Fall 2011
Note: all readings in these courses are in English.
ARA4930/0355 – MEM 4931/2387: The Qur’an as Literature
Professor Sarra Tlili
The Qur’an is at once a fascinating and perplexing scripture. While many Muslim and non-Muslim readers are struck by its beauty, to many others it comes across as a disorganized text. This course’s primary objective is to familiarize students with this scripture mainly by considering characteristics of its style and content. After introducing the geographical and historical setting and addressing the question of how translatable the Qur’an is, the course proceeds to the study of various theories about its genesis. Moving to the question of style, the course will introduce students to the notions of orality and Semitic rhetoric, two key concepts for the appreciation of many classical texts, including the Qur’an and the Bible. Turning to the content of this scripture, we will consider some of its major themes, such as the themes of God’s unity and the hereafter, as well as questions that may have special relevance to our generation, such as gender and environmental issues. In the concluding part of the course we will look into the historical impact of the Qur’an on Arab and Islamic civilization in the fields of arts, scholarship and social life.
CHT 3123/2598 – MEM 4931/ 04H5: Pre-Modern Chinese Fiction in Translation (H, N)
Professor Richard G. Wang
CHT 3123 explores pre-modern Chinese literary narrative from its beginnings through the seventeenth century. Emphasis will be laid on 16th and 17th centuries when Chinese vernacular fiction flourished. All required readings are in English translation, with no knowledge of Chinese required. Class time will primarily be devoted to discussions of the readings, although an introduction to critical issues and literary, historical, and cultural context will be presented in lecture. This is a reading and writing intensive class.
EUH 3122/2514 – MEM 4931/048A: High Middle Ages (H, N)
Professor Florin Curta
The High Middle Ages was a period of fundamental transformations. A world of peasant communities, with a small elite of aristocrats dominating and feeding itself from the labors of the peasantry, Europe after AD 1000 underwent exceptionally intense changes. Economic growth, territorial expansion, and dynamic cultural and social change, all marked the vitality of European society between 1000 and 1400. For four hundred years, before the slump and crisis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, population grew, the cultivated area expanded, urbanization and commercialization restructured economic and social life. Through incorporated towns, universities, central representative bodies, and the international orders of the Roman Catholic Church, Europe of the High Middle Ages first began to define itself in expansionary terms. For the first time, the High Middle Ages witnessed what Robert Bartlett called “the making of Europe.” In this course we will examine the various aspects of this transformation. We will initially follow a topical, rather than chronological order. We will then move along chronological and geographical lines, as we will tackle the issue of state centralization. Our focus will be on Western Europe, but we will also look at some of the neighboring areas, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
EUH 3931/1125: History of Orthodox Christianity
Professor Florin Curta
When Orthodox Christians recite the Creed during the Divine Liturgy, they cross themselves at the words “Believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” The gesture is more than just a matter of ritual, for the significance of these words has to do with identity and with membership in the Kingdom of God. The Church is not just an institution, but a mode of life and a way of being in the world. As such, it has a history, which is often understood as the history of Christianity as a whole. The course will offer a selection of representative topics from a much larger possible list. We will examine some of the key concepts of theology that had historical significance, the political circumstances leading to the separation of various churches, and the main aspects of Orthodox Christian life throughout history. Our focus will be on Orthodoxy, but we will also take quick glimpses at some other churches, especially at the Roman-Catholic church. Anyone with enough curiosity and desire to learn is welcome.
EUH 5934/Dept.: Religion and Politics in Medieval Christian Iberia
Professor Nina Caputo
Through much of the medieval period, Spain was more tolerant, even accommodating, of religious and cultural difference than any other part of Latin Christendom. However, by the end of the 15th century this situation had changed completely: after a long and difficult cultural struggle, religious tolerance officially collapsed with the establishment of the Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Christian Spain. This class will examine the social, religious, intellectual and political circumstances that made these changes possible as well as the growing historiography.
EUH 6935 – Readings in Early Modern Europe: The Republic of Letters & the Nascent-Public Sphere
Dr Robert Alan Hatch
GRADUATE COURSE. Rooted in antiquity and flowering with Renaissance Humanism, the Republic of Letters became a radical new reality in Early Modern Europe. No longer a literary guild of widely dispersed bookish intellectuals, the Republic of Letters—often dismissed as ideal, mythic, invisible—became a new daily reality that often aimed to subvert ancient and traditional foundations. Expanding on the wider efficiency of the postal system, correspondence networks provided a vehicle for the exchange of daily information, and not least, an outlet for freedom of expression not found with published books. By the middle decades of the 17th century, the New Science helped transform the Republic of Letters in its daily practices and in establishing new communication strategies. Working in a harsh intellectual climate—marked by censorship and surveillance backed by incarceration and excommunication—new intellectuals created a new kind of space (without boundary or center) and a new kind of community. By the end of the century, this new community—now expanding its territory with the vernacular—helped undermine the foundations of the ancien regime from within. Foreshadowing the Enlightenment, the nascent-Public Sphere directed itself increasingly toward radical reform—intellectual, social, and political. This seminar plots the unfolding of this dramatic shift in western civilization (1550-1750) by tracing changes in scribal and print culture that prompted new identities for the scholar, intellectual, bourgeois, and citizen. Foreshadowing the Enlightenment, this early modern community helped lay foundations for revolution as much as for democracy.
A tentative working syllabus is found at:
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/01-Courses/current-courses/04-EUH%206935-F-2011.html
FRT 2460/3209 – MEM 2500/046A: The Knight, the Lady, and the King: Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (H, N)
Professor William Calin
Arthur, Guinevere, Tristan, Isolt, Lancelot, and Perceval are not historical personages. They are literary characters in romances created first by poets in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. This course will scrutinize the relationship of literature to historical reality (the mind-set of a feudal-aristocratic and classical-Christian culture, knighthood and chivalry, attitudes toward women, etc.) and the nature of literature itself, with special attention to the creation of myth (the Arthurian world is one of the great myths of modern times) and the relevance of such books to the reader of today. Students will learn how to analyze texts in a more sophisticated way, using modern critical approaches.
GEW 6425 /1837 – MEM 4931/04H7: A Survey of Literary Culture in Early Modern Germany (in English translation)
Professor Will Hasty
This course is a consideration of literature (sermons, religious tracts, dramas, lyric poetry, romance/early novel, philosophical essays), ranging from the late medieval mystics of the 13th and 14th centuries (Mechthild of Magdeburg, Meister Eckhart), to the writings of Humanists, early treatises of Martin Luther, and the Faust chapbook in the 15th and 16th centuries, to German Enlightenment (selected writings of Leibniz, Lessing’s dramas, Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment?”) in the 17th and 18th centuries. The critical focus falls on the emergence of new subject positions in the cultural landscape of early modern Germany as religion/theology converges in unique ways with the arts, sciences, and new technologies. Discussions will be informed by supplementary readings in essays by Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, and others. (Advanced undergraduates may enroll in this course with the permission of the instructor; < hasty@ufl.edu>).
ITW3100/1485 – MEM 4931/04H8: Dante’s Inferno (in Italian)
Professor Mary Watt This course will take students on a semester-long journey through the underworld as imagined by the fourteenth century writer Dante Alighieri. The primary source will be Dante’s Inferno but the course will be enhanced with visual materials and will make full use of the many digital resources devoted to the study of Dante and his world. Special attention will be paid to the political, historical and religious context in which Dante was writing but the main point of the course will be to give students an appreciation of the masterful narrative that Dante weaves and the enduring beauty of his poetry.
JPT 4130/6890 – MEM 4931/04H9: The Tale of Genji
Professor Yumiko Hulvey
The Tale of Genji is the masterpiece of classical Japanese literature, written by a woman known as Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 1000). The Genji preserves the essence of aristocratic culture that is as unfamiliar to many Japanese today as well as non-Japanese. Its pervasive influence continues to be found even in contemporary literature, such as Masks written by Enchi Fumiko in the 20th century that provides a glimpse of an eerie world inhabited by phantasmal figures from the Tale of Genji. Readings include a poetic memoir written before the Genji that helped develop necessary literary strategies for a long sustained narrative.
LNW 3490/0377: Introduction to Medieval Latin (H, N)
Professor Robert Wagman
The course is an introduction to Medieval Latin in its cultural and historical context for students who have completed at least two years of Classical Latin. Students will read in the original from a selection of texts illustrating important aspects of Medieval culture, history, literature, philosophy, religion, and language. The grammatical and lexical peculiarities of Medieval Latin will be discussed. The course will also involve a small practicum in codicology and palaeography intended to introduce students to the study of manuscripts.