Current Courses

MEMS Graduate Courses Winter 2026

MEMS 440 | Postclassical Latin | Donka Markus

The course will survey legends and histories in the Premodern era by geographic area (Ireland, Britain, Italy, Gaul, Spain, Frankish empire). We will study the various features of Postclassical Latin in contrast to Classical Latin. Alongside prepared assignments, there will be ample sight-reading practice. The focus will be on developing vocabulary, grammar, and sight-reading skills specific to the Postclassical period.

While this is not a course in paleography, students will be exposed to the basic and most common orthographic conventions and abbreviations in the Latin texts of the surveyed period. Students will have the opportunity to explore their own interests within the framework of the course and to gain deeper familiarity with the texts and genres that they are most interested in. The Latin of science and philosophy as well as writings by Premodern female authors are among the possible foci of exploration.

MEMS 442 | The Icelandic Sagas: Vikings, Women, and Vengeance | Maria Gull

The Icelandic Sagas are unique literary documents from medieval Iceland. They inform us about the cultural, political, and religious currents of land in tumult and transition. Unlike many contemporary texts, these are not inherently moralistic or celebratory — instead they are dark, matter-of-fact inquiries into the way individuals respond to often unresolvable situations. In this course, we will encounter vindictive women, treacherous kings, heroes and anti-heroes, lawyers, berserkers, and poets.

Texts include Njál's Saga, Egil’s Saga, The Saga of Gísli the Outlaw, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, selections from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, and several shorter sagas such as Hrafnkel’s Saga and Thorstein Staff-Struck. Key themes engaged in the class include vengeance and feuds, magic and religion, conversion, and gender roles.

MEMS 898 | Interdisciplinary Dissertation Colloquium in Medieval and Early Modern Studies | Ryan Szpiech

The MEMS proseminar is usually our students’ first experience in creating an interdisciplinary intellectual community. At the other end of the graduate student experience, MEMS 898 offers a similar model of interdisciplinary work for students at the dissertation-writing stage.

The Interdisciplinary Dissertation Colloquium is an integral part of the Graduate Certificate Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, provides advanced students in MEMS an opportunity to present their work to one another in a seminar that brings together doctoral candidates from potentially all the MEMS disciplines. The work one presents may be dissertation chapters (or parts thereof), conference papers, or scholarly articles to be submitted for publication. In addition to reading and responding to one another’s work, the seminar will also consider methodological and disciplinary issues of common interest to members of the seminar.

Affiliated Courses

SPANISH 459 | Don Quixot  y la formación de la novela moderna| Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas

En este curso examinaremos la obra maestra cervantina desde una perspectiva contemporánea, centrándonos en su contexto sociopolítico, histórico y literario, e incorporando acercamientos críticos que se adapten a nuestra sensibilidad moderna. Prestaremos particular atención a la imbricación de géneros en el texto, analizando igualmente sus reverberaciones míticas y simbólicas. Nos enfocaremos en la construcción de los personajes más significativos, haciendo parada en temas como el de la ley y la violencia, la vida marginal, los espacios urbanos y rurales, la sexualidad latente o abierta y los significados de la violencia y cuerpo. La clase será en español.

ENGLISH 450 | Workers & Writers: The Literature of Medieval Protest | Gina Brandolino

This course focuses on texts associated with the English historical event most commonly known as the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.  This term is an inaccurate description of the event, but it reveals the biases of the writers of official history, who, while making their records of this event, went to great lengths to depict the rebels as members of the lowest social standing—and, besides that, as coarse, base, and dumb.  In fact, many of the rebels were peasants, but not all of them were.  And the actions of the rebels—peasant or not—were well-planned and organized, demonstrating the fierce intelligence of a population tired of being oppressed by those making claims of superiority and power over them. The rebels circulated news among themselves by means of several remarkable letters, some of them in verse. We’ll study these letters as well as William Langland’s great Middle English poem Piers Plowman, which was a source of inspiration to the rebels.  We’ll also read medieval historical chronicles, which took considerable creative license to tell the “official” history of the Rising in a way that tarnished the motives, actions, and intentions of the rebels. It’s clear that those in power after the Rising was quieted wished the rebels to be forgotten or remembered badly.  The course aims to remember them well, and to acknowledge and pay heed to the texts they produced themselves, the texts that inspired them, and the texts that they inspired.

SPANISH 443 | 1492: History and Legend | Ryan Szpiech

1492 is one of the most consequential years in the history of Spain, and one of world-historical importance even today. In the year 1492, "Columbus sailed the ocean blue"—but that is not all that happened! It was the year that the Christian armies conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian Peninsula. It was the year the first grammar of the Spanish language was published. It was also the year that the Catholic Monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, expelled all of the Jews from the Peninsula. When Columbus arrived in the Americas, the medieval world was already undergoing radical changes that would transform it forever, giving way to Early Modern Spanish culture and the beginnings of the Spanish empire and the Spanish language. This course will explore the meaning of 1492 for Spanish literature, art, film, and culture, including the foundation of Spanish grammar and the foundations of Spain as a global power. It will look at the legend of Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler who surrendered the Alhambra in Granada. It will read early writing about the voyage of Columbus to the Americas. And it will explore the importance of 1492 for Jewish culture, as the Jews relocated to other Mediterranean and Atlantic lands but preserved many aspects of Spanish culture and language. This course will explore how in 1492, entire worlds were made and unmade, modern myths were written, and Spain itself was born. Readings, writing, and discussion will be in Spanish.

ANTHRARC 683 | Aztec, Maya, Inca Civilizations | Joyce Marcus

This fun course requires no prior knowledge or background. The focus is on the rise and fall of the ancient civilizations of Latin America. Two major goals are to expose students to archaeology and to comparative civilization.  The geographic focus is on two key regions: (1) the ancient civilizations of South America (especially Peru and Bolivia); and (2) the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras). The South American civilizations to be discussed include the Moche, Chimu, Wari, Nazca, Tiwanaku, and Inca. The Mesoamerican civilizations include the Olmec, Zapotec, Maya, Mixtec, and Aztec.

GREEK 556 | Greek Philosophical Literature 1 | Sara Ahbel-Rappe

In this class we will study the philosophy of Stoicism especially as it emerged in the Roman Empire but also with an appreciation of its  foundations in the early Stoa. We will read fragments from the Hellenistic Stoa, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Lectures of Musonius Rufus and the Enchiridion of Epictetus, all in the original Greek, with the aid of a commentary. We will also read Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius in English. Our aim will be to study the philosophical and historical influence of Stoicism in the Roman Empire. We will consider the so-called Roman opposition, the “spiritual exercise” and the Meditations, Stoic philosophy of mind, the influence of Stoicism on Greek patristics, and the legacy of Marcus Aurelius.

JUDAIC 617 | Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying Culture | Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg

This course offers a wide-ranging introduction to humanistic methods used in the study of cultural boundaries and contact zones, broadly understood, and the dynamics of how people, ideas, and artifacts move through and across them–drawing, for this semester, particularly on examples drawn from Diasporic Judaisms. Using the interconnectivity of international Jewish diasporas as a core case study alongside others, this seminar explores core concepts of cultural translation and connectivity. Readings from a variety of disciplinary perspectives will provide a sampling of generative approaches to understanding cross-border circulation of power structures, cultural and linguistic vernaculars, appropriation, assimilation, and group identity formation in historical and present-day contexts. Specific topics will likely include critical theorizations of translation, transculturation, ethnic discourse, linguistic and religious identity formation, diaspora, and disciplinary decolonization. A flexible menu of assignment options provides opportunities for students to cultivate graduate-level research and communication skills valuable in a variety of academic and post-academic contexts.