Courses

REN-R502 Topics in Renaissance Civilization: Music and the Tudors, 1485-1603 (3 cr.)
Taught by Dana Marsh
Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11:35 AM - 12:25 PM, in Merrill Hall (MU), Room 205, meets with MUS-M558

Music and the Tudors explores Tudor history through its rich and revealing musical culture, showing how music functioned throughout the period as a vehicle of devotion, diplomacy, and display. Points of historical contact take us from Bosworth and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty to the international spectacle of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The course traces the profound musical consequences of the English Reformations under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I, and examines how shifting religious and political priorities reshaped soundscapes in church, court, and household. Under Elizabeth I, attention turns to the Chapel Royal, courtly song, Accession Day celebrations, royal progresses, and the careers of composers such as Tallis and Byrd. The course concludes near Elizabeth’s death in 1603, at the threshold of the Jacobean age.

ARTH-A638 - Problems in Sixteenth-Century Art Outside Italy: The Early Modern Thing
Taught by Bret Rothstein
Thursdays at 3:00PM - 6:00PM in the Wendell W. Wright Education Building (ED), Room 3004

Students in this seminar will examine aspects of material and visual expression in early modern Europe, broadly defined, as well as key theoretical texts pertaining to our topic of study. These aspects include, but are not necessarily limited to, conceptions of objecthood and thingness; historical approaches to ephemera; attitudes toward the acquisition and maintenance of material objects (not just collecting); questions of utility and inutility; latent (and not-so-latent) animatism; and the importance of revision, modification, and/or outright destruction. We aim to address major themes in recent scholarship on the cultural work of the senses in Europe and (later) the Americas from roughly 1350 to, let's say, 1700.

ENG-L746/L611 - Readings in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, 1500-1660: Warring Women in Early Modern Literature and Law
Taught by Penelope Anderson
Mondays and Wednesdays at 9:35 AM -10.50 AM in Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 018

​In his 1607 English legal dictionary The Interpreter, John Cowell states that “women by the law, are not subiect to warfare, to battell or proclamatio[n] made for that cause” (n. pag.).  International law theorist Hugo Grotius puts it more precisely:  “But as to Women, the Thing [war] takes Place only in general, that is, unless they have committed some Crime which deserves a particular Punishment, or have usurped the Offices of Men” (Grotius 2005, 1442-1443).  Women may exist within the context of war, but they do not fight.  Unless, as Grotius notes, women “have usurped the Offices of Men.”  This is the case of female combatants, whose actions qualify as usurpation, the taking of power not rightfully theirs.  In this course, we will consider how the default construction of women as non-combatants within international and military law shapes the consequences when women do go to war.

​We will read literary depictions of warring women – Amazons, Boudica, Queen Elizabeth,  Cleopatra, and others – in works by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet, John Milton, and others.  We will also read a number of legal texts in different schools of law (international, military, common, civil), along with relevant criticism.  Finally, we will put these texts in conversation with historical materials detailing lived experiences of war, with particular focus on the English Civil Wars and the 1641 Irish Rebellion.

​In addition to a major research project and shorter assignments focused on academic and non-academic professionalization, this seminar will help develop the skills necessary for archival research, counting toward the research skills requirement for the English Ph.D.  In collaboration with the Lilly Library and the Newberry Library, we will explore how to craft research questions and conduct archival research in the context of collections that are always partial and never neutral:  how can we tell new stories from the limited materials that we have?  How can we approach canonical texts differently to imagine things otherwise?

FRIT-M503 - Medieval Italian Literature and Culture: Escaping a Pandemic: Boccaccio’s Decameron
Taught by Filippo Petricca
Thursdays, 2:20 PM -4:20 PM, in Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 232

 Celebrated for the complexity of its prose, defined as an epic of merchants (Branca), and serving as a model for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is one of the most influential works of the European Middle Ages. Ten young narrators, seven women and three men, flee from the Black Plague and move from Florence to the countryside, where they tell one-hundred stories in ten days to amuse themselves, impart moral lessons, and recreate a social order. Such short stories engage with a variety of themes, including literature, love, and money, staging multiple social actors, ranging from friars and knights to merchants, artisans, and nobles. This course offers a full reading of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. Particular attention will be devoted to its literary models, the geography of the text and the Mediterranean commercial network, as well as to Boccaccio’s analyses of gender roles and social classes. Taught in English.

FRIT-M504 - Renaissance Italian Literature and Culture: Teatro italiano del Seicento e del Settecento [Italian theatre of the 17th- and 18th-century]
Taught by Marco Arnaudo
Tuesdays, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM, in Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 232 

This course will examine the Italian theatre of the early modern period, from the rise of the Commedia dell'Arte in the mid 1500s to its decline in the 1700s. We will discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the improvisational style of theatre pioneered by the Commedia, the impact of the emergence of modern professional theatre, and the development of Baroque theatre as a multimedia experience. While Commedia will remain at the heart of the discourse, we will examine how other styles (like religious and erudite theatre) responded to the next performative landscape. When it comes to the 1700s, we will see how Goldoni attempted to reform the Commedia and replace it with fully-scripted, bourgeois theatre, and how (ironically) his failed project led him to create some of the great masterpieces of Italian theatre. Class discussions will be in English. Reading knowledge of Italian is required.

FRIT-F825 - Seminar in French and Francophone Studies: Francophone Theater Ecologies
Taught by Alison Calhoun
Tuesdays, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PMin Ballantine Hall (BH), Room 140

This theater seminar, organized as a survey, will introduce students to the relationship between Francophone performing arts and the environment. In the first half of the semester, we will combine reading and viewing of works from the seventeenth- and eighteenth centuries with weekly readings on ecology theory to help us revisit the French classical theater canon in a new light. In the second half of the semester, we will extend our study to how more recent francophone works from the 19th to the 21st centuries use the stage to explore Earth sciences and respond to climate crisis. Readings will include dramatic authors, composers, and choreographers as well as ecology theorists interested in the space of theatre as a tool for ecological consciousness, environmental power, political control, and resistance. Artists we will study include Benserade, Molière, Quinault, Lully, Cyrano de Bergerac, Marivaux, Rameau, Fuzelier, Offenbach, Verne, Beckett, and Giraudoux as well as recent works from Penda Diouf and Tiago Rodrigues. Una Chaudhuri will be in residence for a guest lecture. Readings in English and French. Course conducted in English or French depending on enrolled students.

MUS-M 558 - Topics in Historical Performance: Music and the Tudors, 1485-1603 (thirteen week section)
Taught by Dana Marsh
Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11:35 AM - 12:25 PM, in Merrill Hall (MU), Room 205, meets with R502

Music and the Tudors explores Tudor history through its rich and revealing musical culture, showing how music functioned throughout the period as a vehicle of devotion, diplomacy, and display. Points of historical contact take us from Bosworth and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty to the international spectacle of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The course traces the profound musical consequences of the English Reformations under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I, and examines how shifting religious and political priorities reshaped soundscapes in church, court, and household. Under Elizabeth I, attention turns to the Chapel Royal, courtly song, Accession Day celebrations, royal progresses, and the careers of composers such as Tallis and Byrd. The course concludes near Elizabeth’s death in 1603, at the threshold of the Jacobean age.

MUS M652 Renaissance Music (3 cr)
Taught by Giovanni Zanovello
Mondays & Wednesdays, 11:10 AM - 12:25 PM in Simon Music Building (SM), Room 356

In this class, we will explore the repertoire, history, and musical practices of Western Europe, ca. 1380-1600. We will study many masterpieces that often became models in the following centuries. More broadly, we will approach performance and compositional practices, as well as the role of music in society, that differ sometimes remarkably from practices today. The class is organized as a pro-seminar: the class time will include a moderate amount of lecturing, in addition to class discussion and listening to music. Class attendance is strictly mandatory.

INST-I571 - Songs of Ecstasy: Loving God in Medieval India
Taught by Rebecca Manring
Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2:20 PM - 3:35 PM, in Woodburn Hall (WH), Room 104

Love Song of the Dark Lord tells, in passionately erotic terms, of the love between Krishna (God) and his favourite girlfriend (Rādhā). This long poem of and for the divine was originally performed in one of the most important temples in eastern India. The details of the love story are remarkably familiar to anyone who’s ever been in love. Another poet, Kabir, says “A body not infused with love might as well be a cremation ground.” Why did the poets of medieval India couch their devotion for their lord in such seemingly transgressive language?

In this class we’ll see what we can learn about the historical, social, and political contexts of these works, and see what they have to do with contemporary South Asian culture.