The following graduate courses are being offered in the Spring. 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 website for UNC's program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 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.

MEDREN 200.01. Advanced Topics in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: "The Protestant Reformers and the Jews" (Also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 245)
Sujin Pak
W 8:30 - 11:00
Loc: Langford 042
grace.pak@duke.edu

Synopsis:
This course studies the late medieval and Renaissance backdrop to Christian perceptions of Jews and Judaism and Jewish responses to these perceptions and focuses on the views of Jews and Judaism in the writings of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Bucer, and a few Catholic contemporaries such as Erasmus, Reuchlin, Eck, and Pfefferkorn.

MEDREN 200.02. Advanced Topics in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: "Women and the Protestant Reformation" (Also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 255)
Sujin Pak
M 2:30 - 5:00
Loc: Langford 050
grace.pak@duke.edu

Synopsis:
This course involves the study of 1) the changing views of the roles of women in the home and workplace and 2) the changing views of marriage, divorce, and parenthood during the time of the Protestant Reformation.

MEDREN 200.04. Advanced Topics in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: "Women under Monasticism" (Also RELIGION 206, Divinity School CHURCHST 250)
Susan Keefe
T 6:30 - 9:00
Loc: Gray 110
susan.keefe@duke.edu

Synopsis:
The history of the Medieval Church told from its women figures. Attention is paid to the life and writings of saints, heretics, abbesses, queens, mystic recluses, virgins, bishop's wives, and reformers.

MEDREN 200S.02. Advanced Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: "Writing Life: Christine De Pizan" (Also FRENCH 200S.01)
Helen Solterer
TTH 10:05 - 11:20
Loc: TBA
helen.solterer@duke.edu

Synopsis:
This seminar explores five key questions about fiction through the works of the first professional writer working in French, a woman of Italian origin. *Dream Writing - We'll begin with the major text of her day, the Roman de la rose that takes readers on a surreal, erotic quest. With the help of illuminated manuscripts available on line for the first time, we'll study connections between fantasy, allegory, and fiction. *Literature on Trial - Can a fictional work be charged with doing damage? Christine de Pizan launched the first such public campaign against the Rose. We'll debate the limits and freedoms of fiction by analyzing the case made for and against the romance, comparing this trial with other infamous ones: Chartier's Belle Dame, Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal. *Autobiography - A visionary and cosmic narrative called La Vision Christine offers a test in identifying the defining traits of autobiographical writing. By comparing it with other works in the first-person, like the letters of Heloise and Abelard, we'll consider experiments in the life story of the writer that are not realistic. *Utopias - When Christine wrote La Cité des dames, she invented a fictive community for women. We'll take up her challenge to determine how a utopian text is constructed. *Political Engagement - During the occupation of Paris in the fifteenth century, Christine took the lead writing to defend France. Examining her letters and speeches, we'll investigate the earliest rhetoric of national sentiment and models of the écrivain engagé. This seminar provides an initiation into premodern literature and culture. We will work with contemporary translations, as well as the original texts.

MEDREN 202C.01. Modern European Christianity (Also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 14)
David Steinmetz
MW 2:30 - 3:45
Loc: Westbrook 0016
david.steinmetz@div.duke.edu

Synopsis:
This course is a survey of the history of Christianity from the Reformation to the present. Prerequisite for this course is MEDREN 202B.01.

209S.01. Middle English Literature, 1100 to 1500: "Langland and the Late Medieval Church" (Also Divinity School HISTTHEO 220.01, ENGLISH 212S.01)
David Aers
TH 2:50 - 5:20
Loc: Langford 050
david.aers@duke.edu

Synopsis:
At the center of this course is a close reading of Langland's Piers Plowman in its final version (late 1380s?). This great poem is a long exploratory work which participates in complex webs of discourse and practice. It is committed to reform, church, and polity. But reform from what and to what? And how? What are the resources on which Langland can draw? His work demands that we learn to read with careful attention, with patience, and that we go across disciplinary boundaries which constitute the modern university. Obviously enough, this presents us with serious difficulties. How can we hear and understand the conversations in which Piers Plowman participates, the tendencies about which he rages, the fears and hopes of his community? This course will attempt to address such questions, concentrating on the poem and the late medieval church. Here I want to give special consideration to the relations between Langland's theology/ecclesiology, John Wyclif's, and Wycliffites'. This consideration might open out into some exploration of relations between Piers Plowman and the sixteenth-century English Reformation.

MEDREN 210S.01. Topics in Renaissance Studies: "The World in Venice" (Also offered as ITALIAN 210S.01, ARTHST 210S.01, HISTORY 299S.01)
Valeria Finucci
John Martin
T 4:25 - 6:55
Loc: Perkins 2-060
valeria.finucci@duke.edu
john.martin@duke.edu

Synopsis:
This course examines Venice as a privileged site for the economic, social, and cultural encounters of individuals and communities from throughout the European and Mediterranean Worlds during the Renaissance. We will focus on the various ways Greeks, Germans, French, Jews, Turks, and other "outsiders" both experienced and transformed the city during the Renaissance, with attention both to tensions among various "peoples" as well as to the remarkably porous social and cultural boundaries in this mercantile city. Readings will include memoirs, plays, travel accounts, ambassadors' notes, and other works of literature, as well as a variety of archival sources (in translation).

MEDREN 220AS.01. Society and Economy of Europe (Also HISTORY 221AS.01, ECON 221S.01)
Thomas Robisheaux
MW 4:25 - 5:40
Loc: Carr 137
thomas.robisheaux@duke.edu

Synopsis:
This course introduces advanced undergraduate and graduate students to major topics and puzzles in the social and economic history of late medieval and early modern Europe. To derive maximum benefit from the class students should have a general background in European history from this period. The approach is topical - not chronological or systematic - and is adapted whenever possible to students interest and needs. Topics may include: the foundations of everyday life, the Annales School and history, population trends and demographic theory, the peasant economy, village society, trade, finance, and early capitalism, ritual and society, the nobility, social structure, court society, the making of Europe's urban grid, family and household, gender and culture, micro-history, mapmaking and spatial knowledge, oral culture and literate and visual culture, new approaches to early modern European empires, witchcraft, and marginal groups. We will focus on major current problems of interest, the methods that historians have used in exploring these problems, and the current state of research relating to each of them. Weekly attendance is assumed, graduate students are expected to use their reading knowledge of at least one European language to complete the requirements for the course.

MEDREN 220S.01. Shakespeare Topics: "Delivering Othello" (Also ENGLISH 220S.01)
Joseph Porter
W 4:25 - 6:55
Loc: Allen 317
joseph.porter@duke.edu

Synopsis:
This graduate-upperclass seminar will focus on Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, which we will read in the new Oxford edition. In addition to providing deep and broad familiarization of a key work of world literature, one particularly relevant to the history of racism in the West, and of the Muslim-Christian divide, the seminar also offers an intensive inquiry into editing practice and theory, performance criticism, cultural study, and other ways in which canonical drama is delivered to its audiences. Professor Porter, Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming New Variorum Othello, will serve generally as consultant, associate presenter, and facilitator, and as chief presenter for the last meeting.

The seminar will address the following matters in successive meetings: Author and Audience; The Play "Itself"; Text I: Editorial History and Prospects; Text II: "Unediting" and the Editorial Crisis; Performance I: The Play on Stage; Performance II: The Play on Screen; Teaching the Play; "Race," Gender, Sexuality, and Slavery; Authorial Pivot and Cultural Engine: The Play at Work; Orality and Textuality; Mind I: Subjectivity and Character; Mind II: The Authorial Mind; Ethical Aesthetics.

Written work-20 pp. for undergraduates, 30 pp. for graduates-may consist of either a single essay or two or three shorter ones. Students choosing the second option should plan to submit essays at intervals through the semester. Their final installments, and the single longer essays, will be due the last day of class.

MEDREN 234A. Early Christian Asceticism (Also offered as RELIGION 234.01)
Elizabeth Clark
TTH 1:15 - 3:15
Loc: Gray 230B
elizabeth.clark@duke.edu

Synopsis:
The development of asceticism and monasticism in the first six centuries of Christianity. 

MEDREN 236A. Luther and the Reformation in Germany (Also Divinity School HISTTHEO 236, RELIGION 236)
David Steinmetz
T 2:30 - 5:00
Loc: Gray 110
david.steinmetz@duke.edu

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

MEDREN 245S.01. Art and Art Markets (Also ARTHIST 245S.01, ECON 244S.01, VISUALST 252AS.01)
Hans Van Miegroet
W 7:15 - 9:45
Loc: East Duke 204A
hvm@duke.edu

Synopsis:
This is a cross-disciplinary art history-economics seminar. It offers an analytical, applied, and historical exploration of cultural production and how reception, fashion, and price are related to local markets. Attention is not only paid to the behaviors of producer and dealers, but also to consumers. Theoretical issues will include how and why imagery is valued, the nature of "fancy" or what makes goods desirable and fashionable in a specific point in time. Empirical applications will also draw from studies that challenge the notion that art is exceptional. Historical studies will be examined showing how art markets have evolved from the 16th and 17th century Netherlands, to 18th century England, and 17th-19th century France. We will further reassess lesser known aspects of how dealers intervened personally in the large-scale production and export of Netherlandish paintings to Spain and the Americas (Brazil, Nueva Espana/Mexico), influenced artist's representational strategies based on local audience response(s), and even controlled workshop processes in timely, particular, and specific terms. Though critical discussions ranging from taste formation, consumer behavior to the role of dealers as cultural negotiants (not commonly part of any art historical discussion), students may find in this seminar many ingredients for a lively discussion and a creative exploration of visual culture in the early modern period.

CHURCHST 310. Readings in Latin Ecclesiastical Literature: "Four Carolingian Debates"
Susan Keefe
W 6:30 - 9:00
Loc: Gray 110
susan.keefe@duke.edu

Synopsis:
Readings in Latin of pastoral, theological, and church-disciplinary literature from the late patristic and medieval period. Prerequisite: CHURHST 247 or equivalent, plus a fair reading knowledge of Latin. Instructor's consent required.

RELIGION 337B. Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Also offered as Divinity School XIANTHE 337)
Reinhard Huetter
M 5:30 - 8:00
Loc: TBA
reinhard.huetter@duke.edu

Synopsis:
Seminar on themes and problems in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Consent of instructor required.

ROMANCE STUDIES 392.02. Drama of Renaissance and Early Modern Spain: Empire, Black Legends, and Early Modern Spanish Drama Meg Greer
W 4:25 - 6:55
Loc: Languages 305
mgreer@duke.edu

Synopsis:
In this course, using the development of drama in early modern Spain as a test case, we will examine how changes in the balance of power between groups in a society and global shifts in the balance of power between rival states affect not only literary production, but also both what we define as art and the political and literary histories we construct. We will examine how the particular nature of the transition in the early modern period affected the structure of Spanish drama, from a Middle Ages never fully feudal because of the "Reconquest" frontier, through the social and economic expansion of the 16th century to a 17th-century rearistocratization, in comparison with its development in France, Italy, and England. Spanish drama developed in tandem with the growth of the Spanish empire, was nourished by the prosperity it brought, and would come to be performed throughout Europe and the length and breadth of that empire. As Spanish hegemony weakened, however, inter-imperial competition for dominance of the globe would then write the existence and very possibility of Spanish tragedy out of standard literary histories. As well as following this development historically, we will look at the drama from a variety of theoretical perspectives, from Aristotle's Poetics to Marxist readings of tragedy, and from Bourdieu and anthropological readings of the honor code to Lacanian theories of the subject.