Fall 2008 Undergraduate
ARH 101: History Of Architecture Ancient-Medieval
Lisa Reilly
MWF 11:00-11:50
CAM 153
This course will introduce students to the tools of visual analysis, reading architectural drawings and the study of architecture as a part of the larger cultural, social and political context of its society. While the course will focus on western Europe, it will also include topics from the eastern Mediterranean and Asia. This course will consist of lectures with weekly discussion groups.
ARH 335: Rome, Istanbul, Venice
C. Brothers
TR 12:30-1:45
CAM 158
No description available.
ARTH 222: Early Medieval Art
Eric Ramirez-Weaver
MW 12:30-1:45
CAM 160
This course examines art created in the era from 300 to 1100, when the Christian church expanded and consolidated its authority to become the single most powerful political and cultural force of Europe. Media examined include: architecture, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts and the luxury arts. Too often the "middle ages" remain stuck in the middle. According to a traditional view in art history, medieval artworks were only considered to be of value because they supplied a bridge between antiquity and the Renaissance. In this course, we will interrogate the complex cultural values that gave rise to grand churches and small liturgical vessels alike. Throughout this exploration, we will identify the reasons that medieval artists, motivated by devotion to the three Abrahamic faiths and their scientific beliefs, crafted beautiful and refined visual expressions of their values. These crafted confessions in stone, paint, parchment, and metal provide the living historical records of a vibrant period, during which medieval artists asserted their various cultural identities.
ARTH 270: Buddhist Art, India to Japan
D. Ehnbom
TR 2-3:15
CAM 160
The class traces Buddhism through its art from its origins in India to its spread to Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. There will be a midterm and a final exam.
ARTH 491: Undergraduate Seminar: Art and Science for the Medieval People of the Book
Eric Ramirez-Weaver
T 3:30-6:00
FHL 208
During the middle ages, power relations and scientific knowledge relied upon the approval and support of churchmen. Rather than demonstrate a division between science and the spiritual culture of the middle ages, this unification in Christendom revealed an interpenetration of science and religion that found expression in exceptional works of art. This intersection of spiritual and intellectual cultural life in the middle ages flourished in Constantinople, the capital of the eastern medieval Byzantine Empire, where the cultural legacy of Greek artistic developments and learning, also celebrated by the Romans, were cultivated. Charlemagne launched astronomical reforms that were marshaled in support of the efforts at reforming the western medieval Christian liturgy, since reckoning the date for the feast of Easter required astronomical and computistical expertise. Similarly, the scientific advancements, especially in medicine and astronomy, advanced by Arabic, Islamic, and Jewish scientists during the middle ages fostered additional points of connection between the secular and spiritual aspects of the lives of those communities, as well. For each of the medieval peoples of the book – that is those practicing the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish religions –objects of fine distinction, illuminated manuscripts, and building sites attest to a long-standing effort at expressing the sacred and secular uses for science through art from the early to the late middle ages.
ENMD 381: Illicit Love
A.C. Spearing
MW 2-3:15
CAB 118
In this course we shall read a variety of medieval stories of adulterous and otherwise forbidden love, translated from medieval English, French, and German, including tales of famous pairs of lovers such as Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere, and Troilus and Criseyde. Requirements: a group presentation, two papers, a mid-term, and a final exam.
ENMD 382: Violence in Medieval Literature
P. Baker
MWF 1-1:50
AST 265
No description available.
ENMD 483 = ENRN 483: Medieval and Renaissance Love Lyric
G. Braden
TR 3:30-4:45
MRY 110
A study of the main traditions of love poetry in European literature and of some of the best poems in those traditions up to the mid-17th century. We will start with some of the most important classical precedents (Sappho, Catullus, Ovid), familiarize ourselves with both the Latin and the vernacular poetry of the Middle Ages (especially the troubadours of southern France), read extensively in Petrarch and Renaissance Petrarchism, and end up with the strong reactions to Petrarchism by John Donne and the English Cavalier poets. Much of this poetry is written in languages other than English; we will be reading it in translation, but the original text will always be in front of us. Course requirements will be vigorous class participation, a few short papers, a longer final paper, and a final exam.
ENRN 311: Literature of the Renaissance
G. Braden
TR 12:30-1:45
CAB 215
We will read works by most of the major and some of the minor writers of the English Renaissance, up to the first years of the 17th century. We will also look at some of the continental literature that helped set the tone for the age as a whole, and explore what is meant (and not meant) by “Renaissance” as a period concept. Most of what we will be reading will be poetry, and most of that will be love poetry, from Petrarch to John Donne. There will be several short papers and a final exam.
ENRN 481 Renaissance and the Epic
D. Kinney
TR 2-3:15
BRN 330
What becomes of the epic, especially (but not only) in Renaissance England? Where has it been, and where does it still have to go? Why does the most elevated of literary modes in traditional reckonings end up seeming passe or impossible to so many moderns? Works to be read include Homer's epics, The Aeneid, The Inferno, Paradise Lost, Robinson Crusoe, The Dunciad, and The Waste Land. Class requirements: regular participation including brief email responses, a term paper, and a final exam.
FREN 341: Literature of the Middle Ages and 16th Century
M. McKinley
TR 11-12:15
CAB 235
The French Middle Ages and Renaissance, a period covering over 500 years, may seem like a faraway world of knights and crusaders, castles and intrigues. Yet, books from those centuries between 1050 and 1600 shaped ideals, tastes and cultural icons that still prevail today. From video games to science fiction, Nostradamus to “Shakespeare in Love,” modern culture betrays its fascination with that distant past. In this course you will go beyond anachronism and get to know the real thing. We will read in modern French La Chanson de Roland, the founding epic of la douce France ; Yvain ou le chevalier au lion, an Arthurian romance; some lais of Marie de France, the first woman storyteller in France; excerpts from Christine de Pizan’s utopian vision, La Cite des Dames and from Rabelais’s Gargantua, a fantastic tale of giants in Utopia. We will close with selections from Montaigne’s Essais, where the author reflects on the New World of America and the equally novel territory of the self. Three short papers totaling 10-12 pages, a mid-term and a final.
Prerequisite: French 332. Restricted to French majors.
HIEU 306: From Empire to Kingdom: Europe, 400-1000
P. Kershaw
MW 12-12:50 + section
WIL 301
This class examines the social, political and cultural history of Western Europe from the collapse of Roman authority to the turn of the first millennium. Over the course of the semester we will look at the emergence of the earliest post-Roman kingdoms, some successful (Francia, Anglo-Saxon England) others failures, destined to fail (Vandal Africa, Burgundy, and Ostrogothic Italy). How did new kingdoms and new kings actually emerge from the rubble of the late Roman West? What survived from the late Roman world? What was new? Why did some polities and peoples survive whilst others fell by the wayside? How and why did the world change in Western Europe across these six centuries? Subjects to be addressed in this class will also include: religious life: piety and the cult of the saints; historical writing; ethnic self-perception; intellectual culture; the character of everyday life; manuscript production; social organization; feud, violence and warfare: law and dispute settlement; travel and the changing nature of the post-Roman economy.
Students will be expected to engage with archaeological and literary sources, and to undertake 150-190 pages of reading per week, a mix of primary texts (in English translation) and secondary studies. This course fulfills the second writing requirement, demanding that students write two medium-length papers (2000 words), and take both a mid-term and a final exam.
HIEU 321: Medieval and Renaissance Italy
D. Osheim
MW 1-1:50 + section
MRY 115
The object of this course is to investigate the political, social and cultural history of Italy during the age of the Renaissance. The survey will begin with a consideration of unique Italian political institutions and urban culture in northern and central Italy; it will finish with a reconsideration of the end of Italian cultural dominance and of the legacy of Renaissance culture. the emphasis throughout will be on the relationship of the artistic and literary culture to the social and political in which they are found. We will discuss the writings of Machiavelli, Leon Battista Alberti and the Civic Humanists. We will also discuss the great innovations in Italian art and the role of the great Renaissance patrons in the production of art and culture and the impact of both on public life. There will be a short written assignments on course readings, two hour exams and a final.
HIME 201: The Middle East to 1800
F. Zarinebaf
TR 11-12:15 + section
CAB 311
This class will offer an overview of the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to 1800. The first part will focus on the classical age of Islam, the articulation of the religion, its expansion, and the formation of the first Muslim dynasties (Umayyads, Abbasids). We will pay a particular attention to cultural interactions between the indigenous (Christian, Zoroastrian, Jewish) and the Arab/Islamic cultures in the formation of an Islamicate civilization.
The second part will of this class will discuss the fragmentation of the Ababsid empire, the rise of local dynasties, and the impact of Turkic military and political rule over the societies and polities in the Middle East. The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century was a turning point that paved the way for the rise of the Ottomans.
The final part of this class will examine the rise and axpansion of the Ottoamn empire in the Middle East, N. Africa, and the Balkans. We will also compare the Ottoman empire with another gun powder empire, the Safavids of Iran.
Throughout this class, we will consider not only political history, but the impact of economic, social and cultural changes on the societies and polities of the Midlde East. We will include primary sources in English translation as well as audio- visual material.
Requirements: Midterm, Final, Paper
ITTR 226: Dante in Translation
D. Parker
MWF 1-1:50
CAB 430
Close reading of Dante’s masterpiece, the Inferno. Lectures focus on Dante’s social, political, and cultural world. Incorporates The World of Dante: A Hypermedia Archive for the Study of the Inferno, and a pedagogical and research website (www.iath.virginia/dante), that offers a wide range of visual material related to the Inferno.
JPTR 335: Introduction to Classical Japanese Literature
G. Heldt
TR 2-3:15
CAB 216
Introduction to the literary arts of Japan from 700-1800. The course considers Japan's earliest myths, the precursors of haiku, the "world's first novel" The Tale of Genji, women's memoirs, war tales, folk tales, and other genres.
MSP 308: Colloquium in Medieval Studies
P. Kershaw
M 3:30-6
CAB 423
No description available.
MUSI 301: Renaissance Music
P. Walker
MWF 1-1:50
OCH 107
No description available.
MUSI 409: Topics in Renaissance Music
B. Gordon
TR 2-4:30
WIL 216
No description available.
RELC 205: History of Christianity I
R. Wilken
TR 2-3:15 + section
MCL 1004
How did Christianity evolve from a small Jewish sect in Palestine into a church that embraced the Mediterranean world, Europe, the middle East, Byzantium and the Slavic peoples? How did the teachings of Jesus and the events of his life become the foundation for a complex system of belief (e.g. Trinity), ethics (e.g. marriage), worship? What was the origin and development of Christian institutions and practices, e.g. bishops and clergy, the papacy, monasticism, Baptism, Communion, et al. How did the Bible take its present form? How was this faith understood and explained in rational terms? These are the broader questions addressed in a survey of the first thousand years of Christian history.
RELC 304: Paul: Letters and Theology
H. Gamble
TR 2-3:15
CAB 431
This course examines the activity and thought of Paul of Tarsus, the best known and most influential thinker of the Christian tradition. We will treat the basic problems of Pauline biography and chronology, the nature of Paul's authentic letters, and the leading element of Paul's interpretation of Christianity. Each meeting will consist of both lecture and discussion.
RELC 370: Revelation to John
J. Kovacs
TR 11-12:15
CAB 341
This course will consider the last book of the New Testament from two different points of view. First we will study the book in its original first-century context, comparing it with other works in the same genre, the Jewish apocalypses Daniel, 1 Enoch, and 4 Ezra, and asking questions about the historical setting in which the book was written and its message in and for that context. Questions to be considered include: How do ancient Jewish apocalypses help us make sense of the rich array of symbols and images in Revelation? What is the book’s primary message — does it advocate vengeance, desire for social justice, or a worldwide mission to bring all people to salvation? Then we will consider the book’s “reception”, that is how it has been used and interpreted through the centuries, not only in theological works but also in music, art, poetry, novels, political and prophetic writings. Through the ages John’s Apocalypse has been a remarkably popular book, and the history of its reception offers an embarrassment of riches — in media as diverse as ancient sermons, medieval manuscript illustrations, political propaganda, poetry, song, and film. Among other interpretations, we will consider the book’s reception in hymns, African-American spirituals, reggae music, church architecture, Dürer’s woodcuts, the poetry of William Blake, and the popular /Left Behind series of novels.
Prerequisite: one course in Biblical studies, a course in art history, or permission of the instructor. Requirements: an 8-page paper, midterm examination, final quiz, and a group presentation on some aspect of the reception of Revelation. NOTE: This course is not open to students who have received credit for RELC 369 (The Gospel of John and the Revelation to John) because of significant overlap of material covered.
RELC 393: End of the World in Christian Thought
A. Thompson
MWF 10-10:50
CAB 118
This course will examine Christian speculation on the End of the World from the first century to the Year 2000 and beyond. Special emphasis will be paid to Biblical and apocryphal sources for such speculation, ancient Christian millenarianism, medieval and Reformation apocalypticism, nineteenth- and twentieth-century dispensationalism, and contemporary images of the End in literature and film. Required readings will be taken from original sources.
RELI 207: Classical Islam
T. Gianotti
TR 11-12:15 + section
PHS 204
This is a historical and topical survey of the origins and development of Islam. The course is primarily concerned with the life and career of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, the teachings of the Qur'an, the development of the Muslim community and its principal institutions, schools of thought, law, theology, cultural life and mystical tradition, to about 1300 A.D. The objectives of the course are: (a) To acquaint the student with significant aspects of Islam as a religion in the classical period; and, (b) To help the student think through some of the basic questions of human religious experience in the light of the responses given to these questions by the great sages and saints of the Islamic tradition.
RELI 311: Muhammad and the Qur'an
A. Sachedina
TR 9:30-10:45
CAB 332
A detailed study of Muhammad's biography in the light of the Qur'anic revelation. Students will study the life of the founder of Islamic faith and relate it to his spiritual as well as temporal experience. The study of biography will aim at a fuller understanding of the meanings of the apostle of God (rasul Allah) and the Seal of the Prophets (khatim al-anbiya') in the context of the methods used in the History of Religions in studying the ideas about "holy man" in the community of believers. The study of the Qur'an will be concerned with providing the contextual and intertextual appreciation of the event of revelation in Islam, both as a source of Muslim piety and Muslim experience of divine-human interaction.
SPAN 423: Islamic Iberia
M. Gerli
MWF 2-2:50
CAB 430
No description available.
Fall 2008 Graduate
ARH 701: History Of Architecture Ancient-Medieval
L. Reilly
MWF 11:00-11:50
CAM 153
This course will introduce students to the tools of visual analysis, reading architectural drawings and the study of architecture as a part of the larger cultural, social and political context of its society. While the course will focus on western Europe, it will also include topics from the eastern Mediterranean and Asia. This course will consist of lectures with weekly discussion groups.
ARAH/ARH 921: From Roman to Romanesque: The Classical Past in Medieval Visual Culture
Lisa Reilly
R 10:00-12:30
FHL 215
This course will explore a range of connections between the classical past and the middle ages. Weekly readings as well as student research projects will analyze such topics as the use of ancient sites, spolia, texts, iconography, and artistic forms in medieval visual culture. Well-known examples of this phenomenon include Charlemagne’s invocation of the Lateran in his palace complex at Aachen, connections between Trajan’s column and the Bayeux Tapestry, as well as antique sculptural vocabulary at Reims Cathedral. Further examples can be found in medieval Islamic culture such as the Great Mosque at Damascus and in the Byzantine Empire. The course will endeavor to explore this issue in examples from medieval Islamic and Byzantine culture as well as that of the Latin West.
ENMD 528 = ENRN 528: Dante and Spenser
J. Nohrnberg
TR 11-12:15
BRN 328
This course intends to read both Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, and the first three books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Our object is to explore a common high-water uniqueness in the figurative and allegorical modes of two of the traditional authors likeliest to be invoked as writers of learned, extended, and potentially encyclopedic allegorical fictions. We shall hope to use each author both to introduce the other, and to un-write him, or as a window for opening beyond the confinement of each text. For the social critique, poetics, psychology, and epistemology appertaining to these two literary works are obviously very different?the first author writes a testamentary confession or conversion-narrative in the guise of a Christian’s otherworldly, sprial-shaped Passiontide pilgrimage, the second author propounds the elements a gentleman’s education or disciplining in the guise of an extended, serial and proto-colonial quest-romance. Thus the two authors have at least in common their having chosen to present their "argument" within the dissimulative veil of allegory, but also behind the apparent otherness of their chosen casts: either the shades of the dead in the Comedy, or the denizens of "faerie" in The Faerie Queene. Dante’s "hosts" are mainly historical personages and Spenser’s leading fays are subjects who serve his own courtier-glorified sovereign, and yet the narratives situate both poets’ personnel in an alternative or virtual reality where any given character’s meaning haunts his or her existence - or his or her agency or personhood - to the point of over-riding and/or arresting it in the form of his or her moral silhouette. We will be considering, in these two different cases - high medieval and high Renaissance - what it means to lead a life of allegory as a protagonist, and to be lead through an allegorical narrative as a reader. In beginning this journey by entering the dark wood of obscured yet palpable significances, you will have to consider what it means to have lost your shadow among the whispering trees - or to have merely indulged your curious natal genius for inquiry - and even if you only did this for the sake of a not altogether whimsical notion that you were acting as a free agent even when you chose to sell your soul to a text. Undergraduates and graduate students are equally welcome on the expedition to enlightenment through perplexity. Two middle-length papers, and a final exam (where the student is asked to write two essayettes, i.e., brief commentaries, on two quotes you select from a wide choice thereof).
ENMD 801: Old English
P. Baker
MWF 11-11:50
BRN 312
In this course, the primary task will be to learn the language written in England before the year 1100 and to read a number of texts in Old English, starting with simple prose and ending with such poems as The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, and The Dream of the Rood. Students with some experience in foreign language study will find the course easier than those without. In addition, the course is an introduction to the literature of the Old English period: we will supplement language study and reading Old English with discussion and reading in secondary sources. Written work will include bi-weekly quizzes on the language, one paper, an oral report, and a brief final exam.
ENMD 885: Mapping the Middle Ages
A.C. Spearing
MW 5-6:15
BRN 332
Using as its focus a selection of major literary texts and some important scholarly and theoretical works, this course will explore the spiritual, intellectual and cultural climates of “the Middle Ages”, and will aim to develop a conceptual framework for study of this seminal period in Western civilization. The approach will be both cross-disciplinary and transnational. The topics to be explored, through the lens of artistic masterpieces produced in England and continental Europe, will include: the Middle Ages as a theoretical and critical construct; varieties of love; epic and romance; other worlds; allegory; and regional culture (East Anglia). Medieval English verse texts will be read in the original, most others in translation. Requirements: an oral presentation, two papers, a final exam.
ENRN 881: Masks of Desire: Gender, Genre and Performance in Elizabethan England
C. Kinney
TR 2-3:15
CAB 130
This course will focus upon the sexual politics (the representation of gender and the gendering of representation) and the experimental poetics of early modern lyric, narrative and drama. We'll discuss and historicize our authors’ complicated negotiations with the period’s culturally privileged discourses; we will also explore the staging of their variously didactic and transgressive agendas as they reshape Petrarchan lyric, chivalric and pastoral romance, and the Ovidian master-narratives of transforming desire. Readings will probably include Edmund Spenser's Amoretti and Book III of The Faerie Queene; Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and New Arcadia; Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, George Gascoigne’s Adventures of Master F.J. and Shakespeare’s As You Like It; we will also dip into Ovid and Petrarch (in translation) and certainly consider a variety of critical and theoretical approaches to our primary texts.
Course requirements: participation in discussion; a series of short e-mail responses to our primary and secondary readings, an oral report; a 12-14 page paper; a final examination.
ENRN 981: Renaissance: Word and Image
D. Kinney
TR 11-12:15
CLK G054
Taking Renaissance comparisons of arts as a principal point of departure, we will survey the verbal and visual preoccupations of Early Modern Europe and the often tense dialogues between them in the realms of instruction, invention, demonstration, and credal debate. We will study a range of text-image encounters from Petrarch to Spenser to Shakespeare to Herbert and Milton, reckoning with emblematics and other symbolic conventions as they inform reckonings with texts. Course requirements: lively participation including weekly email responses, a class presentation, and a final exam.
FREN 510 = 810: Medieval Literature in Modern French
A. Ogden
MW 12:30-1:45
CAB 123
In the middle of the twelfth century, the precursor of modern French (romans) quite suddenly took precedence over Latin as the written language of courtly culture, and thus French literature was born. Why did this shift occur then? What topics did authors consider appropriate for expression in the vernacular? How did they justify their endeavors? What patterns did they set for the French literary tradition? This course will investigate issues of authority, truth, genre and language in representative literary works (hagiography, chanson de geste, romance, drama and lyric) composed before the mid-thirteenth century. In the course of discussing secondary readings and of preparing the assignments (an oral presentation and a seminar paper), we will consider matters of professional development.
FREN 510L: Old French
A. Ogden
W 2-2:50
FRN 002
Introduction to reading Old French, with consideration of its main dialects (Ile-de-France, Picard, Anglo-Norman) and paleographical issues. May be taken in conjunction with FREN 510/810 or independently. Weekly reading exercises, a transcription and translation exercise, and a final open-book exam. Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin or another romance language. Taught in English.
FREN 520 = 820: Literature of the 16th Century: The Heptameron and the European Novella
M. McKinley
TR 2-3:15
CAB 241
Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron explicitly showcases its relation to Boccaccio’s Decameron, but it grows just as clearly from a variety of other works and literary genres. We will explore the Heptaméron in conjunction with brief selections from those earlier works, including in addition to the Decameron: Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (more commonly known as The Golden Ass); late-medieval French nouvelles; histoires tragiques ; and Rabelais’s tales of Pantagruel and Gargantua. This focus will allow us to consider literature of the court and of the people and to appreciate the evolution of narrative structures, techniques and conventions in the early modern period. Requirements include frequent response writing, a mid-term writing assignment and a final paper.
FREN 810: see FREN 510
FREN 820: see FREN 520
ITAL 756: Three Crowns of Florence
D. Parker
M 3-5:30
WIL 141B
Close examination of Dante's Commedia, Boccaccio's Decameron, and Petrarch's Canzoniere along with secondary readings.
JPTR 535: Introduction to Classical Japanese Literature
G. Heldt
TR 2-3:15
CAB 216
Introduction to the literary arts of Japan from 700-1800. The course considers Japan's earliest myths, the precursors of haiku, the "world's first novel" The Tale of Genji, women's memoirs, war tales, folk tales, and other genres.
LATI 505: Latin Paleography
G. Hays
TR 3:30-4:45
COC 101
An introduction to Latin paleography and related topics, including the theory and practice of Latin textual criticism and the transmission of Latin texts from late antiquity through the Renaissance. We will survey the development of the various scripts and practice reading them. We will also read and discuss major contributions to the history and theory of paleography, textual criticism and editing.
Requirements will include one or more substantial reports, regular exercises in transcription and collation, and a substantial research paper or project. Graduate students from other departments are very welcome. The course will not involve translation of Latin on a large scale, but students should have a basic mastery of the language (at least three years at the college level). Reading knowledge of German and/or Italian would be helpful but is not required. This course is intended primarily for graduate students; advanced undergraduates should contact the instructor before the first class meeting.
RELC 741: Revelation to John
J. Kovacs
TR 11-12:15
CAB 341
This course will consider the last book of the New Testament from two different points of view. First we will study the book in its original first-century context, comparing it with other works in the same genre, the Jewish apocalypses Daniel, 1 Enoch, and 4 Ezra, and asking questions about the historical setting in which the book was written and its message in and for that context. Questions to be considered include: How do ancient Jewish apocalypses help us make sense of the rich array of symbols and images in Revelation? What is the book’s primary message — does it advocate vengeance, desire for social justice, or a worldwide mission to bring all people to salvation? Then we will consider the book’s “reception”, that is how it has been used and interpreted through the centuries, not only in theological works but also in music, art, poetry, novels, political and prophetic writings. Through the ages John’s Apocalypse has been a remarkably popular book, and the history of its reception offers an embarrassment of riches — in media as diverse as ancient sermons, medieval manuscript illustrations, political propaganda, poetry, song, and film. Among other interpretations, we will consider the book’s reception in hymns, African-American spirituals, reggae music, church architecture, Dürer’s woodcuts, the poetry of William Blake, and the popular /Left Behind series of novels.
RELC 892: Cyril of Alexandria
R. Wilken
T 3:30-6
WIL 140
No description available.
RELC 574: The Icon as Art and Theology
V. Guroian
T 3:30-6
PHS 218
This is a course on the icon in Orthodox Christianity. We will read theological works on the meaning of icons, but also on the value of art and its relationship to culture and the sacred. We will consider the icon as a way of doing theology and as a medium of worship and prayer. Readings range from John of Damascus’s 8th century apologetic in defense of the holy icons to modern Orthodox theological aesthetics and theologies of the icon, Included are the writings of Leonid Ouspensky, Vladimir Lossky, Paul Evdokimov. Andrew Louth, Michael Quenot, and Philip Sherrard. We will study at close hand Byzantine, Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic iconography and gospel illumination.
RELI 576: Islamic Mystical Texts
T. Gianotti
W 3:30-6
CAB 430
This primary text-based seminar will examine the more experiential, noetic dimensions of Islamic piety and righteousness (al-ihsān ), from the Qur’ānic and Prophetic foundations to the principal thinkers of the medieval Arabic and Persian “Sufi” traditions. By “seminar” is meant a disciplined, studious discussion of the texts-at-hand. Students should thus be prepared to shoulder a heavy reading load (approx. 100 -150 pages per week) and should come to the class prepared to discuss the assigned text(s) with their colleagues and professor, who will serve the seminar as a guiding participant rather than as a regular lecturer. Students will routinely be asked to initiate the discussion by introducing the text and offering their observations and questions.
SPAN 550: Medieval and Renaissance Literature
M. Gerli
M 3:30-6
CAB 139
No description available.