MST 1000Y. Level I Latin – C. O'Hogan
This year-long course is a core requirement for the MA in Medieval Studies. By the end of this course, students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of the full range of Latin grammar through sight translation and reading comprehension; identify and explain examples of specific Latin grammatical features in assigned readings; recall essential medieval Latin vocabulary (~ 2,000 words); identify orthographical variations of words found in the word lists; have experience of using a range of medieval Latin dictionaries and lexica; and translate medieval Latin texts of simple to moderate difficulty with minimal use of a dictionary. This course also prepares students to sit the Level I exam.
MST 1001Y. Level II Latin – S. Ghosh
Prerequisite: Level I Latin Exam pass OR completion of MST1000 OR permission of the instructor
This year-long course is a core requirement for the PhD in Medieval Studies. By the end of this course, students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of the full range of Latin grammar and syntax through sight translation, reading comprehension, and composition exercises; identify and explain examples of specific Latin grammatical features, and the particular idiosyncrasies of the main varieties of medieval Latin, in assigned readings; employ medieval Latin vocabulary well beyond the core vocabulary of MST1000Y; use a range of medieval Latin dictionaries and lexica; translate independently medieval Latin texts of moderate to advanced difficulty; and identify the varieties of medieval Latin texts and articulate a general sense of the history of Latin language and literature from late antiquity down to the early modern era. This course also prepares students to sit the Level II exam.
MST 1003H. Professional Development for Medieval Studies PhDs - K. Gaston
This course is intended to prepare PhD students in Medieval Studies for the job market. It will provide for them an overview of the non-scholarly skills they will need to acquire for the academic job search and for their professional lives beyond the job search, as well as give them information about non-academic options. The course will meet for 12 two-hour sessions over the course of three academic years and will include presentations from a range of faculty and guest speakers, with special attention given to the unusual challenges faced by students in our unit. Individual sessions will include coverage of the following topics:
- Funding, Grants, Bursaries, Fellowships
- Planning for the PhD with an Eye on the Future
- Coping with Academic Stress; iv. Gender Equity in Medieval Studies
- Alternatives to Academia
- The Medievalist and the Department
- The Teaching Portfolio
- The Conference Circuit
- Publishing Research as a PhD Student
- CVs, Cover Letters, and How to Prepare for Them
- Postdocs
- The Academic Job Search in North America and Beyond
MST 1022H.Transmission and Reception: The Survival and Use of the Latin Classics - C. O’Hogan
Prerequisites: Level I Latin Exam Pass OR completion of MST1000 OR permission of the instructor; MST1104 or 1105 are recommended
This course investigates the transmission of the Latin Classics from Antiquity to the invention of print, with a focus on the medieval centuries. Manuscript traditions will be considered as well as reception in all its forms: indirect transmission (testimonia, references, quotations and allusions), commentary, and imitation.
MST 1104H. Latin Palaeography I – B. Miles
Prerequisite: Level I Latin Exam Pass OR permission of the instructor
This course guides students through the study of Latin scripts from the late Roman Empire to the twelfth century. Lectures and hands-on sessions are supported by selected readings on various aspects of Medieval paleography. Training in reading scripts is provided through weekly exercises. The course includes a practicum on the transcription of Latin manuscripts.
MST 1105H. Latin Palaeography II - R. Macchioro
Prerequisite: MST1000Y OR permission of the instructor.
This course guides students through the study of Latin scripts from 1200 to 1600 A.D. Lectures and hands-on sessions are supported by selected readings on the cultural-historical background of Gothic writing, the physical characteristics of manuscripts, library practices and bibliographical resources. Training in reading scripts is provided through weekly exercises. The course includes a practicum on the transcription of Latin manuscripts.
MST 1107H. Latin Textual Criticism - R. Macchioro
Prerequisite: Level I Latin Exam Pass OR permission of the instructor
This course introduces students to the theory and practice of Latin textual criticism. Emphasis will be on transcription and collation, with an eye to producing an edited Latin text with critical apparatus and apparatus fontium. The problems of writing an introduction, describing manuscripts, analysis of a textual tradition, stemmata, etc. will also be treated. Materials for practice will include scholastic texts, poetry, and narrative prose.
MST 1117H. Medieval English Handwriting 1300-1500 - S. Sobecki
The study of handwriting in late-medieval medieval England is a complex and dynamic field. Since the publication in 1969 of M.B. Parkes’ foundational English Cursive Book Hands, 1250-1500, English palaeography has diverged significantly from continental practice in terminology and approach. The specificity of the main scripts used in England – Anglicana and Secretary – has developed into highly specialised field, often at the expense of acknowledging points of contact with continental and, especially, French handwriting.
This course will introduce students to the study of handwriting in late medieval England (1300-1500), with a focus on literary and administrative writing in English, though French and Latin will also be considered. We will study the main scripts used in England (Anglicana, Secretary, and Textura) in their administrative and literary guises, and we will explore the different systems to classify scripts as used by English and continental European scholars. In addition, we will examine in detail existing controversies in English palaeography, in particular the cases of Adam Pinkhurst and Thomas Hoccleve. Students will learn to identify, date, and transcribe late medieval insular scripts.
To better understand duct and scribal practice, students will be taught how to write Secretary and Anglicana. Pens will be provided. Students’ attempts at producing medieval scripts will not be part of the assessment.
MST 1422H. Introduction to Study of Magic - J. Haines
This course introduces students to the topic of medieval magic, which has recently developed into an important interdisciplinary area of scholarship. This seminar will serve as a broad introduction to magic in the Middle Ages for students working in disciplines ranging from literature to the history of science. Following an introduction to the different types of magic – from healing and astrology to exorcism and necromancy – the seminar will survey the historiography of medieval magic from the 1500s onwards. The bulk of the seminar will concern the vast range of mostly Latin literature related to medieval magic. While genres such as dream books have been relatively well studied, others, such as chiromancy manuals, have received less attention. Significant time will be devoted to well-known works such as the Secret of Secrets and the Notory Art.
MST 2010H. Old Norse – S. Ghosh
This course provides an introduction to Old Norse language and literature, focusing on basic instruction in Old Norse grammar. Students will explore short readings from poetic and prose texts.
MST 2051H. Middle Welsh I - B. Miles
This course is an introduction to Middle Welsh language, the native language of medieval Wales. Middle Welsh is the language of one of the most vibrant literatures from medieval Europe, comprising writings in both poetry and prose from ca. 1100 to 1500. Students will work from a course book which introduces the grammar and structures required to read the medieval language, and which includes an edition of a complete Middle Welsh prose text. Class-time will be devoted to translation and reading from the original Welsh text under the supervision of the instructor. The course will also teach the linguistic vocabulary for describing a Celtic language. No prior knowledge of Welsh is assumed.
MST 3025H. - Beowulf's Afterlives - A. Bolintineanu
Prerequisite: None, but a knowledge of Old English is desirable
Over its thousand-year-old afterlife, the Old English poem Beowulf has been read in manuscript, in analog and digital facsimiles, in printed and digital editions, in multispectral imaging, and in museum exhibitions; has been translated into prose and verse; has been adapted into nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century children’s picture books, novels, and graphic novels; has been transformed into films and video games. Using a variety of analogue and digital methods, this course studies Beowulf’s afterlives both for the light they shed on the Old English poem and as a springboard into examining modern aesthetic and political engagement with the medieval past.
MST 3123H. Medieval Medicine - N. Everett
This course surveys the major developments and examines key texts in the history of medicine in Europe and the Mediterranean from c.300 to 1400 AD. Topics include pharmacy and pharmacological treatises, surgery, therapeutics, regimen and diet, the transmission and adaptation of ancient medical works, the contributions of Arabic authors, the school of Salerno, the rise of academic and professional medicine in the 13th and 14th centuries, medical responses to the Black Death, and anatomy on the eve of Renaissance medicine.
MST 3150H. Medieval French Epic - D. Kullmann
Prerequisite: Basic reading knowledge in Old French (usually an Old French course) or permission of the instructor
This research seminar will offer an introduction to the Old French epic (or chanson de geste), which is one of the most productive and most influential narrative genres of medieval French literature. The first part of the seminar will be dedicated to the close reading and interpretation of the Chanson de Roland, while also introducing broader research problems related to the epic genre, such as the question of its origins, the epic style, various aspects of medium and performance (especially the key issues of oral or written transmission, improvisation vs. planned composition, and sung performance vs. reading), the role of tradition and individual authorship, the complex relation between epic and history, the use of epic in historiography, the practice of re-writing and the constitution of literary cycles. During the second half of this research seminar, students will be required to study and present selected further epic texts, concentrating on the representation of the relationship between kings and vassals and other questions of political and historical interest. They will be expected to further develop their presentations in written term papers.
MST 3159H. Classical Antiquity in medieval French literature: adaptations of Ovid - D. Kullmann
Prerequisite: Basic reading knowledge in Old French (usually an Old French course) or permission of the instructor
Intensive study of the problems connected with the reception of classical antiquity in the context of medieval France, based on vernacular literary texts. The first half of term will be dedicated to close reading of a selected text. In the second half of term, students will present papers on specific aspects which may take into account additional texts.
MST 3226H. Medieval Mediterranean History - M. Meyerson
This course treats major themes in the history of the ‘multi-cultural’ (Christian, Muslim and Jewish) Mediterranean world during the Middle Ages. Among the themes treated are: conquest and colonisation; relations between the adherents of ruling faiths and religious minorities; ideologies and practices of ‘holy war’; slavery; gender, honor, and shame; interfaith commerce; and cultural exchange.
MST 3237H. Monastic Rules and Customaries - I. Cochelin
This course explores the history of monasticism from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages through its so-called normative sources, especially rules and customaries. The main goal of the course is in-depth reading of primary sources, however, attention will also be given to the recent secondary literature on these texts, challenging the traditional history of monasticism. While the focus is on monasticism, it is also a social history course as it allows the study of medieval daily life even in periods for which we have no similar sources for other groups of society. Students will be able to choose one theme to study through all the sources read in class (in translation and Latin) — such as food, organization of space, punishment, or sexuality — or to investigate lesser known (and usually not yet translated) rules and customaries.
MST 3241H. Everyday Life in Medieval Europe - S. Ghosh
What did medieval people do for a living, and where did they do it? What did they eat and wear, and in what sort of homes did they live? What sort of family lives did they have? How were their communities organized, and what was the place of those who didn’t fit within those communities: the criminals and rebels, the poor, the old, the sick, and the dead? The purpose of this course is to survey the ways in which historians have tried to address these kinds of questions, in brief, to understand: how did ordinary medieval people live?
Through this course, students will gain an introduction to some of the landmarks of scholarship and major debates in a number of fields of social and cultural history that fall within the broad umbrella of the history of everyday life. These include the history of the family, the history of sexuality, women’s history, popular religion, the history of the poor and marginalized, and the history of crime. No prior knowledge of any of these subjects is required.
MST 3301H. Themes in Medieval Philosophy: Augustine’s Confession - P. King
This seminar will focus on property and poverty in the High Middle Ages — more precisely, on voluntary poverty, and the critique of ownership and property that advocates of voluntarily living in poverty put forward. We will start with the mendicant movements of the 12th C. then move on to concentrate on the 13th / 14th C. philosophical debates involving Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, William of St.-Amour, Gerard of Abbeville, John Duns Scotus, John of Paris, Peter John Olivi, and William of Ockham (mostly but not entirely Franciscans) in their efforts to develop an account of voluntary poverty that would be philosophically consistent and yet compatible with the official view of the church (usually represented by the papacy).
Knowledge of Latin is a definite plus, though much of the material is available in English translation.
MST 3321H. Philosophy of Mind in the Middle Ages – D. Black
This course is devoted to a close reading of Avicenna's most comprehensive work on philosophical psychology, The Book on the Soul from his summa of philosophy, The Healing (Al-Shifā'). This text had a lasting impact on philosophy and theology both in the Islamic world and the West. Avicenna covers a wide range of topics, including the relation of the soul and the intellect to the body; personal identity, consciousness, and self-awareness; the nature of intellectual cognition; the nature of sense perception and imagination; animal cognition; and the relations between intellectual and sense cognition. Main texts: our readings are drawn from the complete draft English translation by D. Black and M. Marmura, Avicenna, Healing: Psychology. The text is also available in the original Arabic, in medieval Latin translation, and in French.
MST 3346H. Medieval Islamic Philosophy - J McGinnis / R. Hadisi
Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), or Avicenna in the Latin west, and al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) are two of the brightest luminaries in the Islamic intellectual world, both past and present. Both figures in their own ways attempted to reconcile their religious faith with the best science and philosophy of their day: Ibn Sīnā by arguing how philosophy is a rational articulation of Islam’s fundamental belief in God’s unity, and al-Ghazālī by applying the canons of philosophy itself to philosophical arguments that seem at odds with the claims of the Qurʾān. The course examines three central topics treated by both figures at what might be considered the common borders of philosophy, science and religion. These central issues, which in the medieval Islamicate as well as Christian world were the litmus test of orthodoxy, involved the age of the cosmos, the nature of the afterlife, with a particular emphasis on the human psyche, and God’s knowledge of the cosmos and more general divine attributes. At the end of the course, the students should take with them an appreciation of the thought of two of the leading thinkers in the Islamic intellectual tradition as well as a deeper appreciation of certain issues central to philosophy of religion and philosophy of science.
MST 3501H. Introduction to the Medieval Western Christian Liturgy - J. Haines
This introductory course is designed to supply participants with essential tools for further research in medieval liturgy, regardless of their field of expertise. The first four weeks cover basic aspects of private and public Western Latin worship in the Middle Ages. This is followed by an in-depth study of extant liturgical books, especially those from the 13th through the 15th centuries. The latter will include hands-on work with liturgical books housed in University of Toronto library collections.
MST3602H. Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages - Y. Iglesias
This course focuses on the most common crimes and punishments in the Middle Ages. We review crimes like theft, infidelity, rape, insults, treason, prostitution, murder, and punishment as death penalty, amputations, forced matrimonies, economic sanctions, and torture. A goal of the course is to understand how punishments not only depended on the crime itself but on the criminal's position in the social hierarchy. The course draws on a wide variety of source material including records of individual court cases, legal codes, literary texts, and images. It will be a survey of the middle ages.
MST5002H. Topics in Medieval History: Medieval Italy and its Invaders - N. Everett
This seminar examines how medieval Italy’s development was characterised by invasions and settlement of different peoples on the peninsula and their types of governance- the Ostrogoths (5th-6th cent.), the Lombards (6th-8th cent.), Carolingians (9th cent.) Arabs (9th-11th cent.), Ottonians (9th-10th cent) and Normans (10th-12th cent.). This course will examine the motives, impact and long-term consequences of these invasions by examining key literary sources, legislation, documentary sources and archaeology.
MST5003H. Topics in Medieval Literatures: ‘Beowulf’ - R. Trilling
MST 9310H/Y. Directed Reading
CMS students may request to complete an individual reading or research course with a faculty member of their choice who must have a Graduate Faculty (SGS) Appointment through CMS. Barring exceptional circumstances, directed reading courses will be authorized only for students in the second year of registration, on topics directly related to their main research Areas, and for which CMS or one of the cognate Departments has no comparable offering.
The student is responsible for finding a faculty member who is willing to work with the student (Browse the list of CMS Faculty). Together they will create the learning goals, deliverables, resources, timeline, and mechanism for feedback. With input from the supervising faculty member, each student will submit the SGS Reading and / or Research Course form along with a brief course outline that includes all of the following: course title (max 60 characters) and a paragraph describing the body of work to be studied; learning goals and objectives; required readings (journal articles, book chapters, (non) governmental documents, etc.) necessary to meet learning goals and objectives; assignments with corresponding due dates and relative weights; a statement regarding the penalty for late submission of work; and planned contact with instructor and mechanism for obtaining instructor feedback.
The form and outline should be submitted to the Graduate Administrator, for approval by the PhD Coordinator, at least one week before the sessional deadline to enrol in courses.