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.
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: Conversion and Confession—Augustine, Milton, Bunyan (Also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 219; ENGLISH 271BS)
David Aers
Th 1:15 – 3:45
Loc: Langford 050
aers@duke.edu
Synopsis:
This course explores modes of conversion and confession in a few extremely rich texts from around 400 to around 1670: Augustine’s Confessions, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, with attention to his On Christian Doctrine, and Bunyan’s Grace Abounding. Rigorously text-centered, the course will also address major transformations within Christianity and within the history of western versions of the self. So some discussion of medieval practices will be part of the course: to grasp the implications of rejecting the sacramental practices of penance, we at least need to know what these were and what they implied about Church, conversion, and self. The course also offers an opportunity to reflect on the central thesis of James Simpson’s Reform and Cultural Revolution.
MEDREN 200.02. Advanced Topics in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: The First Seven Ecumenical Councils: The Growth of Norms for Church Life East and West, ca. 300–800 AD (Also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 272.01)
Susan Keefe
M 7:00 - 9:30
Loc: Gray 110
susan.keefe@duke.edu
Synopsis:
TBA
200.03. Advanced Topics in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: "Preaching the Creed, 0-800 AD" (Also offered as Divinity School CHURCHST 272.02)
Keefe
W 7:00 - 9:30
Loc: 110 Gray
(Prerequisites: MEDREN 202B or CHURCHST 13)
susan.keefe@duke.edu
Synopsis
TBA
MEDREN 200.04. Advanced Topics in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Virtue and Theology in Early Christian Ethics (Also offered as Divinity School HISTTHEO 220.01)
Warren Smith
TTH 2:30 – 3:45
Loc: Langford 042
wsmith@div.duke.edu
Synopsis:
TBA
MEDREN 202C.01. Modern European Christianity (Also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 14)
David Steinmetz
TTH 11:00 – 12:15
Loc: Westbrook 0016
david.steinmetz@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 (also offered as Divinity School CHURHST 13).
MEDREN 220S.01 Shakespeare Topics: Shakespeare and Company (Also ENGLISH 220S.01)
Joseph Porter
W 4:25-6:55
Loc: Social Sci 311
joseph.porter@duke.edu
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.
MEDREN 223B.01. Music in the Renaissance: “Music during the Lifetime of Josquin Desprez” (Also MUSIC 223)
M 4:25 - 6:55
Loc: Biddle 069
tdb@duke.edu
Synopsis:
Josquin Desprez, the leading figure in the musical renaissance ca. 1500, has been dramtically re-envisioned in recent research, thanks to archival discoveries that revise the chronology of his life. This work opens up many opportunities for research on music during the great last decades of the fifteenth century. We will begin the semester by reading a recent dissertation on Josquin’s decade in Rome, at the Papal Chapel. From there we go in various directions, with study of manuscripts, musical analysis, and stylistic trends.
MEDREN 245S.01. Art and Art Markets (Also ARTHIST 245S.01, ECON 244S.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 producers 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), one may find in this seminar many ingredients for a lively discussion and a creative exploration of visual culture in the early modern period.
ENGLISH 312. Middle English Literature: Medieval Drama and Its Afterlives
Sarah Beckwith
T 1:30 - 3:45
Loc.: TBA
sarah.beckwith@duke.edu
Synopsis:
TBA
HISTTHEO 338. Calvin and the Reformed Tradition (Also RELIGION 338)
David Steinmetz
T 4:00 – 6:30
Loc: Gray 110
david.steinmetz@duke.edu
Synopsis:
TBA
FRENCH 392. Les Temps prémodernes: mode d'emploi: Uses of the Medieval Past
Helen Solterer
T 4:25 - 6:55
Loc: Languages 305
hsolt@duke.edu
Synopsis
How has thinking with the Middle Ages shaped critical theory? This seminar initiates members into medieval culture as a perennial object of thought, investigating ways that the surviving writing and images and imagined oral creations have conditioned key theoretical models. Our inquiry will proceed by pairs of texts. Each week we will debate a mode of thinking by examining a critical essay together with a premodern work. As a whole, the seminar will cover a spectrum of love-writing, allegory, lyric, theatrical plays, quest narratives, and didactic composition. All premodern readings are in bilingual contemporary/Old French editions that will give us the chance to consult the originals. The seminar welcomes participants from other Departments and Universities.
We will address the following issues: how to conceive of the earliest spoken and written vernaculars in terms of voice and literacy, oraliture, manuscriture, performance; the kind of thinking that medieval fiction generates; issues of canon formation and chronological narrative explaining the emergence of literature; gender and sexuality; and the place of medieval culture in modernity, and how to trace its ideological functions and aesthetic effects. Readings will include the following: Bernard Cerquiglini, La Naissance du français and Langue orpheline; multilingual charters Serments de Strasbourg; La Chanson de Sainte Eulalie; Daniel Heller-Roazen, Echolalies: Essai sur l'oubli des langues; Dante's De Vulgari eloquentia; Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion; L'Art du discours; Christine de Pisan's Le Chemin de longue étude; Sahar Amer, Representations of Gender in Medieval French and Arabic Literature; André Le Chapelain, L'art d'aimer; Helen Solterer, Medieval Roles for Modern Times/Un moyen âge républicain; Le Jeu d'Adam; Mystère de la Passion; scenes from religious and secular drama.