoisie, mimesis, poetics, epistolarity, Salic law, French Wars of Religion, the Edict of Nantes, and Absolutism. We will end with consideration of pre-revolutionary works, anticipating the rise of the French Republic.
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Instructor: Hélène Bilis TF 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM
HISTORY
*HIST208: Society and Culture in Medieval Europe
This course examines life in medieval Europe c. 750-1250 in all its manifestations: political, religious, social, cultural, and economic. Topics to be studied include the political life of France, Germany, and Italy, economic structures and their transformations, monks and monastic culture, the growth of papal power, the crusading movement, intellectual life and theological debates, heresy and religious minorities, love and sex, and the varied roles of women in medieval life. Students will learn to analyze and interpret primary sources from the period, as well as to evaluate critically historiographical debates related to medieval history.
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Instructor: Ramseyer TF 12:45 PM – 2:00 PM
*ENG213: Conquest and Crusade in the Medieval Meditteranean
This course examines Mediterranean history from the disintegration of the Roman empire in the fourth and fifth centuries through the Latin Crusades of the Holy Land in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with a focus on the religious, political, and cultural diversity of the medieval Mediterranean and the relationship between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities. Topics of discussion will include warfare and empire, the emergence and development of Christianity and Islam, asceticism and the relationship between religion and philosophy, Christian and Muslim concepts of holy war, conversion and the status of religious minorities, and the crusades from both a Christian and Muslim perspectives.
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Instructors: Ramseyer TF 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM
*HIST232: The Transformation of the Western World: Europe from 1350 to 1815
This course surveys the transformation of medieval Europe into a powerful civilization whose norms, institutions, and technology reached across the globe. Along the way, we use original sources, including Wellesley's museum collections, to investigate major landmarks in Europe's political, cultural, social, intellectual, and environmental history. These include the Black Death, the Renaissance, the creation of seaborne empires and the discovery of new worlds, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the coming of capitalism, a multitude of devastating wars, and changes in urban and rural landscapes—all set against the backdrop of European people's ongoing efforts to define their relationships to their own medieval and ancient forerunners and to the world's other peoples.
Instructor: Grote MR 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM
MES/RELIGION
*MES/REL261/365: Cities in the Islamic World
An exploration of urban forms and culture in Muslim societies from Islamic late antiquity to the present. The course examines and critiques concepts of 'the Arab city' and ‘the Islamic city' while focusing on elements of continuity and change in particular cities, such as Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul, Isfahan, Samarqand, Lucknow and Lahore. Topics include migration, settlement, and the construction of new cities; conversion; the emergence of ‘holy cities' as centres for pilgrimage, religious education and Islamic legal scholarship; sacred space and architecture; religious diversity in urban environments; the impact of colonialism; post-colonial developments; modern and contemporary environmental issues; renewal and preservation.
Instructor: Marlow W 9:30 AM – 12:10 PM
MES/REL 367: Seminar: Muslim Travelers
An exploration of the experiences and writings of Muslim travelers from the Middle Ages to the present in West, South, East, and Central Asia, North Africa, Europe, and America. Focus on the wide range of cultural encounters facilitated by journeys for purposes of pilgrimage, study, diplomacy, exploration, migration, and tourism, and on the varied descriptions of such encounters in forms of literary expression associated with travel, including poetry, pilgrimage manuals, narrative accounts, letters, memoirs, and graffiti. Authors include al-Biruni, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battuta, Evliya Çelebi, al-Tahtawi, Farahani, Abu Talib Khan, Asayesh.
Instructor: Marlow W 9:30 AM – 12:10 PM
SPANISH
SPAN325: Seminar: Candid Cuisine: Food in Latin American Literature and Culture
An in-depth study of food in Latin American literature and culture, with a particular focus on its functions and symbolism in indigenous cultures and in the context of the transatlantic exchanges of food products, plants, animals, and recipes among the Americas, Europe, and Africa after 1492. We will also study the role of food and cuisine in the search for new literary forms of expression during the Latin American independence era and contemporary times. The course will study depictions of food, cooking, recipe books, private and public spaces, hunger, deprivation, and body image to explore power relations, gender, race, sexuality, and identity as rooted in long-standing, multicultural traditions involving preparation and consumption of food, global exchanges of foodstuffs, plant, and animal species, as well as the emergence of new hybrid cultures. Readings may include Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz' Respuesta, Francisco de Paula García Peláez' Libro del Chocolate, Fernando Ortiz' Contrapunteo cubano, and Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate.
Instructor: Guzauskyte R 2:20 PM – 5:00 PM
WRITING
*WRIT172: The Medieval Body: An Examination
In this seminar, we will explore how the human body was represented in medieval writing. We will also investigate how medieval authors considered the human body metaphorically as its own kind of text, or as the medium within which society’s codes and values are written. Together we will trace enduring themes associated with the body, such as: the relationship between the soul and the flesh; food and self-image; the tensions of the sexed body (gender, power, and sexuality); the political meaning of fashion and clothing; rituals connected to illness and death; and the link between human and the divine. The authors we will read include poets and philosophers, lawyers and monks, mystics and wanderers. By studying their work, we will trace how perceptions of the body shifted throughout medieval societies, and learn how medieval understandings of the body have shaped our own modern perceptions of it.
Instructor: Surh TF 2:10 PM – 3:25 PM
LAST UPDATE: April 7, 2024
Nearly a dozen departments and programs across the humanities and social sciences offer courses for credit in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Some of these courses, including all courses offered by the program itself, carry the ME/R prefix, while others do not. All courses for credit toward the major and minor are listed in the course catalog.