REN-R502 /HISP-S628 Topics in Renaissance Civilization: Early Modern Attitudes Toward Animals and the Environment
Taught by Steven Wagschal
Wednesdays at 3:55PM-6:25PM in the Psychology Building, Room (PY), Room 115
As the Spanish spearheaded imperial expansion in the Americas, they left in their wake an increasingly decimated environment, one that did not go unnoticed by careful observers. Describing the scene of ships unloading their cargo near Seville’s Torre de Oro, historian Gonzalo Argote de Molina, writing in the 1550s, estimated that some 200,000 cowhides were being brought back to Spain each year. These hides came from the mostly feral progeny of the cows and bulls that had originally been introduced along with other European farm animals to America by the Spaniards. Argote de Molina noted that the demand for leather in Europe was much greater than that for meat in the Americas, such that, the bovine flesh was usually left rotting all over the countryside. A few decades later, Jesuit missionary José de Acosta provided an account of what happened to all of this excess waste: it had already led to an ecological disaster around Santo Domingo, causing infection and leading to a situation in which growing packs of feral dogs roamed like wolves. Sadly and presciently, royal chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo—like an early modern Cassandra—had already written about this type of ecological waste decades before Argote de Molina. Indeed, Oviedo had noted that the Spanish should have known better because of earlier, similar missteps with their careless introduction of species in the Canary Islands. Today, in the thick of the Anthropocene, it still seems that interest in profits from commodities outweighs concern for non-human animals and their intertwined environments. The case above is just one example. Early modern humans interacted with animals and impacted the environment in many ways. This course will look at historical and literary texts to analyze the complexities of early modern attitudes toward animals and their interrelated environments, in the theoretical contexts of Animal Studies and Environmental Studies, while also examining current trends and debates in Spain and Latin America on these issues in the twenty-first century.
ARTH-A 635 Problems in Italian Art of the Seventeenth-Century: Paintings of Everyday Life
Taught by Giles Knox
Wednesdays at 3:10PM-6:10PM, in Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 010
This seminar aims to investigate the remarkable emergence in early modern Europe of paintings that purport to show not stories from the Bible or mythology but scenes of the everyday. We will trace the origins of this phenomenon back to fifteenth-century Northern Europe, but the real focus of our sessions will be on how genre painting as this is problematically called developed in parallel in various parts of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Italy, Spain, France, and, especially, the Netherlands.
ENG-L610/L769 - Readings in Late Medieval Literature and Culture: Literary Magic: Speculation, Science, and Medieval Writing
Taught by Patricia Ingham
Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12:45PM-2:00PM in Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 219
“Any sufficiently advanced technology,” wrote Arthur C Clarke in 1968, “seems indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s famous third law seeks, in some ways, to dismantle the association of magic with trickery and fraud and, along the way, to grant it some of the privileges associated with “advanced” (so-called) technology.
Clarke’s compelling observation nevertheless both stipulates and avoids a host of debates about the nature of human making; the intimacies of “art” with “science”; or the value of technological determinism. And what, after all, do we mean by “advanced”? There’s no better location from which to assess these relationships and questions than the period known in part for its fascination with literary representations of magic and marvels.
Medieval literature from the period of the 12th to 14th centuries is chock-a-block full of things magical: talking birds; swords and belts with special properties; aged women whose bodies miraculously return to youth; automata brought to life; precious metals formed from lead; alchemies; astrologies; elvish recipes or astrolabs.
This same set of centuries also significantly expanded available technical capacities via eye-glasses, flying buttresses, mechanical clocks, offset gears and pulleys, moveable toys, not to mention a host of developments in agriculture, book & ink making, chemistry, dialectics, speculative grammars, double-column bookkeeping, and cosmography. This course will examine the powerful intimacies between literary accounts of medieval magic and the response to innovations in science and technology. Our work will include resisting some of the common assumptions about “advanced technology,” as well as those about the Middle Ages as a period of “pseudo science.” We will survey the ways that medieval authors understood innovation to be an explicitly ethical problem, and why they turned to romance and fable to sort out some of those vicissitudes. We will assess how and when representations of things technical and scientific in writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Guillaume de Machaut, Marie de France, or Roger Bacon (or in the work of illustrators and artists) point to problems of creativity, ingenuity, or originality; or, alternatively, to the problems of determinism, fatedness, and fraud. This means that, as we go, we will keep an eye on both the status of newness in late-medieval literature and culture, and (accordingly) the stories that historians of literature or of science tend to tell about the Middle Ages on these topics. (Hint: the former examples really don’t match up with the latter story.) The course will be structured around a set of central topics: likely, at this point, Art and Nature; Curiosity and Care; Man-made Marvels; Cosmologies, but interested people are very welcome to contact me about other topics they would be interested in pursuing. While no previous familiarity with things medieval will be expected, students should be willing to try their hand at reading the Middle English texts (i.e. like Chaucer’s poetry) in the original (in accessible teaching editions). Poetry and prose in other languages (Latin, Old French, etc.) will be read in modern translation (though original languages will be available for the intrepid!) The course should be of use to graduate students interested in 19th and 20th century science or speculative fiction, to those interested in intellectual history, as well as those interested in the stories we tell ourselves and each other about technology.
FRIT-F513 French Renaissance Prose: The Montaigne Seminar
Taught by Eric MacPhail
Thursdays, 4:00PM-6:00PM in Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 233
In this course we will study one of the major achievements of world literature, the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. We will read all three books of essays and situate our reading in a variety of cultural and historical contexts. We will explore the highly stratified composition of the essays and their esthetic of irresolution, and we will develop an understanding of literary genre based on the essay in its nascent form. We will discuss the main current trends in Montaigne scholarship and the many opportunities for research and publication while hearing from distinguished guests in the field. The course will be in French.
FRIT-M504 Renaissance Italian Literature and Culture: The Literature of the Italian Baroque
Taught by Marco Arnaudo
Tuesdays at 12:00PM-2:00PM Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 233
The class investigates the literature of the Italian Baroque through the prism of the scientific, religious, political, artistic, and cultural innovations of the early modern period. We will analyze literary works by Marino, Bartoli, Tesauro, Tarabotti, Malatesti, Loredano, Basile, Accetto, and many others, covering a large range of genres and styles. The class can be taken in English or Italian.
MUS-M502 Composers: Claudio Monteverdi
Taught by Massimo Ossi
Mondays and Wednesdays at 12:45PM-2PM in Simon Music Center (SM), Room 356
Life and works, general survey with particular focus on patronage and cultural context (Mantua, Venice), and for madrigal and opera in-depth discussions of text-music relationships. Some lecture, some student reports, research paper at discretion of students; three take-home essay tests, some listening quizzes (in class). Although the course is aimed at MM/DM students in the Jacobs School, I will happily accommodate non-JSoM, non-musically literate, graduate students.
HISP-S 558 Conquest and Colonialism in Latin America
Taught by Kathleen Myers
Tuesday and Thursdays, 12:45PM-2:00PM in Global and International Studies (GA) Room 0009
This course will examine the beginnings of Spanish Colonialism in the Americas. We will study how this historical and cultural process was depicted by a wide variety of people—including European, indigenous, and mestizo authors, ranging from conquistadors, clergy, and nuns to individuals petitioning the Crown for favored status as a colonial subject. We will focus in particular on the role of spatial, racial, and gendered constructs in the formation of empire, and suggest how this approach affords us a better understanding of the legacy of colonialism in Latin America today. The final weeks of the semester will be devoted to students developing a final research project that links course themes/methods/theory to their own areas of study/disciplines.