Medieval Studies Graduate Courses

The wide variety of research interests among the faculty participating in the Center for Medieval Studies results in an array of courses available to graduate students in the program. Find out more about current course offerings below as well as upcoming and past courses from the links on the left.

Summer 2026 Fall 2026 Spring 2027 | Past Courses

Summer 2026

MVST 5225 L11 (4 Credits) Old French Languages and Literatures| Reilly
T/R 9:30 - 12:30 | 17060
This graduate seminar offers an introduction to the Old French language through an in-depth study of a literary work. We will explore that work both linguistically and materially, including its paleographical and codicological contexts. Through our systematic study of Old French grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, students will also gain proficiency in reading texts from a variety of genres, whether literary, historical, or documentary. No prior knowledge of Modern French or Latin is required. Graduate students from any disciplinary background interested in the Francophone Middle Ages are welcome. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

MVST 5095 R21 (4 Credits) Medieval Pilgrimage| Bruno
M/W 9:00 - 12:00 | 17059
Pilgrimage will be conceptualized broadly, entertaining a variety of aims for travel and also considering the pilgrimage form as a purely conceptual exercise as well as a journey with more practical aims. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

HIST 5204 V32 (4 Credits) Medieval Environmental History| Bruce
ONLINE | 17050
This seminar is intended to familiarize graduate students with current themes and trends in medieval environmental history. Weekly reading assignments comprise historical monographs and scholarly articles in English. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction

LAT 5093 V21 (3 Credits) Latin for Reading| McGowan
M/W 1:00 - 4:00 | 15080
A course designed for graduate students seeking a reading knowledge of Latin in their discipline. Some prior study of Latin is desirable but not necessary.

LAT 5090 V11 (3 Credits) Ecclesiastical Latin| McGowan
M/W 1:00 - 4:00 | 15081
This course is a study of the grammatical structure, form, and vocabulary of Church Latin, focusing on the Bible, the Church fathers, and medieval thinkers.

DAHU 6000 (4 Credits) Data Humanities | Reilly
F 11:30 - 2:15 | 15081
This course serves as an introduction to the theory and practice of the data humanities, a field that applies computational, data science methods to humanities data. Students will primarily be concerned with text as data, although some attention will be given to working with images and audio. Students will be introduced to the Python programming language, and every week, they will develop their programming skills. Through hands-on projects and exercises, students will learn how to acquire, manage, analyze, and visualize humanities data, gaining practical experience with essential data science techniques. Topics covered include text processing, natural language processing (NLP), sentiment analysis, and topic modeling. Students will also explore ethical considerations and critical debates surrounding the use of data science in the humanities. No prior programming experience is required.

Fall 2026

MVST 5071 (4 Credits) Sources, Archives, and Materials for Medievalists | Commuzzi
M 2:30 - 5:00 | 17060
This course will introduce students to many of the most important sources for the study of the medieval world. Drawing on the diversity of expertise among Fordham’s faculty and the rich resources of New York City, the course will introduce students to a variety of handwritten sources (including manuscripts and other documents), as well as coins and seals, and the specialized skills used to understand and interpret these sources. The course will also feature discussions of the processes whereby libraries and archives were developed and maintained, and how scholars use these sources in the digital era. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

THEO 6014 (4 Credits) Ancient Theological Controversies | Fiano
T 1:00 - 3:30 | 17059
This course will aim at providing students with a historical understanding of the ancient development of Trinitarian and Christological doctrine while also reflecting on the ancient and modern historiographic constructions of the controversies that surrounded those topics through theoretical and methodological readings in intellectual history, the sociology of scientific knowledge, and discourse analysis. After a survey of some early understandings of Christ’s identity and of crucial early disputes, the seminar will focus on the Trinitarian, Christological, and anthropomorphic controversies. Emphasis will be placed on the philosophical underpinnings of the various theological postures, on the late ancient emergence of theological discourse as a field of knowledge sustained by a new set of intellectual practices, and on the link between theological debates and imperial power. Whenever possible, particular attention will be devoted to Syriac and Coptic sources for the controversies under examination.

PHIL 5012 (3 Credits) Introduction to St. Augustine | Pini
T 12:00 - 2:00 | 17050
This seminar provides a systematic survey of the main themes of St. Augustine's philosophy and theology. Topics will include faith and reason, divine ideas, time, eternity, and creations, the theology of the Holy Trinity, the nature of the soul, the freedom of the will and divine predestination, good and evil, original sin and divine grace, and the human history as the history of salvation. The unifying theme of the discussion will be a synthetic account of St. Augustine's Neoplatonic Christian anthropology, occasionally contrasted with St. Thomas Aquinas' Aristotelian Christian anthropology. The discussion will be organized around student presentations and two term papers on topics other than one's presentation topics.

PHIL 6130 (3 Credits) Animals in Medieval Philosophy| Somma
W 12:15 - 2:15 | 15080
This course covers prominent discussions of nonhuman animals within medieval philosophy. Students will investigate developments in psychology and ethics related to the function and treatment of nonhuman animals, including theories of animals' inner lives and various ways moral categories might apply to animals. The course will examine works from both the Islamic world and the medieval Latin West, spanning the ninth century CE to the early 15th century.

ENGL 5111 (3 Credits) Race, Religions, Monstrosity in Medieval Literature | Yeager
T 11:30 - 2:00 | 15081
The medieval taste for the exotic has introduced many audiences to a range of monstrous beings, from ferocious giants and dog-headed men to the peace-loving sciapod. Medieval studies of monstrosity have often been linked solely to theorize the different human "races" found there. Yet the medieval language of monstrosity was not always limited to travel narrative, nor to the pejorative, for it was used to describe heroes, saints, even the Christian deity in far more familiar contexts than many would imagine. In this course we will examine the discourse of monstrosity as a complex critical lens through which premodern writers asked important questions of race, religion, civic virtue, and human morality. We will read from Pliny, Augustine, the Beowulf Manuscript, medieval romance, and Mandeville's account.

HIST 6078 (4 Credits) Crusaders States: The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099-1291 | Paul
T 2:30 - 5:00 | 15080
This course charts the social, political, and cultural history of the feudal principalities that were established by Latin Christians in the Eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the First Crusade. Students will be introduced to the narrative and documentary sources through which the history of the Latin Kingdom has been constructed, as well as the archaeology and art of the Levant during the period of Frankish occupation and settlement. In addition, we will engage with the major historiographical debates concerning the constitutional organization of the Latin kingdom, the relationship between the Frankish crusaders and Muslim and eastern Christian populations over whom they ruled, and the "colonial" character of the Latin settlements. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

HIST 7026 (4 Credits) Medieval ProSeminar: Classics in the Middle Ages | Bruce
F 2:30 - 5:00 |
This seminar deals primarily with the transmission and reception in western Europe of classical Greek and Latin texts written before 525 CE, with a focus on the Latin tradition. The overarching aim of the seminar is to highlight the achievement of the Latin Middle Ages in preserving the ancient classics and appropriating them for new uses in a Christian civilization. It treats the most influential authors in the medieval schools (Virgil, Horace, and Ovid), as well as the persistence of the most prominent genres of classical literature, including didactic poetry, drama, elegy, encyclopedic works, epic poetry, epigram, grammatical works, historical writings, legal works, literary criticism, lyric poetry, oratory, philosophical writings, prose fiction, and satire. Lastly, the seminar also considers centers of transmission, book collections, and the medieval commentary tradition.
Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Spring 2027

HIST 8026 (4 Credits) Medieval Seminar: Classics in the Middle Ages | Bruce
F 2:30 - 5:00 |
This seminar deals primarily with the transmission and reception in western Europe of classical Greek and Latin texts written before 525 CE, with a focus on the Latin tradition. The overarching aim of the seminar is to highlight the achievement of the Latin Middle Ages in preserving the ancient classics and appropriating them for new uses in a Christian civilization. It treats the most influential authors in the medieval schools (Virgil, Horace, and Ovid), as well as the persistence of the most prominent genres of classical literature, including didactic poetry, drama, elegy, encyclopedic works, epic poetry, epigram, grammatical works, historical writings, legal works, literary criticism, lyric poetry, oratory, philosophical writings, prose fiction, and satire. Lastly, the seminar also considers centers of transmission, book collections, and the medieval commentary tradition.
In the Spring semester, students will spend the semester working on research papers based on the topics identified in the Fall. At class meetings, students will have the opportunity to present their research and to read and critique each others' writing. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

HIST 6155 (4 Credits) Medieval Towns: Urbanization and Urban Life in Medieval Europe | Comuzzi
TH 2:30 - 5:00 |
This course surveys the historiography of European towns from c. 700 to c. 1500. Subjects covered will include the growth of urban centers/urbanization, towns as commercial and artisanal centers, space and the urban environment, the development of municipal governments, guilds and artisanal labor, the structures of urban society, social inequality, the urban family, and social conflict. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

MVST 5300 (4 Credits) Occitania: Language and Power | Paul & O'Donnell
F 11:00 - 2:00 |
This course introduces students to the cultural world of a medieval “south”: Occitania. Texts in Old Occitan include documentary writing, historical narrative, and the poetry of the troubadours. Topics include urban/rural communities, gender and power, the Albigensian crusade and its aftermath and the beginning of vernacular book production.

THEO 6027 (3 Credits) Ancient Judaism | DeGolan
M 2:30 - 5:00 |
This course examines Jewish thought, practice, and community from the Second Temple period through the end of the Talmudic era (ca. 535 BCE to 600 CE). Using primary sources in translation—including biblical texts, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, and rabbinic literature—students will explore scriptural interpretation, sectarian diversity, theological concepts, and the development of rabbinic authority from the Temple's destruction through the compilation of the Talmuds.

THEO 6048 (3 Credits) Varieties of Biblical Reception | Peppard
T 4:00 - 6:30 |
A select survey of privileged appropriations of the Bible and Christian ideologies.