The Consortium includes Columbia University, Fordham University, New School University, New York University, Princeton University, Rutgers-New Brunswick, and Stony Brook.
This page will be updated as more information becomes available.
SPRING 2016
Columbia University
Art History and Archaeology
AHIS G8171 The Art of the Early Qur’an. Avinoah Shalem.T 6:10-8pm, 930 Schermerhorn.
Columbia University Libraries holds a rare reproduction one of the earliest Qur’anmanuscripts, also known as the Holy Qur’an Mushaf of ‘Uthman or Tashkent Qur’an. This Qur’an allegedly considered to be the one written by the hand of ‘Uthman (d. 626), one of first caliphs, and thus appears as the oldest in the world. According to tradition, ‘Uthman, who commissioned this Qur’an, was assassinated while reading it, and his blood splattered on its pages. This Qur’an is therefore one of the most holy relics of Sunni Islam. Columbia’s codex will form the very focus of this seminar, around which several issues will be examined. Sessions will be devoted to the art of holy script in early Islam, canonization, monumetalization, the mobility of Qur’ans, and the relationship between “model” and “copy.” The seminar might develop into an exhibition at the Wallach Gallery in 2017.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/AHIS/G8171-20161-001/
AHIS G4615 Mapping Gothic. Stephen Murray. T 10:10-12pm, 934 Schermerhorn.
The story of Gothic is traditionally recounted diachronically as architectural development. With our new interactive website, www.mappinggothic.org, we challenge the user to entertain multiple stories and explore the synchronicity of architectural production, considering the space and time when France became France and new cultural/national unities began to emerge in Europe.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/AHIS/G4615-20161-001/
AHIS G8881 Scribbles and Scribbling in the Early Modern Period. D. Bodart & F. Alberti. R 2:10-4, 930 Schermerhorn Hall.
The seminar investigates the creative process of scribbling and scribbles by artists in the light of the common and popular practice of scribbling. During the past decades, scribbles and schematic drawings have been found on the margins of early modern artworks by artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. This graphic production, which has not received much attention from scholars, echoes the ideas of “controlled regression” and “scribbling style” that Ernst H. Gombrich and Ernst Kris used in their seminal essay “The Principles of Caricature” when questioning the late appearance of caricature at the end of the 16th century. The new material discovered belongs to an earlier chronology, which predates the official birth of caricature, and therefore should be rethought within the wider field of visual culture of that period. In order to understand the status, perception and uses of such “unlearned” drawings at a time when art was dominated by the laws of disegno, the seminar intends to consider artists’ scribbles in relation to the wider popular and anonymous practices of the images. It will also consider scribbles within workshops practices and the learning process. The course will be focused on methodological issues, associated with the creation of a digital archive of early modern scribbles. Students are required to read at least one of the following foreign languages: French, Italian, Spanish or German.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/AHIS/G8881-20161-001/
English and Comparative Literature
BC3155 The Canterbury Tales. Christopher Baswell. Open to graduate students with permission of instructor. TR 4:10-5:25pm.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/ENGL/BC3155-20161-001/
ENGL G6002 Middle English, Section 2: Medieval Disabilities. Christopher Baswell. R, 2:10-4pm.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/ENGL/G6002-20161-002/
ENGL W4211. Milton. Julie Crawford. TR 11:40am-12:55pm.
(Lecture). This course will look at the major works of John Milton in the context of 17th-century English religious, political and social events. In addition to reading Milton’s poems, major prose (including The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Areopagitica, and The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth), and the full texts of Paradise Lost and Sampson Agonistes (the course text will be Orgel and Goldberg, eds. John Milton), we will look at the authors and radicals whose activities and writings helped to provide the contexts for Milton’s own: poets and polemicists, sectarians and prophets, revolutionaries and regicides, Diggers and Levelers. Requirements for this course include two short primary research papers (3 pp.) and an exam. Graduate students will also be required to write a seminar paper.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/ENGL/W4211-20161-001/
ENGL G6135. Renaissance Drama. James Shapiro. M 2:10-4pm.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/ENGL/G6135-20161-001/
The Rhetorical Tradition. Kathy Eden. W 10:10-12pm.
Major works of rhetorical theory from Greek and Roman antiquity to early modern Europe with a focus on the continuities and changes and with special attention to the forensic elements of both their inventional and stylistic strategies.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/CLEN/G6120-20161-001/
French and Romance Philology
Queer Love in Medieval France. Eliza Zingesser. F 2:10-4pm.
What did it mean to be queer in the francophone Middle Ages? Was there such a thing? The term ‘sodomy’ was used in the period to describe a wide variety of acts (not all sexual), and the term would seem to foreclose the possibility of female same-sex desire. The questions we will address include the following: In an era in which all non-procreative sex was conceived as sinful, does the opposition between homosexual and heterosexual still hold? How does reproductive discourse underpin medieval conceptions of artistic creation? Was male and female homosexuality conceived symmetrically? Our readings will take us through a broad range of genres—from penance manuals to lyric poetry to romance. Texts include Marie de France’s lais, troubadour songs, Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature, the Roman d’Enéas, Heldris of Cornwall’s Le Roman de Silence and selected saints’ lives.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/FREN/G8116-20161-001/
FREN G8417. Pascal, Hermeneutics and Rhetoric. Pierre Force. R, 2:10-4pm.
This seminar deals with the connections between hermeneutics and rhetoric in Pascal. We will focus on the notion of Figure, which applies to both fields in a problematic way. We will use ancient hermeneutics and literary theory in order to define Pascal’s general theory of interpretation.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/FREN/G8417-20161-001/
History
HIST G8233 History & Culture of Nomadic Civilizations: Nomads of the Eurasian Steppe. Gulnar Kendirbai. W 12:10-2pm.
“A nomadic society does not have a history of its own,” wrote the well-known Historian Arnold Toynbee. This course seeks to challenge this statement by employing new perspectives in examining the economic, political, cultural, and environmental history of the nomadic steppe populations of Eurasia, which main body lies within the borders of the former Soviet Union. Extended to the east into Mongolia and Northern China and to the west to the Carpathian Mountain range in Central Europe, the Steppe region has played a major role in Eurasian history, although its importance is often overlooked. By connecting east with west via trade routes (the Silk and Tea Roads), it facilitated travel of goods, cultures and ideas between their populations through its inhabitants, the nomadic peoples, who were the main mediators in bringing many innovations to both sides. This course is also open to approved undergraduates; please request instructor’s permission and fill out an add/drop form to be added.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/HIST/G8233-20161-001/
HIST G 8906 Craft and Science: Making Objects in the Early Modern World. Pamela Smith. M 10:10am-2pm. [This course counts for the Med Ren MA Manuscript/Print Culture requirement]
This course will study the materials, techniques, settings, and meanings of skilled craft and artistic practices in the early modern period (1350-1750), in order to reflect upon a series of issues, including craft knowledge and artisanal epistemology; the intersections between craft and science; and questions of historical methodology and evidence in the reconstruction of historical experience. The course will be run as a “Laboratory Seminar,” with discussions of primary and secondary materials, as well as text-based research and hands-on work in a laboratory. This course is one component of the Making and Knowing Project of the Center for Science and Society. This course contributes to the collective production of a transcription, English translation, and critical edition of a late sixteenth-century manuscript in French, Ms. Fr. 640. In 2014-15, the course concentrated on mold-making and metalworking. In 2015-16, it will focus on color-making, including pigments, varnishes, cold enamels, dyes, imitation gems, and other color processes. Students are encouraged to take this course for both semesters (or more), but will receive full credit only once. Different laboratory work and readings will be carried out each semester. SPRING 2016 ONLY: This course will also be open to a small number of select undergraduates, with instructor’s permission and an add/drop form ONLY.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/HIST/G8906-20161-001/
HSEA G6009 Colloquium on Early Modern Japan: Gender in Japanese History. Gregory Pflugfelder. W 4:10-6pm.
Reading and discussion of primary and secondary materials dealing with Japanese history from the 16th through 19th centuries. Attention to both historical and historiographic issues, focusing on a different theme or aspect of early modern history each time offered. Field(s): EA
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/HSEA/G6009-20161-001/
HIST W4081 Building Forever: Rome through its Monuments, Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Maya Maskarinec. R 2:10-4pm. Open to graduate students with permission of instructor.
How did a small Italian settlement by the Tiber River rise to become the capital of a vast Mediterranean Empire? How did this same city reinvent itself as the spiritual capital of Western Christendom? How were these dramatic changes registered, recorded, remembered, forgotten or erased in the urban fabric? This course ‘reads’ the multilayered city of Rome from its origins through the Middle Ages: Part I: From Village to Empire; Part II:A Christian Capital; Part III:Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages. Each meeting focuses on select sites or monuments in the city, each paired with a primary text, to consider larger economic, social, cultural, religious, and political changes taking place in Rome and the impact that they had on the urban landscape. Throughout, we will delve into the methodological challenges faced by scholars in understanding these changes. Students will be encouraged to think creatively about the intersections of history and legend and the participation of monuments in their wider urban setting.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/HIST/W4081-20161-001/
Italian
ITAL G4102 Renaissance Chivalric Epic-Folk Performance Tradition. Jo Ann Cavallo. W 4:10-6pm.
This course will examine a selection of chivalric narratives, primarily by Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, as they pass from the written verse to popular theater, primarily SicilianOpera dei Pupi and the Tuscan-Emilian epic Maggio (folk opera). Close analysis of episodes, scripts, and performances will be combined with attention to the social, geographical, and historical context. Corollary issues to be discussed include orality and literacy, the concept of (popular) culture, the performance aspects of verbal art, and the ideology of symbolism.
By examining episodes from canonical chivalric texts adapted in popular folk traditions, this course crosses temporal and geographical boundaries (medieval and modern, southern and northern Italy) as well as social and formal ones (elite and popular culture, written and oral literature). It also brings to bear various disciplines, combining aspects of literary criticism with performance theory, social history, and cultural anthropology, as it introduces students to an overlooked aspect of Italian studies, popular oral traditions.
Classes will be in English, but the performances and some readings are in Italian without available translations.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/ITAL/G4102-20161-001/
ITAL W4092 Dante’s Divina Commedia II. Teodolinda Barolini. TR 4:10-6pm. 516 Hamilton Hall.
Prerequisites: SECTION 001: reading knowledge of Italian. SECTION 002: none. A year-long course in which the “Commedia” is read over two consecutive semesters; students can register for the first, the second, or both semesters. This course offers a thorough grounding in the entire text and an introduction to the complexities of its exegetical history. Attention not only to historical and theological issues, but also to Dante’s mimesis, his construction of an authorial voice that generations of readers have perceived as “true,” and the critical problems that emerge when the virtual reality created in language has religious and theological pretensions. SECTION 001: Lectures in English, text in Italian; examinations require the ability to translate Italian. SECTION 002: Lectures in English, examinations in English; students who can follow lectures with the help of translations but who cannot manage the Italian should register for this section.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/ITAL/W4092-20161-001/
Latin American and Iberian Cultures
SPAN G6509 Visions from Afar, Visions from Nearby. Alessandra Russo. W 1:10-3:55pm.
Between the 15th and the 17th centuries the expansion projects –and in particular the Iberian ones – stimulated an unprecedented fertile tension between the distant and the close, in geographical, historical and visual terms. Each session of this graduate seminar will be devoted to specific episodes – how to conceive the city of Tenochtitlan from Nuremberg? how to make a Jesuit mapamundi in Beijing? how to illustrate local plants and fruits in Mexico (Francisco Hernandez) or Goa (García da Orta)? how to transform into copper plates the pages of the chronicles describing remote places for an European public (De Bry’s enterprise)? We will also study a number of textual and visual documents explicitly conceived to cross the ocean (Diego Muñoz Camargo from Tlaxcala, Guaman Poma de Ayala from Lucanas, both authors’ textual and visual works aimed to reach Spain and to be potentially printed), or Bernardino de Sahagún’s encyclopedic project. From the construction of “global mythographies” in Las Casas, or Pignoria to the display of farness and the reconceptualization of Antiquity in XVIth century Lisbon, and Goa or in the Wunderkammernof Bologna, Naples, or Prague, we will investigate how between the 15th and 17th centuries, new ways of making both remoteness and proximity visible were used and invented, tools that range from new challenges of ekphrasis to precise optical techniques of capturing.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/SPAN/G6509-20161-001/
Music
MUSI G8104 Music, Mind, and Soul in the Renaissance. Giuseppe Gerbino. W 1:10-3pm. 701A Dodge Hall.
This seminar analyzes the rise and decline of the polyphonic madrigal in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as a chapter in the history of emotions. We will investigate how early-modern “passions of the soul” were understood, codified, constructed, enacted, and simulated in music. Course topics will focus on four areas: recent approaches to the study of emotions in a historical perspective; recent approaches to text/music analysis in secular polyphony; Renaissance theories of the mind-body relationship and the place of music in Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines of the human soul; Renaissance theories of perception and cognition, and the role of music in the philosophy of love.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/MUSI/G8104-20161-001/
Slavic Studies
RUSS G6014 Old Russian Literature. Valentina Izmirlieva. T 4:10-6pm. 709 Hamilton Hall.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/RUSS/G6014-20161-001/
Fordham University
English
ENGL 5742 – Milton’s Major Works T 4 – 6:30 p.m.
Eve Keller
This course will aim to offer a reasonably intensive study of Milton’s major poetry and prose in the context of contemporary controversies in religion, politics (both social and domestic) and natural philosophy. We will also pay attention to the development of and developments in the enormous industry of Milton Studies. Requirements for the course include one set of study questions to be used by the class to direct discussion, one oral presentation, a book review, and a term paper.
CRN 27430
History
HIST 5553 Book History: Text, Media, Communication (Rigogne)
Wednesdays 5:30-8:00
New York University
Anthropology
English
MEDI-GA 2300 001 (Spring 2016)
Marguerite Porete and The Mirror of Simple Souls
Topics in Interdisciplinary Study of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Research Strategies and Methodologies
Prof. Elizabeth A. R. Brown
Wednesday, 1:00-3:00 PM, Tisch Hall, 40 West 4th Street, Room LC2
Emphasizing research strategies and methodologies for interpreting evidence and reconstructing past events and individuals from the material traces they have left, this seminar will be centered on Marguerite Porete, burned as a heretic in Paris on 1 June 1310, allegedly for writing the mystical treatise The Mirror of Simple Souls. The seminar will examine the limited documentary and chronicle sources for Marguerite and her death, as well as the text of the book she is credited with writing. In investigating the sources, we will study their creation, their reception, their preservation, and their treatment by modern historians, including specialists in narrative, in literary and discourse theory, in inquisitorial theory and practice, and in feminist spirituality (with particular attention to Parisian beguines). The larger context in which the execution occurred, the reign of Philip the Fair of France (r. 1285-1314) and the pontificate of Clement V (r. 1305-1314), will be studied for the light they cast on this episode. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski will visit the seminar to discuss female mystics and their literature, and Michael Sergent will come to talk about his work on the textual tradition of The Mirror of Simple Souls.
Shakespeare
ENGL-GA 1345 Archer, Gilman, Halpern. 4 points per term. 2016-17
Shakespeare’s major comedies, histories, and tragedies.
Paleography and Codicology
ENGL-GA 2200 Rust. 4 points. 2016-17
A survey of Latin scripts of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance (500-1550) and of methods and materials of medieval book production, introducing the world of the handwritten book and uses of manuscript evidence in literary study. Attention will be given to scripts, to the materials and methods of book production, to developments in page layout and decoration as well as to a series of book genres: from the Bible and Books of Hours, to student notebooks and household miscellanies.
Topics in Renaissance Literature
ENGL-GA 2323 Archer, Fleming, Gilman, Guillory, Halpern, Wofford. 4 points.2015-16, 2016-17
Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
ENGL-GA 2333 Archer, Gilman, Guillory. 4 points. 2016-17
Marlowe, Jonson, Kyd, Marston, Tourneur, Webster, Middleton, Rowley, Ford, Chapman.
Restoration and Early 18th-Century Literature
ENGL-GA 2521 McDowell, Siskin, Starr. 4 points. 2016-17
The major works of Dryden, Swift, and Pope, together with the works of such contemporaries as Bunyan, Butler, Rochester, Marvell, Behn, Astell, Addison, and Steele.
French
Studies in Renaissance Literature
FREN-GA 2390 Usher. 4 points. 2015-16, 2016-17
Potential topics include: Rabelais, Montaigne: sagesse de la littérature ? ; Words and Images
Women Writers in France: The Creation of Feminine Literary Tradition
FREN-GA 1811 Goldwyn. 4 points. 2015-16.
This seminar examines both the changing socio-historical context of French women writers and the common problems and themes that constitute a female literary tradition. Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Marguerite de Navarre, Medelieine de Scudéry, Mms. De Villedieu, de Lafayette, Du Noyer, and de Graffigny.
Studies in 17th-Century Literature
FREN-GA 2490 Usher, Goldwyn. 4 points. 2015-16, 2016-17
Recent topics include Neo-Classical French Theatre, Emulation and Rivalry in the 17th century
Fine Arts (IFA)
Architectural Theory and Practice in Italian Renaissance (Seminar) FINH-GA 3043-001 (#3538)
Marvin Trachtenberg Wednesday 5:30PM-7:30PM In the standard narrative of Renaissance architecture, the upward path out of the dark ages follows a three-part progression in the quattrocento. First, the new all’antica, rationalized practice of Brunelleschi. Next the Vitruvius-inspired neoantique architectural theory of Alberti (followed by other writers). Finally, the theory-informed practice of Alberti himself, followed by others such as Francesco di Giorgio and Giuliano da Sangallo. In the cinquecento, this pattern appears to more or less repeat. First the new “High Renaissance” grand-manner classicism of the practice of Bramante and Raphael (soaring suddenly “above” earlier work, echoing Brunelleschi and Alberti’s emergence); and then the mature Renaissance theorists, who “resolve” all relevant issues not only in their buildings but especially their printed treatises beginning with Serlio. Most historiography of Renaissance architecture continues to be determined, to a greater or lesser degree, by this narratology, with emphasis on the roles assigned to the major players, whose lives and works are divided among various modern historians, who occasionally pause to reaffirm the entire story.
Introduction To The Study Of Medieval And Renaissance (Colloquium) FINH-GA 2543-001 (#3299)
Marvin Trachtenberg Thursday 3:00PM-5:00PM This course offers an introduction to medieval and Renaissance architecture through the study of a broad range of issues. It questions certain fundamental assumptions that have long tended to shape discourse in this complex historical zone, and attempts to clarify and make newly meaningful material that is oftenwrongly regarded as obscure or difficult. It addresses broad questions such as periodization and historical stratigraphy, or the relative roles of material versus textual evidence in architectural study as well as specificities of key individual works and their builders. Sessions focus on such problems as the paradox of the Gothic column; the origins and logic of the rib-vaulting system; the possibility of a medieval modernism; Richard Krautheimer’s celebrated theory of medieval architectural iconography; the enigmaticstatus of Italy in medieval architecture; the changing role of antiquity as model in Renaissance and pre-Renaissance periods; the origin story of rational urban planning; the role of the individual architect versuscollective planning and questions of architectural authorship; temporalities of architectural design and facture, and related topics.
Hebrew and Judaic Studies
History
HIST-GA.1150 19047 Early Modern Europe Literature of the Field CLQ TUE 2:00 – 4:45 Wolff
Italian Studies
The Arts of Eloquence in Medieval and Early Modern Italy
ITAL-GA 2588 Cox. 4 points. 2016-17
Recent scholarship in medieval and early modern culture has increasingly stressed the centrality of the study of rhetoric in these periods and the range of its influence, not simply on literature but on everything from art, music, and architecture to political thought. This course serves as an introduction to medieval and early modern rhetoric in Italy, conceived of broadly as a global art of persuasive discourse, spanning both verbal and nonverbal uses.
Studies in Renaissance Literature
ITAL-GA 2589 Cox, Bolzoni, Tylus. 4 points. 2015-16, 2016-17
Variable content course. Recent topics: The Italian Lyric Tradition from Petrarch to Marino (Tylus); art and literature, poetry and portrait in Italian Renaissance (Bolzoni); the literature of pilgrimage in early modern Italy (Tylus) 2014-15.
The Courtesan in Early Modern Italian Society and Culture
ITAL-GA 2590 Cox. 4 points. 2016-17
Examines the figure of the so-called cortigiana onesta within 16th- to 17th-century Italian culture, with a particular focus on the role courtesans played within the literary culture of the period, both as authors and as the subject of literary works. Also pays some attention to representations of courtesans within the visual arts and to their role within the musical culture of the time and in the early history of Italian theatre.
Studies in Early Modern Literature
ITAL-GA 2689 Cox, Tylus. 4 points. Variable content course. Recent topics: Studies in Translation (Tylus). 2016-17
Spanish and Portuguese
Cervantes: Don Quijote
SPAN-GA 9472 4 points. 2015-16, 2016-17
The Quijote is one of the most renowned and read works in the world, and its ability to generate critical literature seems to have no limits. In Cervantes’ work, the reader assumes the role of interpreter, with both writing and reading subjected to revisions which transform the idea of literature and the fiction it represents. Students will address questions posed by the critical canon and recent studies: the Quijote as the first modern novel; its transgression of works that came before it; its inscription in a category of burlesque, humorous literature; its ability to appropriate nearly all literary models from its time. The course will situate Cervantes within the history of ideas in order to approach vital questions such as the ethical value of good intentions resolved with negative effects; the construction of identity; the dispersion and agony of the subject; reality conceived as a limitless text; the function of objects and their nominalization.
Princeton University
Art History
ART 547 / ARC 552 Graded A-F, P/D/F, Audit
Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Architecture
Carolyn Yerkes
Advanced research in the history of architecture from 1400 to 1750. Topics vary, with the focus each year on important European centers and architects, and on issues related to architectural theory and practice. In spring 2016, this course considers the forms of early modern architectural theory, with particular attention on the history of the architectural book. We explore a set of key genres-including the treatise, the model book, the biography, the construction manual, and the travel narrative-through a close reading of primary sources and direct study of original objects.
Sample reading list:
Sebastiano Serlio, On Domestic Architecture
Andrea Palladio, Four Books of Architecture
Giorgio Vasari, Life of Michelangelo
Claude Perrault, Ordonnance for the Five Types of Columns
Requirements/Grading:
Papers – 75%
Oral Presentation(s) – 25%
Other Requirements:
Not Open to Freshmen.
Schedule/Classroom assignment:
Class number Section Time Days Room Enrollment Status
40753 S01 9:00 am – 11:50 am W McCormick Hall 362 Enrolled:6 Limit:20
English
COM 547 / ENG 530 Graded A-F, P/D/F, Audit
The Renaissance – England Reads Venice
Leonard Barkan
Venice fascinates the English early moderns, for its politics, its religion, its art. Dramatists locate plays there, travellers return with fantastic stories, Sir Philip Sidney gets his portrait painted by Veronese. Our questions have to do with ways in which creative figures from one linguistic or generic sphere read the evidences from another sphere. We consider works by Shakespeare and Jonson. But we also follow other trains of cross-cultural familiarity: historiography, travel writing, diplomatic relations, issues about gender and religious minorities, and the role of the visual arts in creating an image of the Other.
Sample reading list:
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare, Othello
Ben Jonson, Volpone
Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller
Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities
Henry Wotton, Life and Letters
See instructor for complete list
Requirements/Grading:
Paper in lieu of Final – 50%
Oral Presentation(s) – 30%
Class/Precept Participation – 20%
Other Requirements:
Not Open to Freshmen.
Prerequisites and Restrictions:
None..
Schedule/Classroom assignment:
Class number Section Time Days Room Enrollment Status
41003 S01 1:30 pm – 4:20 pm M East Pyne Building 127
German
Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Art History
16:082:536 Renaissance Architecture (3)
Architecture in Italy from 1400 to 1600, including issues of form, symbol, meaning, and intention. The influence of engineering, urban planning, military architecture, garden design, and theory as well as practice addressed.
Marder
16:082:537 Early Baroque Painting in Italy (3)
Painting in Rome ca. 1600, focusing on the stylistic innovations and legacy of the Carracci and Caravaggio in the context of contemporary artistic trends, patronage, and theory.
Puglisi
16:082:538 Bernini (3)
Consideration of Bernini’s career as the universal artistic genius of the Roman baroque. Sculpture, architecture, and painting and their contexts considered.
Marder, Puglisi
16:082:539 Velazquez and Baroque Painting in Spain (3)
Major achievements of the 17th-century painter and his impact on Spanish baroque painting.
Puglisi
16:082:543 Dutch Genre Painting in the 17th Century (3)
Recent interpretations of the themes and pictorial “realism” of Dutch 17th-century genre painting and its antecedents. Artists include Frans Hals, Gerard Dou, Gerard Terborch, Johannes Vermeer, and Jan Steen.
16:082:547 Baroque Architecture (3)
Emphasizing 17th-century Rome, the great architects Bernini, Borromini, and Pietra da Cortona discussed in depth. Issues of urbanism, the contributions of the Piedmontesi architects, and 18th-century architecture examined.
Marder
English
ENGL 620 Ben Jonson: Theater, Poetry, Philosophy
Henry Turner
R 1:10-4:10pm
This course will introduce students to the life, times, and works of Ben Jonson, arguably the most important dramatist of the seventeenth century. We will read selections from Jonson’s poetry and prose, especially extracts from his commonplace book on literary criticism, and as many of the masques and plays as possible. We will use it to launch our investigations into some of the major problems that defined what we call the “early modern” in England and that are currently driving scholarship on the period. Topics will include the theater as an institution and mode of representation, with some discussion of classical and early modern architectural theory and notions of theatrical space; company organization and acting styles; the emergence of “authorship” in competing fields of moral and textual authority, including patronage and the market; theater and spectacle at court; the philosophical premises implied in neoclassicism, including but not limited to theories of comedy, tragedy, and dramatic structure; the status of literary criticism and the idea of poetry and the “literary,” including its function and purpose; the Roman and Greek traditions behind Jonson’s humanism; his reading practices and the history of the book and print culture more generally; urbanization and the development of a consumer culture; ideas of the “social”; problems of style in language and behavior; gender, sexuality, and performance. We will be working with a combination of modern editions, older editions (especially the still excellent Works ed. Herford and Simpson, as well as the new Cambridge edition), and “original” texts from EEBO. Selections from scholarship on Jonson and assorted theoretical readings will be available electronically on Sakai. Course requirements include perfect attendance at all seminar meetings, active participation in discussion, class presentation on an assigned research topic (usually introducing an important bibliographic, biographical, or archival resource to the class), weekly discussion starters, research bibliography for final paper, abstract and office-consultation over final paper, 25-page final research paper, due at the end of the semester.
Please email [email protected] for more information.
16:350:536,537 Studies in Renaissance Literature (3,3)
Major writers of the 16th and early 17th centuries approached through modern critical ideas of form, genre, convention, theme, and style.
16:350:538 Forms of Renaissance Literature (3)
Studies in literary forms that gave expression to major themes in the 16th and early 17th centuries: heroic, pastoral, satirical, tragic, and comic.
16:350:539 Renaissance Drama (3)
Readings from selected Tudor and Stuart playwrights.
16:350:540 Shakespeare (3)
General study of Shakespeare’s works.
16:350:541 Milton (3)
Milton’s poetry and selected prose.
16:350:542 Studies in the 17th Century (3)
Survey of 17th-century literature, including Jacobean, Caroline, Civil War, interregnum, and Restoration poetry, prose, and drama. Study of influential literary historical and theoretical narratives written about this century.
History
Italian
16:560:613,614 Italian Literature of the 14th Century (3,3)
First semester: Petrarch. Second semester: Boccaccio.
White
16:560:615,616 Italian Literature of the 15th Century (3,3)
First semester: the development of Humanism (Bruni, Valla, Alberti, Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, and others). Second semester: the poets (Lorenzo, Poliziano, Pulci, Boiardo, and others).
Marsh
16:560:621,622 Italian Literature of the 16th Century (3,3)
Issues of Renaissance literature and culture, seen from a critical perspective. First semester: Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and others. Second semester: Castiglione, Della Casa, Speroni, Aretino, Tasso, Fonte, and others.
Baldi
16:560:625,626 Italian Epic and Chivalric Poetry (3,3)
Medieval origins of the genre and its evolution during the Renaissance through Pulci’s Morgante, Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata.
Baldi, White
16:560:631 Italian Literature of the 17th Century (3)
Works of Campanella, Marino, Galileo, and baroque theater.
White
Stony Brook University
English
EGL 502: Studies in Shakespeare
EGL 503: Studies in Milton
EGL 520: Studies in the Renaissance
History
HIS 501: Early Modern Europe Seminar:1450-1789
Field seminar in early modern European history, 1450-1789. Surveys the major historical problems and interpretations from the Renaissance to the coming of the French Revolution.
Italian
ITL 522: Seminar in Italian Humanism and Renaissance Literature
Analysis of the works of such writers as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Aretino, Tasso, and Michelangelo. Study of the relation of the individual works of these writers to broader historical, cultural, and intellectual developments of the period.
Music
MUS 545: Topics in Renaissance Music
Historical, analytical, and critical issues related to Renaissance music. Recent topics have included early 15th-century song repertories, the boundaries of the Renaissance, and the works of Ockeghem. May be repeated if topic is sufficiently different.
MUS 547: Topics in Baroque Music
Historical problems in music of the Baroque era. Recent topics have included German Passion settings, theories of expression and representation, and musical rhetoric.
MUS 585: Early Music Performance Practice
Study and implementation of Renaissance and Baroque performance practices. Areas include brass ensemble music and lute and guitar repertories.
