Current Graduate Courses

FAH 1118HF

The Medieval Treasury

Thursday, 3-6 pm

This course examines medieval church treasuries, their contents and architectural settings, and the ways they have been conceptualized from the Middle Ages to the present. It highlights the diversity of treasury contents, from liturgical chalices to legal documents, who contributed to the shape of such collections and why, and how the collections were documented. Major themes in present-day art history create the conceptual underpinnings of the course, including materiality, collecting and display, mobility, and patronage. The course will provide opportunities for students to work with objects in local museums and to develop research projects in the Digital Humanities.
Recommended: Reading knowledge of French, German, Italian, and Latin helpful.

FAH 1130HS

Architecture of the otherworld: Islamic Architecture and the Immaterial

Wednesday, 10 am-1 pm

This course reexamines how notions of the otherworldly shaped Islamic architecture, with a focus on its formative period. It explores the act of building as a form of being, considering the ways architecture upheld human encounters with the divine, the celestial realm, as well as other otherworldly beings, benign and malevolent. The course considers the ways Muslims navigated notions of sacrality through a lifecycle, from daily to annual ritual practices and how architecture and material culture emerged dialogically within this context. Through an exploration of Islamic temporality, eschatology, the afterlife, early Islamic sacred geographies, sacred cities, ritual practice, pilgrimage, relics and funerary cultures of early Islam, the course challenges notions of sacred space as a typology to reveal Islam’s relation to the otherworldly as an embodied enactment of transcendence.

Old English I

R. Trilling

Tuesday, 10 am-12 pm / Thursday, 11 am-12 pm

Old English is the language spoken and written in England between roughly 500 and 1100 AD, and it offers a window to the past through a wide range of beautiful and evocative texts.  In this course, you will encounter the very oldest English literature in its original form—the tales of kings, battles, heroes, monsters, and saints that have inspired writers from John Milton to J.R.R. Tolkien.  Because Old English is almost like a foreign language to Modern English speakers, the course will begin with intensive work on the basics of Old English grammar and translation practice before we move on to more in-depth study of the literature and culture of early medieval England.

NB: Students must attend both classes each week.

The Canterbury Tales

K. Gaston

Thursday, 2-4 pm

This course explores Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the context of several different critical approaches, such as historicism, formalism, intertextuality, gender studies, and textual criticism. We read the Canterbury Tales in their entirety, examining some of the interpretive issues with which recent Chaucer criticism has been most concerned, and considering relevant ancient and medieval sources and analogues.

ENG 5202HS

The Invention of Colonialism: Richard Hakluyt and Medieval Travel Writing in Early Modern England

K. Gaston

Tuesday, 10 am-12 pm

Early modern writers readily seized on medieval texts to advance political positions. Richard Hakluyt, the great Elizabethan collector of travel writing, is often credited with first formulating England’s budding colonial ideology. In doing so, Hakluyt relied largely on medieval texts, such as the 14th-century Mandeville's Travels or the 13^th-century missions to Mongolia. This course will explore how these premodern texts already conveyed the essence of the expansionist mercantilism and colonialist imperialism that would characterize the Elizabethan reach for the New World. Our course will involve working with manuscripts and early printed books at UofT's Fisher Rare Book Library. The course will advance three positions: first, that Hakluyt, John Dee, Sir Walter Raleigh, and their contemporaries were much better and closer readers of medieval travel texts than we give credit them for; second: that the ideology behind English colonialism was invented in the late medieval period, not in Elizabethan England, and third: that another facet of periodization, with its emphasis on rupture rather than continuity, comes under scrutiny.

ENG5103HS

Writing the Self in Late-medieval England: Thomas Hoccleve and Margery 

S. Sobecki

Wednesday, 11 am-1 pm

What did it mean to be an “author” in late-medieval England? How do premodern writers compete for authority with scribes and readers? Are fifteenth-century autobiographical narrators literary fictions or biological selves? To answer these questions, we will explore how two of the most exciting and original fifteenth-century English writers, Thomas Hoccleve and Margery Kempe, establish their voices while writing under the conditions imposed by manuscript culture. We will read Thomas Hoccleve’s cycle of five poems, The Series, and his earlier Le Male Regle, as well as The Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiography by an English writer. Both authors have produced some of the most personal works in medieval England. Hoccleve’s poems try to process his struggles with mental health and personal loss, while Kempe’s extravagant, larger-than-life personality breaks new ground in women’s literature and life-writing. We will discuss premodern concepts of authorship, (auto)biography, social identity, gender, and mental health, alongside exploring material culture. We will follow cutting-edge research and examine Hoccleve’s and Kempe’s works in surviving manuscripts, some of which were written in their author’s own hand.

GER 1200HF

Middle High German

Friday, 10 am-12 pm

Delve into the fascinating cultures of medieval Germany! The course is an introduction to the German language and literature of the Middle Ages. Look no further if you want to know more about queens in power, knights and chivalry, or the origins of Romantic love in Europe. The course also provides some introduction to German language history. We learn to read the original medieval German language. In addition, part of the course is devoted to all aspects of medieval German culture, including its rich manuscript culture. We tackle foundational texts such as the first German love songs and one of the most famous medieval narrative texts in the German language, Hartmann von Aue’s Erec (late twelfth century). No previous exposure to medieval culture or language required! Course language is English. Students from units other than the German Department are welcome: While knowledge of modern German will be helpful, it is not required.

Reading German for Graduate Students

Friday, 2-4 pm

In this course, German reading knowledge is taught following the grammar-translation method designed for graduate students from the Humanities. It is an intensive course that covers German grammar with focus on acquiring essential structures of the German language to develop translation skills. The course is conducted in English, and consequently participants do not learn how to speak or write in German, but rather the course focuses exclusively on reading and translating German.
Prior knowledge of German not mandatory. By the end of the course, students should be able to handle a broad variety of texts in single modern Standard German. 

NMC 2081HS

Anthropology of the Middle East

Wednesday, 3-5 pm

This course examines current theoretical and methodological trends in the anthropological study of the Middle East. The readings will offer students ethnographic insight into the region, introduce them to current research, and acquaint them with the kinds of questions anthropologists ask (and the ones they fail to ask). Possible topics include (post)colonialism, nationalism, gender, violence, history/memory, the politics of archeology, mass mediations, neoliberalism, and questions of ethnographic authority. A central goal of the course is to enable students to think in new, creative, and critical ways about their own research projects.

NMC2085HS

Methods in Medieval Middle East History

Thursday 1-3 pm

This course serves as a foundation in the study of the medieval Middle East and early Islamic history, through an introduction to the field, key problems in historiography, and methodological debates in current scholarship. The period from late antiquity to the Mamluk era is considered, with a focus on the question of sources and the challenges they pose for modern scholars. Topics of interest include historical periodization, the potentials of non-Arabic sources on the rise of Islam, and the relationship between social, political, and intellectual history. The medieval Islamic historiographical tradition is surveyed across its various forms, with attention to critical considerations in the use of narrative sources. The relevance of material sources such as numismatics and archaeology, as well as documentary sources such as epigraphy, papyri, and archival material from the Genizah, are considered seriously. Students are also introduced to key reference works. This course is open to graduate students in all fields of medieval history, Middle East Studies, and Islamic Studies.
No language prerequisite.

NMC2226HS

Medieval Persian Historiography and Diplomatics

Tuesday, 1-4 pm

This seminar is concerned with Persian historical writing and documentary sources for the study of the history and culture of greater Iran during the medieval Islamic period. Selected excerpts from major Persian chronicles and other historical writings will be read and analyzed in their historical contexts. Students will also be introduced to Persian diplomatics, i.e., the study of various types of documents, including correspondence and legal documents, as well as chancery manuals and notarial formularies.

Monday 6-8 pm

A survey of the Ottoman Turks from their late 13th–early 14th century origins on the frontiers of the Seljuk, Mongol, and Byzantine empires to their establishment of an Islamic empire. Topics include the principalities known as beyliks that came into being in Anatolia as the above empires declined, the nature of the early Ottoman beylik, conquests in the Balkans, the destruction of the early Ottoman state by Timur and its rebirth, and Mehmed II’s conquest of Constantinople. Coverage includes Ottoman institutions, economy, society, and culture.
 

NMC 2312HW

The Ottoman Empire in its Classical Age

Monday 6-8 pm

A survey of the Ottoman Empire in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. From the victory by Selim I the Grim over Safavid Iran and conquest of Syria and Egypt to the resplendent age of Süleyman the Magnificent to the internal and external challenges that forced transformation or decline. Topics include wars in Europe, the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and with Iran; internally, the rise of the harem and “sultanate of the women,” rebellions in Anatolia, military reform, religious controversies, and art and architecture. The endpoint is the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) when the expansion of the empire ended.

NMC 2331YY

Ottoman Palaeography and Diplomatics

Tuesday, 5-8 pm

This course is an introduction to Ottoman palaeography and diplomatics. The participants are presented with a range of Ottoman documents such as imperial edicts (firman/hükm) and their registrations (mühimme defterleri), diplomas (berat), reports and petitions (‘arz-i hal, ‘arz), vizierial summaries (telhis), memoranda (tezkire), receipts (temmesük), and legal registrations (sicill, hüccet). In addition, there will be samples from various types of registers (defter), for example, surveys of taxable population (tahrir defteri) or records of the financial department (maliye), such as day books (ruznamçe defterleri) and financial edict registry books (ahkam defterleri). For each seminar meeting photocopies of original Ottoman documents will be assigned for reading and analysis.

Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilization
At CMS: prof. J. Miller, W. Saleh

Department of East Asian Studies
At CMS: prof. J. Purtle

Department of English
At CMS: prof. R. Getz, F. Michelet, S. Pelle, A. Walton

Department of French Studies
At CMS: prof. D. Kullmann

Germanic Languages & Literatures
At CMS: prof. M. Stock and S. Ghosh

Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilization
Toronto School of Theology

Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilization
Department for the Study of Religion

Department of Italian Studies
At CMS: prof. E. Brilli

Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilization
At CMS: prof. M. Subtelny

Department for the Study of Religion
Department of Philosophy

Department of Spanish & Portuguese
At CMS: prof. Y. Iglesias