An overview of late antique material and textual culture, covering the third through the seventh centuries. Organized chronologically and thematically, the course addresses issues such as the transition from Roman to medieval economies, the transformation of cities, the rise of the institutional church and the development of Christian art and architecture, and the beginnings of monasticism. Readings will reflect the intersection of text and material culture represented by the disciplinary perspectives of the instructors, an archeologist and an historian, and the discussions will stress interdisciplinary solutions to methodological problems and historiographic debates.

MVGA 5076 Practicum in Codicology (Gyug)
A practical course on the terms and practices of manuscript description, with consideration of how manuscript studies and analysis have been used in medieval studies.

MVGA 5200 Medieval Iberian Literature and Society (Jimenez-Belmonte/Gyug)
The religious, linguistic and political pluralism of medieval Iberian society is reflected in its literature, rhetoric and social accommodations. Despite debates about the role of pluralism in forming Iberian identities, pluralism provides models—whether of convivencia or conflict—that now dominate discussions of western medieval culture in general. In the course, Iberian pluralism will be considered through discussion of works and studies on the literature and societies of the Iberian peninsula from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries.

MVGA 6024 Medieval Chronicles (Gyug)
Medieval historical narratives have often provided the framework for periodization or the evidence from which medieval attitudes and values have been reconstructed. In the course, a close reading of several medieval narratives and related secondary literature will contribute to an understanding of the genre's development, the influence of chronicles on the writing of history, and the uses of such sources.

MVGA 6025 Religion, Society, and Coulture (Gyug)
In the centuries between the emperor Constantine and Pope Gregory VII, religion played an important role in the ordering of society, and has a very prominent place in sources from the period. For the fall 2003, studies to be discussed will include works on saints and asceticism, holy places and the cult of relics, the development of ecclesiastical orders and rituals, church reform, and the relations between religion and rulers. Since each topic presents its own problems of how to work with the sources, the modern studies will be complemented with the close reading of primary sources both in Latin and in translation from a wide range of genres and periods, beginning with Late Antique vitae, running through sermons, prayers and histories of the Carolingian and post-Carolingian centuries, and ending with the polemical treatises of the eleventh century.

HSGA 6070 Medieval France (Smail)
The course covers the history and historiography of medieval France. Some of the readings are particularly French in their implications. Others have broader comparative implications, but are with few exceptions, geographically situated within the confines of medieval France. Although the readings cover a range of authors both old and new, the list does not attempt to be a fair and adequate representation of medieval France historiography. Instead, the weekly topics are designed to point out some areas of active and continuing scholarly interest. In addition to the scholarly narratives told by each reading, you should be careful to study the sources used by each author and be prepared, in a collaborative and course-long effort, to develop a picture of the contents of French medieval archives.

This course is designed as an introduction to medieval law and society through selected primary and secondary sources. The “law and society” perspective studies law not as a distinct entity governed by its own rules but rather as an element of a larger society, both influencing and influenced by broad social patterns.

This course introduces students to a wide array of historical literature relevant to questions of politics, power, and authority in medieval Europe. Within this general framework we will be focusing on two important sub-themes, namely the history and historiography of state formation and the nature of power and authority.

Colonialism may have come of age in the 18th and 19th centuries, but western Europe began its long apprenticeship in colonialism centuries earlier, in the crucible of the Viking, Moslem, and Magyar invasions. As the land rebounded in the year 1000 or so, adventurers from the European heartland in northern France, England, and the Rhineland exploded across the face of modern Europe and the Mediterranean, colonizing or recolonizing the Iberian peninsula, Sicily, Palestine, eastern Europe, the Baltic lands, and Ireland. In studying this great expansion we will explore the Crusades, the Christian reconquest of Spain, the Ostsiedlung, and other colonizing movements, including the resettlement of Europe's own empty spaces, paying close attention to the social, political, and ideological (including gender) dimensions of the expansionary drive and its effects at home. We will also explore, through the study of maps and literature, how Europe imagined itself in relation to its margins.

Medieval popes, bishops, and priests exercised spiritual and juridical powers over a wide array of matters relating to family life. Church laws insisted on the sanctity of unborn and newborn offspring, the sacramental importance of baptism and marriage, and a privileged role for legitimate birth in questions of inheritance, eligibility to office and legal remedy. Moreover, in establishing rules that defined, promoted, and implemented the principles of proper Christian conduct, ecclesiastical authorities often found themselves in conflict with the customs of traditional lay society. The course is designed to focus on the legal dimensions of this struggle by examining canonical theory as well as judicial and confessional practice.

In modern usage, the term ‘religious’ refers to everything related to religion, whereas the medieval Latin religious was employed to denote above all matters pertaining to the regulated (monastic) life. The English expression ‘institution’ is again quite vague and has no single medieval equivalent. It applies equally to inanimate and abstract entities, to status, and to procedures, whether defined legally or by custom. The seminar will adopt the current understanding of ‘religious institutions’ in its broadest sense and apply it to various phenomena of medieval ecclesiastical history. Basic administrative units of the Western Church such as bishoprics, the practice of priestly ordination, and clerical status obtained institutional definition as early as in late Antiquity. Other institutions did not acquire shape until the twelfth-century revival of canon law, including papal monarchy, the college of cardinals, canonical elections, and ‘religious’ confraternities. The course will examine some of these ‘institutions’, their juridical and spiritual identities, strategies of self-representation, and major trends and conflicts affecting the overall institutional development.

This course surveys recent historiography on the roles and status of women in medieval society, as well as the structure and dynamics of medieval families. Among the debates to be explored are the effect on medieval society of the Christian Church’s teachings on virginity, sex, and marriage, and the influence of geography (northern vs Mediterranean Europe), environment (village, town, and convent), and status (noble, bourgeois, or peasant) on the work, family role, and authority of women. Chronologically the course will range from the early Christian period to the Renaissance. Recent scholarly work on nuns, mystics, and beguines will be examined, as will recent work on medieval mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, children and adolescents, and widows and the aged. The readings will also cover different approaches to the study of women and family, including the methodologies of literary scholars, anthropologists, demographers, feminists, and legal historians. The course will also take advantage of the March 2005 Medieval Studies conference, Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing, and Household, to stress the material culture aspects of family life.

This course explores major themes in the social and economic history of medieval Europe, including the impact of the “barbarian” migrations, technology and social change, agriculture and rural life, the commercial revolution, the Black Death, social revolts, craft guilds and the textile industry, and changing notions of poverty and charity, among other topics. The different methodological approaches to these issues will also be highlighted in examining not only “schools” of history (such as the Annales school, the Toronto school, prosopography, and feminist analysis) but also the contributions of other disciplinary approaches, including archaeology, demography, environmental science, historical geography, and numismatics.

This course examines the role of warfare in medieval society from the “barbarian invasions” through the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses. We sill focus in particular on the impact of technological developments on the conduct of war and on social hierarchies; on the relationship between social stratification and the conduct of war; on the influence of the church on warfare; and on the social consequences and economic costs of warfare. Students will be required to do a short oral report and annotated bibliography, as well as an historiographical.

This course will examine the history of Ireland from the height of the so-called Gaelic revival in the mid-fourteenth century to the collapse of Gaelic rule and the completion of the Tudor conquest in the early seventeenth century. Beginning in the late medieval period with an exploration of Ireland as an English borderland, a frontier society divided between English and Gaelic worlds, the class will then chart the protracted incorporation of Ireland into a highly centralized early modern English state under the Tudors. With emphasis placed on the latest scholarly studies, including the most recent developments in Irish and English historiography, the course offers a holistic approach to a crucial but often overlooked period in late medieval and early modern Irish and English history.

The pro-seminar provides an introduction to significant issues in the area and the basic tools for research. Students who continue in the linked seminar in the spring 2006, HSGA 8025, will write research papers on selected topics in the area. Major topics and debates in the study of medieval religious cultures will be considered through works on the cult of saints, popular religion, devotional practices, religious identities, and questions of dissent. In addition to introductions to sub-disciplines such as hagiography and liturgy, research methods and problems will be considered through the close reading of selected primary sources. Most classes will include Latin translation exercises.

This is the first half of a year-long pro-seminar/seminar sequence that will result in a seminar paper/M.A. thesis based on research in primary sources. The pro-seminar is designed to introduce students to a range of sources available from medieval France. The course, therefore, is not about medieval France per se, since the sources can lead students in directions that have little to do with anything that one might care to call the history of medieval France. Particular attention will be paid to the published primary sources that can serve as the basis for a seminar paper to be written in the spring of 2005, though students who take the pro-seminar are not required to take the seminar. A guided visit to the New York Public Library in late September will introduce students to some manuscript sources, and students will also be encouraged to explore manuscript collections in the New York area and elsewhere. Several weeks will also be devoted to microfilms of southern French materials in my own collection. Coverage of the early middle ages is not a major goal of this pro-seminar, though students who wish to work on the period before 1100 will have the opportunity to do so. The chronological focus will instead be on the high and later middle ages.

The course will consist of a two seminar pro-seminar/seminar sequence inviting graduate students to formulate and pursue original research projects in the field of medieval church law. Possible study questions may address a wide range of issues, including legal theory and judicial practice, contemporary uses and perceptions of “canonical justice.” The pro-seminar will be devoted to becoming familiar with the bibliography and tools available for original investigations in to the subject. It will also assist students in defining their own research topics. The seminar in the spring of 2004 will provide a forum for the presentation, discussion, and refinement of each participant’s scholarly work, which should eventually result in a 30 to 50-page essay.

This is the first half of a year-long course that focuses on the social, economic, and administrative history of England from the eleventh through fifteenth centuries. Special emphasis is placed upon 1) how to identify, interpret, and exploit a wide variety of primary sources (such as wills, cartularies, court rolls, account rolls, chronicles, among others); 2) how to use major historical collections (such as the Rolls Series, VCH, Record Commissioners, Royal Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Ordnance Survey, Selden Society, and others); and 3) gaining an awareness of the regions and landscape of medieval England, as well as the contributions of historical geography. Besides treating thematic issues such as the church and society, law and the legal system, the growth of government and administration, maritime trade and industry in town and country, the weekly discussions will also consider economy among the peasantry, townspeople, and the landowning elite. Some knowledge of Latin is recommended.

Participants will build on the reading and topics from HSGA 7025 (Proseminar: Medieval Religious Cultures) to prepare research papers based on sources and debates in the study of medieval religious cultures. Weekly readings will be selected by the participants from materials for their papers; later in the semester, they will present drafts of their own papers, and prepare critiques of others.

Continuation of the fall pro-seminar. Students will write research papers and give class presentations. Our collective research will be put on display at an end-of-semester mini-conference, where everyone will give 20 minute papers to an audience.

The course forms the second part of a two-semester pro-seminar/seminar sequence in which participants will be invited to formulate and pursue their own original research project in the field of medieval church law. Study questions may address a wide range of issues, including legal theory, judicial practice, and the uses and perceptions of “canonical justice.” The seminar offers a forum for the presentation, discussion, and refinement of each student’s scholarly work-in-progress, which should eventually result in a 30 to 50-page essay.

Students continue to work on the research project they defined in the Proseminar to this course. They also learn to design and use a computer database that includes data gathered in the course of research on the final paper, participate in seminars to improve their academic writing and public speaking skills, and familiarize themselves with professional standards for writing a scholarly article, giving a talk at an academic conferences, and writing an academic curriculum vitae. They complete the seminar by giving a 20-minute conference paper on their research project and writing a thesis-length original research paper that could be published as a scholarly article.

Modified, October 24, 2007 9:50 AM , Any questions about the History webpage can be sent to aacosta@fordham.edu.