Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Instructor: Florin Curta

Who are you? Where are you from? The dynamics of migration have shaped identity throughout human history. Migrations change how we consider ourselves, how we view others, and how we think about our positions in the world. As we move through time and space, our identities
transform, becoming trajectories in their own right. Most contemporary analysis of migration and identity, however, lacks historical depth. In order to make better sense of our globalized present, this course presents a comparative assessment of migration around the world since the Middle Ages. Rather than focusing on a discrete region, the course emphasizes a series of case studies. These include: the Great Migration of Late Antiquity, the deliberate and forced mobility of the Armenians, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, displacement in Europe after World War I, migration to the United States. With each case, we will consider a series of questions: Why do people migrate? How have migrations affected the construction of personal, social, cultural, and ethnic identities? How have past migrations shaped our understandings of belonging, nation, and home? We will engage these questions from multidisciplinary perspectives and explore the theoretical, historical, psychological, and sociological dynamics of migration and identity. In addition to lectures and discussions, students will analyze memoirs, letters, maps, paintings, oral histories, and artifacts. Students will also participate in the faculty-student “workshops” on digital mapping, oral history, and analytical writing. In doing so, students will develop a deeper understanding of the connections between migration and identity, and of the complexities that lie behind two seemingly simple questions: Who are you? Where are you from?

Instructor: Thomas Vozar

This multidisciplinary course explores Great Books written in the early modern West, between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. These core texts raise questions that have occupied Western societies ever since. What is the nature of modern political communities? What should
be the role of religion in public life? What are our duties to our country and our family? What is citizenship meant to be in the modern world? Students will explore these questions and others through careful study of some of the great works of literature, art, history, philosophy and politics from the early modern West. Authors to be considered include Machiavelli, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Milton, Locke, Swift, Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, Franklin, among others.

Instructor: Valerie Hampton

https://ufl.instructure.com/courses/339981

Instructor: Ben Guyer

https://ufl.instructure.com/courses/339982

Instructor: Will Hasty and Mark Law

In this online course, you will learn how technological innovations and basic physical principles underlying them (e.g., force, work, and energy) in the cultural domains of power generation, agriculture, sacred spaces, warfare, and textiles interact with belief- and value systems to shape the European Middle Ages.

Instructor: Yehoshua Ecker

Grateful spirits, vengeful ghosts, monstrous creatures, and marvelous objects and phenomena—stories of such oddities abound in Chinese literature. Perhaps best represented in medieval (ca. 220- ca. 960 CE) “chronicles of the strange” (zhiguai 志怪) and “transmissions of marvels” (chuanqi 傳奇), these tales have developed and changed through time and have greatly contributed to the development of Chinese fiction and fantasy. This course introduces students to traditional Chinese tales of the strange and primary sources that contributed to their development. We will also consider cross-cultural literary theories of the fantastic and uncanny, as well as interdisciplinary literary, discourse, and narrative theories. Early Chinese tales of the strange cannot be fully understood without knowledge of the worldviews in which they were conceived, composed, and initially circulated and read. As such, three major medieval Chinese cosmologies or worldviews informing these tales will be introduced and questioned to better situate accounts of anomalies in their own cultural contexts.

Instructor: Richard Wang

This course is designed to explore the religious culture, cultural history and literary expression of traditional China through a 100-chapter novel known as Journey to the West, or Monkey. Based on the famous Tang Buddhist monk Xuanzang’s (596-664) historical pilgrimage to India, and encompassed the story cycle of the journey to the west developed in a millennia, the novel of the Ming dynasty demonstrates its rich texture of religious and literary themes, sentiments, and assumptions in this novel, a work considered one of the masterpieces of traditional Chinese fiction, and the finest supernatural novel. The Journey’s scope includes a physical journey, a heroic adventure, a religious mission, and a process of self-cultivation, through the encounters between the pilgrims, mainly the well-known character Monkey who is Xuanzang’s chief disciple and guardian, and various monsters. This novel has an unsurpassingly penetrating impact on Chinese cultural history and society. It represents the maturity of the novel, and most literary genres in its pages. While basically a supernatural novel, it also describes social customs and daily life of different regions of China. More than any other traditional Chinese narratives, the Journey presents concerns and themes directly related to Chinese religious, intellectual and
cultural history, in addition to literary tradition.

Instructor: Florin Curta

https://people.clas.ufl.edu/fcurta/medieval-eastern-europe/

Instructor: Staff

In Fall 2025, this course will focus on the literature and culture of medieval France. This course will be taught in English.

Instructor: Rori Bloom

In this class, we will survey the cultural history of France (important events and people but also literature, art, and ideas) with a focus on the 17th through 20th centuries. Along with readings from our textbook and from other primary and secondary sources, students will explore websites, listen to podcasts, and watch films related to the periods under study. As well, students will participate in a “Reacting to the Past” role-playing game in class, where we act out an historical conflict, with students representing various historical figures. The goal of this course is to give students a general knowledge of French history and possibly to serve as a foundation for future coursework, study abroad, or travel to France. This course will be taught in French.

Instructor: Matthieu Felt

Explores the historical and cultural stimuli that led to war, recorded later as war narratives. Supported by images of architecture, narrative picture scrolls, and extant military accoutrements.

Instructor: Yehoshua Ecker

A survey of the history of Jews in Muslim societies from the Muslim conquests of the 7th century to the dispersions and transformations of the 20th century. The Arab-Muslim conquests brought most Jews in the world under one political entity. This reality has drastically altered in the past 100 years. This survey of about 1,400 years offers an overview of a crucial period in Jewish history. It uses the political history and chronology of the Muslim world as a scaffold for outlining and contextualizing the Jewish experience within this world, and the impact of this experience on Jews beyond it.

Instructor: Yehoshua Ecker

The Ottoman Turks conquered the region later known as modern Palestine (including Jerusalem) in 1516 and ruled it for four centuries. What was Palestine like under Ottoman rule? This course explores decentralized Ottoman governance, Middle Eastern and European interventions, and also the ways in which Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and interacted through the early twentieth century, when Palestine became one of the world’s most contested places.