Spring 2001
In the Spring 2001 semester, the Medieval Studies Certificate Program offered the following courses.
| MSCP 80500 | Interdisciplinary Seminar: Sex & Gender in the Middle Ages |
| T, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professor Pamela Sheingorn {Cross- listed with HIST 70400} | |
| This relatively new field has
moved rapidly. First attending to the distinction between
"sex" and "gender," then concentrating
on how gender is produced, scholars now ask how and
what biological bodies symbolize, how societies represent
gender, and how they construct and maintain gender systems. Moving beyond binaries means interrogating not only "essentialism" vs. "social constructionism," but also "masculine" vs. "feminine," as well as asking questions about "genders" and "sexualities." Beginning with an introduction to questions of terminology and historiography and an overview of Greek and Roman sexualities, we will move on to primary texts from the Early Christian period to the fifteenth century. Each class session will focus on one or two primary texts, read in their entirety. (Complete description/syllabus available in Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109) |
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| C L. 80700 | International Style in Medieval Literature: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Book of the Duchess |
| Thurs, 6:30-8:30p.m., Room TBA, 4 credits | |
| Professor Scott Westrem {Cross-listed with ENGL 70500} | |
| Everyone agrees that when
Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400, he left unfinished, and
possibly unordered, a collection of tales supposedly told by
a group of pilgrims on the road to the shrine of St. Thomas
à Becket, Britain's most popular medieval pilgrimage site.
Yet almost everyone would also agree that the resulting book,
which he called "the tales of Caunterbury," has
guaranteed Chaucer his place with Shakespeare as a towering
writer of literature in English. In fact, as Harold Bloom observes in The Western Canon, the Tales "consists of giant fragments" that leave the reader with "little impression of something unfinished." Although there are actually times when the impression of "unfinishedness" is quite powerful, Bloom's sense of the work may explain why even the editors who arrange Chaucer's collected works place his Tales first (though everyone believes he was writing it in his last years), and thus before The Book of the Duchess, which most scholars consider to be his earliest major poem, and one which he actually did complete, probably around two decades before he turned to the "General Prologue." In this seminar, we will read the Book and almost all of the Tales, asking many questions, only one of which will be: What is Chaucer doing? Thinking about the question will lead us to examine his sources (most of them in other languages), themes, narrative voice, character development, and use of genres; we will also pay attention to crucial-if apparently fusty-matters such as codicology, since manuscript evidence certainly influences important conclusions scholars draw about the text. We will of course pay attention to Chaucer's indebtedness to the international literature of his day, particularly to the Italian and French writers of his generation (and one earlier) whose work he used (and transformed) in stunning ways that make him an originator of the very idea of comparative literature. We will also examine pertinent criticism (with an attempt to grasp something of the history of Chaucer criticism), including work by D. W. Robertson, Donald Howard, Jill Mann, V. A. Kolve, David Aers, Lee Patterson, Mary Carruthers, and Carolyn Dinshaw. Knowledge of Middle English is not a prerequisite for this seminar, but a desire to learn it is; we will spend a fair amount of time in early sessions on Chaucer's language. I pay a great deal of attention to student writing with assignments spread throughout the semester: four informal "reaction" papers, one 6-8 page paper requiring work with a manuscript (original or facsimile) or some other medieval artifact, and a lengthier (15-page) research paper. If successful, this seminar will never finish. Required Texts: The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987) and Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, ed. Helen Cooper (New York: Oxford U P, 1989, rpt. 1991). |
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| C L. 88100 | Dante: Purgatory and Paradise |
| M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professor Giuseppe Di Scipio (Course taught in English) | |
| The course will study major
issues through a selection of cantos from both the
Purgatorio and the Paradiso. We shall concentrate on poetry and poetics,
history and politics, philosophy and theology, astronomy and
astrology. Continuous
references will be made to Dante's other works. Students will
write a short essay, five pages, as an assigned topic due
after the first six weeks of classes. The topic for the final
paper will be chosen early enough so that students may give a
brief oral presentation toward the end of the semester.
Students are expected to have read Dante's Inferno, the Vita
Nuova and the Epistles. For more information: (212)772-5109 or gdiscipi@shiva.hunter.cuny.edu |
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| FREN. 71000 | The Saracen Woman in Medieval French Literature |
| W, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professor Jacqueline De Weever | |
| In this course we read
several twelfth- and thirteenth-century Old French texts in
modern French translations, which center the Saracen woman in
the plot. The themes emphasized are:
The erasure ofotherness in the Ideal Portrait; the Portrait
as colonizing agent; the Woman from the East as temptation
and source of wealth; Cross-Dressing to veil identity and to
underscore identity; the Black Saracen Woman as Demon. The texts are: Aliscans, Aucassin et Ncolette, Eneas, Fierabras, Flire et blancheflur, la Prise d'Orange, and Huon de Bordeaux. |
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| HIST. 70600 | Byzantium between East and West, 976-1204 |
| M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits | |
| Professor Eric Ivison | |
| Between 976 and 1204, the
Byzantine Empire passed through a period of readjustment and
change in the face of internal and external challenges to its unity and
identity. This colloquium will discuss the nature and
significance of these transformations and will critically
evaluate the differing approaches to historians.
Participants will read Byzantine and modern historiography,
the former translated into modern languages.
The format of classes will vary; in some meetings we will all read the same work/s, and discuss them as a group. In others, participants will divide the readings between themselves and will present on the chosen books/articles.Discussion topics will include approaches to Byzantine and modern historiography; current trends in political and cultural histories; an eleventh century crisis?; patriarchate and papacy; the impact of the Turks; the Comnenian system and the aristocracy; monasticism and spirituality; revisionist interpretations of economy and society; provinces and capital; interpreting elite culture; new approaches to gender and social status; the impact of the West; explaining imperial fragmentation and collapse. Three papers are required. Two papers, approximately 15 pages each, discussing a historiographic topic. The due dates of these papers will be set in the syllabus. One independent research paper, approximately 25 pages, combining the study of medieval and modern historiography, on a thesis of the student's own choosing. The paper will be due during the final examinations week after the end of the course. Information: ivison@postbox.csi.cuny.edu Full course description and provisional core bibliography available in Certificate Programs Office --Room 5109. |