Graduate Spring Courses 2005


Home

Undergraduate Studies

Graduate Studies

Faculty

Calendar

The following graduate courses are being offered in Spring 2005. Email addresses are included for contacting instructors for further information. For a list of courses being offered at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, see the attached listing. For those who are not aware of the opportunity, Duke and UNC have a reciprocal registration arrangement that allows graduate students at one university to take courses at the other.

Inter-Institutional Registration Agreement

Under the inter-institutional registration agreement, any graduate, professional, or undergraduate student enrolled as a degree-seeking student at any of the following participating universities may participate in registration via the inter-institutional registration process:

Duke University
North Carolina Central University
North Carolina State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

For further information on rules and registration procedures, go to the Inter-Institutional Registration Agreement website.

Duke/UNC direct bus: A new Duke/UNC direct bus, funded by the Robertson Scholars Program, departs frequently and makes traveling between the two campuses easier than ever before. See the Robertson Scholars website for the departure and arrival schedule for this bus.


Duke Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Courses for Spring 2005


ART HISTORY 395S. The Friar and the City

Caroline Bruzelius
M 1:15–3:45
204A East Duke Building

Synopsis:
A graduate seminar on the origins and development of the mendicant orders and their physical impact on medieval cities. We shall discuss the architecture of the new orders in relation to their founding principles, sources of economic support, and relations to the lay public as well as the secular clergy. An important aspect of the class will be on the impact of the Franciscans and Dominicans on the planning and fabric of
medieval cities.

 

MEDREN 200.02. Advanced Topics in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: The Life and Thought of Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Peter Abelard (Also offered as Divinity School HISTTHEO 220.02)
Boyd Taylor Coolman
MW 4:00-5:15
Loc. TBA

Synopsis:
This course will allocate a third of the semester to each of these seminal twelfth-century thinkers. While the primary focus will be their theological and philosophical thought—through close reading of their most important writings—this will be carefully contextualized within their respective social, ecclesiastical, and political settings, and within the narrative of their
individual lives.

 

MEDREN 206.01. The Christian Mystic Tradition in the Medieval Centuries: Medieval Women Contemplatives and Theologians (Also RELIGION 206.01, HISTORY 206.01; also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 206.01)
Susan Keefe
W 7:00-9:30 PM
Loc. TBA

660-3469

Synopsis:
Reading and discussion of the writings of medieval Christian mystics (in translation).

 

MEDREN 209S.01. Middle English Literature Topics: Wycliffite Writings (Also ENGLISH 212S.01)
Fiona Somerset
TH 1:15-3:45
Allen 317

Synopsis:
Wycliffism was England's first indigenous heresy: its early adherents were religious dissidents who not only held to alternative religious beliefs censured by the established church, but hoped to effect radical reforms of the governance of both church and state. The Wycliffites (also known as Lollards) left behind a large body of writings and translations in a wide variety of genres, ranging through satirical broadsides, debates and dialogues, declarative lists of their alternative positions, treatises attacking aspects of church government or explaining specific beliefs, individual self-defenses within the context of a trial for heresy (some plainly fictionalized), imitations and adaptations of religious and secular writings produced outside the movement (most notably Piers Plowman and the Canterbury Tales), and the first full translation of the bible into English that can still be read fairly easily today. In this class we will study Wycliffism and its cultural impact by reading a broad sampling of these writings. Along with using modern editions, we will use the evidence about Lollard writing and readerships that the manuscript record and early printed books can provide: all students will be trained in paleographical and codicological skills to enable them to do this research. Some previous exposure to Middle English and/or the study of medieval England will be helpful, but is not required. No previous work in the field of History of the Book is required. The temporal span will be from about 1370-1550, with some scope for further comparative extension in response to student interest.

 

MEDREN 218S.01. Medieval Philosophy (Also PHIL 218S.01)
Edward Mahoney
M 6:15-8:45
West Duke 204
660-3061

Synopsis:
Study of Augustine against background of late ancient Roman philosophy, and Thomas Aquinas and others against background of medieval Muslim philosophy, in particular Avicenna and Averroes, and Neoplatonism.

 

MEDREN 220S.01. Shakespeare: Shakespeare and Company (Also ENGLISH 220S.01)
Joseph Porter
W 6:00-8:30
Allen 317

Synopsis:
We will read and discuss Othello in the new Arden edition (ed. Honigmann) and a baker's dozen of other plays by Shakespeare, Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, and Middleton, in the context of what is known and being discovered about the works' composition, performance, and publication, with special attention to revolutionary kinds of computer-assisted investigation, and to what is revealed by the recently-discovered foundations of the Rose and Globe theaters, and by the newly-opened London Globe replica.

READING ASSIGNMENTS: Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642, Donald Foster, "The Webbing of Romeo and Juliet," Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, Christopher Marlowe, I & II Tamburlaine the Great, Edward II, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humor, Bartholomew Fair, Thomas Middleton, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Revenger's Tragedy, Middleton and Thomas Dekker, The Roaring Girl.

EXAMINATIONS: None.

TERM PAPERS: Either one substantial essay due the last week of class, or a series of two or three shorter papers distributed through the semester.

GRADE TO BE BASED ON: Class participation and written work.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION/COMMENTS: While early modern drama, especially Shakespeare, is proving exceptionally fruitful ground for computer-assisted investigation, the methods in question are portable to other texts.


MEDREN 236A.01. Luther and the Reformation in Germany (Also RELIGION 236.01; also offered as Divinity School HISTTHEO 236.01)
David Steinmetz
W 4:00-6:30
Loc. TBA

Synopsis:
The theology of Martin Luther in the context of competing visions of reform.

 

MEDREN 240.01. Medieval Narrative: Allegory and Writing Love (Also FRENCH 240.01)
Helen Solterer
M 4:25-6:55 pm
Languages 305

Synopsis:
Premodern Europe is commonly credited with two inventions: romantic love and the mode of reading and writing known as allegory. This seminar will investigate them together. Building on Jacques Lacan's contention that we cannot understand the modern psyche and its desires without making sense of the figurative languages of courtly love, we will begin by reading in tandem: the earliest vernacular "how-to" manual, Andreas Capellanus' Art de l'amour courtois, with Roland Barthes's Fragments d'un discours amoureux. Our work will concentrate on the most controversial allegory, the Roman de la rose, and one principal author, Christine de Pisan, who engaged with it critically through a life of writing. This first professional woman writer in the Francophone tradition makes an important case-study for examining allegory. We will study her polemic on the Rose, critiquing its unethical writing. And we'll explore her own allegorical experiments in gender; including the Chemin de longue etude, inspired by Dante, and the autobiographical L'Avision Christine. To help us in our inquiry, we'll debate essays by Erich Auerbach, Slavoj Zizek, Giorgio Agamben. It is possible that Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, today's top critic of Christine de Pisan, will join us.

This seminar offers an initiation into premodern French culture. No earlier coursework is required. All work will be done with the latest translations into French, with strategic analysis of the Old French, thanks to the Lettres gothiques series that will help us to read the original with a translation. This seminar will be conducted in French or English, depending on the makeup of the group: all students in English, Literature, Art History, and History are welcome.

 

MEDREN 243S.01. Topics in Netherlandish and German Art: Art and Markets (Also ARTHIST 243S.01)
Hans J. Van Miegroet
W 7:15-9:45 PM
East Duke 204A

Synopsis:
Specific problems in northern Renaissance or baroque art such as the Antwerp workshops of the sixteenth century or a critical introduction to major artists such as Van Eyck, Bosch, Dürer, and Rubens. An analytical approach to their lives, atelier procedures and follower; drawings and connoisseurship problems; cultural, literary, social, and economic context; documentary and scientific research strategies.

 

MEDREN 272B.01. The Early Medieval Church: Seven Ecumenical Councils (Also RELIGION 272B; also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 272.01)
Susan Keefe
M 7:00-9:30 PM
Loc. TBA
660-3469

 

GERMAN 302. Topics in Literary Theory: Research Methods In Literary Scholarship
Ann Marie Rasmussen
M 4:25-6:55
Old Chemistry 101

For a weekly schedule, see the course syllabus.

SPANISH 354. Drama of Renaissance and Early Modern Spain: The Tragedy of Early Modern Spain
Margaret Greer
T 7:15-9:45 PM
Languages 305

Synopsis:
Study of the nature, development, and cultural function of drama in 16th- and 17th-century Spain through representative plays – canonical and non-canonical – of the period.

 

FRENCH 325. Montaigne and Friends
Marc Schachter
TH 7:15-9:45
Languages 305
684-8111