Current Graduate Courses

FAH 1127H

Early Medieval Art

Wednesday, 10 am-1 pm

Early medieval art has long been viewed in the shadow of Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture, although the seven hundred years between c. 400 and 1100 produced a wealth of material culture that provides critical insights for understanding the formation of Europe. The seminar will focus in any given semester on one of the following four subdivisions with this period: Merovingian and Migratory, Carolingian, Ottonian, or Insular and Anglo-Saxon. The art and architecture in these periods can be understood in light of their relationship to the classical past, the development of political and ecclesiastical structures, the importance of the cult of saints, and the rise of monasticism. The focus in 2024 will be on the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter and there will likely be an important digital humanities component to the course.

EAS 1101Y1Y

Classical Chinese I (Limited spots)

Old English I

R. Trilling

Monday, 2-4 pm / Thursday, 11 am-1 pm

An introduction for reading knowledge to the oldest literary form of English, with discussion of readings drawn from the surviving prose and verse literature.

NB: Students must attend both classes each week.

Topics in Medieval Literature: Digital Humanities Practicum: Records of Early English Drama, 1325-1642

M. Sergi

Wednesday, 10 am-12 pm

The Records of Early English Drama (REED) project, headquartered on Floor 8 of the JHB, has been working for over four decades “to locate, transcribe, and edit historical documents containing evidence of drama, secular music, and other communal entertainment and ceremony from the Middle Ages until 1642.” Medieval and early modern drama studies generally focus on extant play texts, though these represent only a small fraction of performance culture in early England; REED fills in that gap, bearing witness to the ubiquitous existence of performance, though not always being able to reveal more about performances than that they did exist. The operative idea of REED has always been to know more — to compile all available archival evidence of early performance practices (far beyond simply contextualizing extant plays), a mass of information unprecedented in historical drama studies, at once comprehensive and tantalizingly incomplete — and to leave it to drama scholars to figure out what to do with it all. Of course, during those same four decades, new technologies have arisen that have shifted how scholars work with, and think through, masses of information. REED has, as a result, has gone digital: a process whose fundamental reorientation of the archives must provoke a rethinking of early drama historiography itself — and which reaffirms the necessity of digital humanities training for twenty-first-century medievalists and early modernists. In lieu of traditional essay writing, ENG5100H will give students real hands-on experience in the digital humanities, leading them step by step as they transcribe, format, edit, index, and tag entries in REED’s “York Protoype” (that is, in the digitization of REED material gathered from medieval and early modern York, only currently available in hard copy).

ENG5102HS

Reception of the Classics in Middle English Literature 

K. Gaston

Wednesday, 3-5 pm

This course traces the reception of Classical authors such as Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius in Medieval England. We will give special attention to the cultural, material, and institutional contexts within which these works circulated and which, in turn, shaped how they were taken up by vernacular English poets. We will consider how the adaption of Classical literature provides a site for exploring the writing and interpretation of history, identity and its performance, poetic form, and poetic truth. English poetry under consideration may include works by Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate as well as the anonymous Sir Orfeo and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

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.

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. This course is not intended for MA or PhD students in German.

HPS4110H

Medicine, Science, and Mobility in the Mediterranean World 

Tuesday, 11 am-1 pm

The Mediterranean world has historically been characterized as a fluid and permeable space of both human and non-human movement and interactions across Africa, Asia, and Europe. This course examines the role of Mediterranean entanglements in the histories of science and medicine, focusing on the premodern period. We will address topics such as the relationship between medicine, science, and religion; slavery, medicine, and natural inquiry; epidemics and public health; shifting views of disability; the movement of specimens and curiosities; travel and scientific exchange; orientalism and its legacies; and the making of human diversity. We will also critically reflect on the category of mobility, engaging in questions related to how movement participated in processes of knowledge production in medicine and natural inquiry and, conversely, how medical, and scientific pursuits encouraged mobility.

NMC 2110HS

Al-Jahiz and His Debate Partners

Tuesday, 10 am-1 pm

One of the most complex figures in classical Arabic literature, al-Jahiz was a polymath who incorporated every field of intellectual inquiry into his own essayistic and compilatory literary form. He has been credited as a foundational prose stylist for the Arabic literary tradition, as well as the first contributor to Arabic literary theory and criticism. In this class, we will examine a variety of his works, from short epistles to excerpts of his longer works. Part of the analytic process will be to reconstruct the polemical context in which these works were written, and thus readings will be selected to illuminate his relationship to contemporary discourses, such as law, theology, Quran interpretation, logic, dialectic, and poetry.

Prerequisites: NML 310Y or NMC 412H or permission of the instructor

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.

NMC2129HF

Islamicate Codicology 

Tuesday, 1-4 pm

An introduction to Islamicate codicology, this course centers around hands-on learning, drawing on the collections of the Fisher Library. Students will learn to write a codicological description of a manuscripts, while being exposed to debates in the field, reference sources, and the variety of research questions that can draw on the material aspects of manuscripts.

Prerequisites: Basic reading knowledge of classical Persian, classical Arabic, or Ottoman Turkish.

NMC2221HF  

Persian Mirrors for Princes

Thursday, 10 am-1 pm

The Persian literature of advice on kingship and kingly ethics constitutes an important source for understanding medieval Islamicate political philosophy and concepts of rule and social organization. These works are sometimes referred to as “mirrors for princes,” although they are not consistent in terms of their contents. Excerpts from selected texts dating from the 11^th to the 17^th centuries will be read and analyzed, including such classics as the Qabusnameh of Kay Ka’us, the Siyar al-muluk of Nizam al-Mulk, and Nasir al-Din Tusi’s Akhlaq-i nasiri.

NMC 2223HS

The Persian Manuscript Tradition

Tuesday, 1-4 pm

An introduction to medieval Persian codicology, including the technical terminology used in the study of manuscripts; paleographical issues, such as script styles and dating; textual criticism and editing techniques; and the use of manuscript catalogues. Some attention will also be paid to the arts of the book. Digital copies of selected Persian manuscripts will form the basis of study.

NMC2541Y

Medieval Middle Eastern Ceramics 

Wednesday, 2-4 pm (hybrid)

This course will use ceramics to study the material culture of the medieval Middle East and the central Islamic lands. As such, they will be running narrative, to which other materials will be referred, or in turn used to refer to other materials. The same motifs found on ceramics may be found in the contemporaneous buildings, textiles or woodwork; the same forms are found in metalwork and glass; illustrations on ceramics will survive better than manuscript paintings, and there are more illustrations of, for instance, medieval swords to be found on pottery than there are actual swords. The course will rely heavily on the collections of the ROM, and provide a thorough grounding on the technical production and typological variability of the various types of materials attested within their archaeological and cultural context. This course offers an excellent opportunity to study this important period of ceramic production, the period of occupation which covers most early sites in the Middle East. It provides essential understanding of the ceramic corpus for anyone seriously considering archaeological research in the Middle East and Mediterranean.

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