Curriculum

The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Curriculum

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.

Courses offered in the current semester or scheduled to be offered in the next semester are listed below. Courses normally open to first-year students without prerequisites are starred (*). For course meeting times and places, and for prerequisites, please consult the course browser.

Students interested in learning more about upcoming courses are welcome to consult the instructors directly or attend the program's open house (advertised on our events webpage) shortly before registration begins.

Questions about the curriculum can be directed to the program director(s).


 

SPRING 2024

Courses normally open to first-year students without prerequisites are starred (*).

 

ART HISTORY

ARTH229: Islamic Arts of the Book

This course introduces students to the central role that the book has played (and continues to play) in the Islamic world. We will study the history of the Islamic book, from manuscripts of the Qur’an, which often feature refined calligraphy but almost never include illustrations, to historical, astrological, and poetic works – like the famous Shahnama (Book of Kings) – that contain images of various types and sizes. Students will learn about the production, collection, and circulation of these books, and ask how and according to which criteria they were conceived, used, and evaluated. In addition to traditional art-historical methods of close-looking and socio-historical analysis, students will learn to use digital approaches to produce new knowledge about the field. Visits to view manuscripts and related materials in local collections will supplement classroom discussion and assigned readings.                   . 

Instructor: Brey MR 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM 

 

*ARTH251: The Arts in Renaissance Italy Before and After the Black Death 

This course surveys a selection of the arts in Italy during the period we now call the Renaissance, dating from circa 1260 to 1500. We will examine the rise of the mendicant orders, the devastation of the Black Death, the growth of civic and private patronage, and the connection with art and artists in northern Europe, all of which had a profound impact on the visual arts. The work of major artists and workshops will be examined and contextualized within their political, social, and economic settings by readings and discussions of contemporary texts and recent scholarship.

 

Instructor: Musacchio MR 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM

 
ENGLISH
 
*ENG213: Chaucer 

From the raucous high humor of Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale to the mock heroism of the Nun’s Priest and the gentle irony of the Franklin, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales provide both a window onto medieval society and a glimpse of the English literary tradition in its beginning moments.  We will study a selection of Chaucer’s tales in their various and competing forms—saint’s life, moral fable, romance, dirty joke—paying special attention to his preoccupation with food, sex, gender, identity, and how people know what they know.  Although the selected tales will be studied in their original dialect, no previous study of Middle English or medieval literature is assumed. Relevant backgrounds from other contemporary writers will be supplied, and some time will be devoted to learning the sounds of Chaucer's English. In fact, one of the joys of learning to read a medieval author like Chaucer is coming to appreciate the sounds of his poetry, written in a time when storytelling was still largely oral and communal. 

 

Instructor: Lynch MR 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM

 

*ENG221/HIST221: The Renaissance 

This interdisciplinary survey of Europe between 1300 and 1600 focuses on aspects of politics, literature, philosophy, religion, economics, and the arts that have prompted scholars for the past seven hundred years to regard it as an age of cultural rebirth.  These include the revival of classical learning; new fashions in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and prose; the politics of the Italian city-states and Europe’s “new monarchies”; religious reform; literacy and printing; the emerging public theater; new modes of representing selfhood; and the contentious history of Renaissance as a concept.  Authors include Petrarch, Vasari, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Castiglione, Rabelais, Montaigne, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.  Lectures and discussions will be enriched by guest speakers and visits to Wellesley’s art and rare book collections.

 

Instructors: Wall-Randell/Grote MR 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM 

 

HISTORY

 

*HIST214: Medieval Italy 

 

This course provides an overview of Italian history from the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the fifth century through the rise of urban communes in the thirteenth century. Topics of discussion include the birth and development of the Catholic Church and the volatile relationship between popes and emperors, the history of monasticism and various other forms of popular piety as well as the role of heresy and dissent, the diverging histories of the north and the south and the emergence of a multicultural society in southern Italy, and the development and transformation of cities and commerce that made Italy one of the most economically advanced states in Europe in the later medieval periods. 

 

Instructor: Ramseyer TF 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM 

 

*ENG221/HIST221: The Renaissance 

This interdisciplinary survey of Europe between 1300 and 1600 focuses on aspects of politics, literature, philosophy, religion, economics, and the arts that have prompted scholars for the past seven hundred years to regard it as an age of cultural rebirth.  These include the revival of classical learning; new fashions in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and prose; the politics of the Italian city-states and Europe’s “new monarchies”; religious reform; literacy and printing; the emerging public theater; new modes of representing selfhood; and the contentious history of Renaissance as a concept.  Authors include Petrarch, Vasari, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Castiglione, Rabelais, Montaigne, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.  Lectures and discussions will be enriched by guest speakers and visits to Wellesley’s art and rare book collections.

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Instructors:Grote/Wall-Randell MR 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM

 

*HIST246: Vikings, Icons, Mongols, and Tsars 

A multicultural journey through the turbulent waters of medieval and early modern Russia, from the Viking incursions of the ninth century and the entrance of the East Slavs into the splendid and mighty Byzantine world, to the Mongol overlordship of Russia, the rise of Moscow, and the legendary reign of Ivan the Terrible. We move eastward as the Muscovite state conquers the immense reaches of Siberia by the end of the turbulent seventeenth century, when the young and restless Tsar Peter the Great travels to Western Europe to change Russia forever. We will focus on khans, princes, tsars, nobles, peasants, and monks; social norms and gender roles; icons and church architecture; and a host of Russian saints and sinners.

 

Instructor: Tumarkin TF 2:10 PM – 3:25 PM

 

*HIST279/379: Heresy and Popular Religion in the Middle Ages 

This course looks at popular religious beliefs and practices in medieval Europe, including martyrdom and asceticism, saints and relics, shrines, miracles, and pilgrimage. It seeks to understand popular religion both on its own terms, as well as in relationship to the church hierarchy. It also examines the varied and changing roles of women in Christianity, Christian ideas regarding gender and asexuality, passionate same sex relations in monastic culture, and saints associated with LGBTQ communities. It ends by examining the growth of religious dissent in the 11th and 12th centuries, which led to religious repression and the emergence of what some historians refer to as a persecuting society in 13th-century Europe. The course may be taken as 279 or, with additional assignments, as 379.

 

Instructor: Ramseyer TF 11:20 AM – 12:35 PM

 

HIST354: Seminar: King-Killers in Early Modern Britain and France 

Popular fascination with kings and queens is alive and well, but European monarchs once enjoyed a mystical, superhuman prestige far beyond mere celebrity. Why did they lose it? To find an answer, this seminar investigates their enigmatic killers: perpetrators of cosmic cataclysm in the name of liberation from tyranny. After examining the medieval legal foundations and ceremonial glamor of sacred kingship, we will analyze the most sensational modern cases of king-killing: Charles I in the English Civil War and Louis XVI in the French Revolution. Our analyses will encompass political maneuverings by individuals; bitter conflicts of class, religion, and party; the subversive power of satirical literature; utopian yearnings for a more egalitarian society; and the philosophical battles that produced modern concepts of the state.

 

Instructor:Grote W 12:30 PM – 3:10 PM

 
ITALIAN/MUSIC
 

*ITAL/MUS223: Italian Popular Song (in English) 

Throughout its history, the Italian language has expressed itself optimally through song. In this interdisciplinary course, we explore the connections between song and lyrical poetry in works from the Middle Ages through hip-hop. Students will gain an overview of Italian history and culture, and will learn how poetry and music have contributed to the shaping of Italian national identity. In addition to field trips to hear an Italian opera and to work with rare prints and manuscripts in Special Collections, students will analyze poetry and its musical enhancement, and manipulate digital humanities resources. No previous knowledge of music or Italian is required.

Instructors: Fontijn and Parussa TF 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM

 

MES/RELIGION

*MES/REL262: The Formation of the Islamic Tradition 

Historical study of the Islamic tradition, from its beginnings in Arabia through its shaping in the seventh to tenth centuries in the diverse and newly integrated regions of Western and Central Asia and North Africa. Topics include the sacred sources of the Islamic religious tradition, the Prophet and the Qur'an; the formulation of religious law, ethics, theology, and philosophy; varied patterns of piety and mysticism; and the development of Sunni and Shi'i understandings of Islam and Islamic history. Particular attention to the diversity within the Islamic tradition, its intercultural contacts, and its continuing processes of reinterpretation. The course also addresses approaches, methods, issues, and new directions in the study of Islam and Muslim societies.

 

Instructor: Marlow TF 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM

 

MES/REL 271/371: Love and Longing in  Middle Eastern and Iranian Literature and Film

Love in its myriad manifestations constitutes a central and perennial theme in the literary and artistic repertoires of Arabic- and Persian-speaking societies. This course explores the varied, subtle vocabulary and the versatile, multivalent imagery linked with the themes of love and longing in Arabic- and Persian-language literature and film. In different times and places, how have men and women writers and directors used the themes of love and longing to depict and critique concepts of gender and gender relations, and social and political inequalities? How have men and women writers and filmmakers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries both continued and disrupted earlier literary and poetic discourses of love? How have modern filmmakers engaged with and reworked classical stories of transgressive love? Divided roughly equally between literary and cinematic works, the course explores treatments of love and longing in, for example, early Arabic poetry and the Quranic text, philosophical and medical treatises, narrative cycles (for example the Thousand and One Nights), epic (notably the Persian Shahnameh or ‘Book of Kings’), lyric poetry (Rumi, Saadi, Hafez), modern verse, and film, including films by Dariush Mehrjui, Youssef Chahine, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami, Rakhshan Bani-Etamad and Shirin Neshat.

 

 Instructor: Marlow W 9:30 AM – 12:10 PM

 
PHILOSOPHY
 

*PHIL221: History of Modern Philosphy

A study of central themes in seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophy. We will engage with questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and morals. Authors include Amo, Astell, Cavendish, Conway, Descartes, Princess Elisabeth, Heywat, Hume, Locke, Kant, and Wang Yangming. Among the topics: the nature of substance, the relationship between mind and body, the limits of reason, determinism and freedom, and the good life.

 

Instructor: Walsh TF 12:45 PM – 2:00 PM

 

SPANISH

SPAN278: Writing Women, Early Modern Spain

This course offers an introduction to the works of Spanish women authors ranging from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth. Topics include: the links between gender constructs and literary genres, representations of women's voices in early poetry, novels, letters and autobiography, rhetorical and artistic self-fashioning, and the analysis of women's access to writing, education, and socio-political institutions in early modern Spain. Texts by, among others, Teresa de Cartagena, Florencia Pinar, Teresa of Ávila, María de Zayas, Ana Caro, Hipólita de Narváez, Sor María de Ágreda and Sor Marcela de san Félix along artworks by Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana will be read and discussed.

 

Instructor: Rivera  MR 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM

 

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 MR 9:55 AM – 11:10 AM

 
 
 

LAST UPDATE: December 9, 2023