Center for Renaissance Studies Graduate Consortium Seminars
The Center for Renaissance Studies Consortium offers seminars during the academic year. These courses permit an instructor to direct an advanced seminar in his or her area of specialization by drawing from a larger pool of participants than may be available on a single campus, and they serve as a first-hand introduction to the Newberry's holdings of manuscripts and early editions in areas of its special strengths. Consortium Seminars are conducted as symposia for scholars with common interests and goals, rather than as formal courses, and each participant is encouraged to develop his or her own research interests within the limits, broadly interpreted, of the general topic designated by the seminar leader. Graduate students taking a course for credit should make arrangements with their own institutions as well as registering with the Center. Faculty auditing is encouraged. Funds may be available for faculty and graduate students at Consortium schools to participate in these seminars.
2007- 2008 Consortium Seminars
The Commentary Tradition in the Medieval West
Instructor: Theresa Gross-Diaz
Fridays, 2 pm-5pm, September 28- December 7, 2007
Course Description
Medieval thinkers wrote commentaries on nearly every imaginable genre of text, from law codes and Scripture to prophecies and contemporary fiction. Commentaries - explanations and interpretations of important texts - have drawn increasing attention from medievalists as sources for understanding the ways medieval people studied, taught, expressed complex and original ideas, and organized information. Yet many students of the Middle Ages rarely or never encounter this form of writing or think about it critically while in graduate school. This course will be an interdisciplinary introduction to the wide range of commentary literature, and a survey of recent trends and approaches in utilizing commentaries in various fields. We will both address the secondary literature and tackle some commentaries directly. While most of the commentaries we will look at were written in Latin, a few are in vernaculars, and we will even investigate images as commentary*. The aim is to introduce students to the wonderful potential of commentaries and the creative ways they can be used to better understand the Middle Ages.
The Newberry is particularly well equipped to support such a course. Not only are hard-to-find secondary sources and editions present in the Library (such as Aurora: Petri Rigae Biblia versificata: A Verse Commentary on the Bible, Notre Dame 1965), but manuscripts and incunables that comprise commentary in varying forms will allow students to work with the well-known (e.g. Aquinas' commentary on the Sentences, MS 67.3) and the less familiar (e.g. Haly ibn Ridwan on [Ps-] Ptolemy, MS Ayer 744) in their original medieval formats. Students will have at least one exercise based on a choice of manuscript or incunable from the collection. The instructor, who has previously taught at the Newberry, has published on various medieval Psalms commentaries and is currently writing a book on the subject.
*(In most cases the commentaries studied in class will be available in English or other modern language translation; however, some knowledge of Latin will be useful.)
Codicology and Latin Paleography
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Instructor: Elizabeth Teviotdale
Fridays, 2 pm-5pm, January 11, 2008 - March 14, 2008
Course Description
This seminar provides students with a firm foundation in the discipline of codicology (the study of the manuscript book) and introduces them both to the forms of script used in writing Latin in the Middle Ages and to the cultural history of the medieval book. Students become familiar with the materials and techniques of medieval book production, develop their skills in transcribing Latin from original sources, and explore the role of the book in medieval society. Because so much of what we know about the Middle Ages is derived from the study of manuscripts, this seminar—intended for medievalists from across the disciplines—provides students with a fundamental skill for the study of literature (both Latin and vernacular), intellectual history, social history, ecclesiastical history, art history, and music history. It also serves to prepare students for the subsequent study of documentary hands. The course draws on the Newberry Library’s manuscript holdings in demonstrating the physical properties of the manuscript book, as sources for student transcription assignments, and as potential topics for term papers.
A typical class period comprises three components: (1) a practical workshop in transcription using examples of a given script prepared in advance by the students from supplied reproductions, (2) the discussion of a reading assignment focused on an aspect of the cultural history of the book, and (3) a mini-lecture, sometimes illustrated by manuscripts in the Newberry’s collections, that introduces the following week’s assignments.
Students write a term paper analyzing a single manuscript or manuscript fragment, preferably in the collection of the Newberry Library; present a seminar report on the topic of the term paper; are responsible for reading and transcription assignments; and are expected to contribute regularly to class discussion. It is an absolute prerequisite for the course that the student possess an elementary grasp of Latin (the equivalent of one semester of college Latin). Although knowledge of modern foreign languages is not strictly required, students may be working with secondary literature in foreign languages for their term papers.
Introduction to the Troubadours
Instructor: William D. Paden
Thursdays, 2 pm-5pm, January 10, 2008 - March 13, 2008
Course Description
This course will introduce the students to the troubadours, poets of the South of France in the Middle Ages, and the Occitan language in which they wrote. The troubadours blazed the trail that would be followed by vernacular poetry in Europe, and provided brilliant expression of themes ranging from love to war. We shall study the language in Paden, An Introduction to Old Occitan, and learn to translate troubadour poetry in that book; read a book of English translations, Paden and Paden,Troubadour Poems from the South of France (2007); and refer to selected essays in two recent collaborative histories, Gaunt and Kay, The Troubadours: An Introduction, and Akehurst and Davis, A Handbook of the Troubadours. We shall consider the performance of troubadour poetry in song as well as historical issues including the court, gender relations, and desire.
Beowulf
Instructor: Christina von Nolcken
Fridays, 2 pm-5pm, January 11, 2008 - March 14, 2008
Course Description
This seminar is for participants who have already completed at least one course in Old Englih. Its aim is to help them read Beowulf and familiarize them with some of the scholarly discussion that has accumulated around the poem. We will read the text primarily as edited by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, Beowulf: An Edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), and we will draw on the Newberry Library's rich collection of early printed and facsimile editions to help us discuss textual and paleographical matters as well as aspects of the pom's scholarly and popular afterlife. We will define areas of scholarly discussion with the help of Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, eds., A Beowulf Handbook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997) and Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003); to help place the poem in a larger context of Germanic legend we will also look especially to material in Frederick Klaeber, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 3rd ed. (Boston: D.C. Health, 1950); G.N. Garmonsway and Jacqueline Simpson, trans, Beowulf and its Analogues, 2nd ed. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1980): and Christine Rauer, Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000).
Participants will define the topics of their final research papers early in the seminar, by reading as widely as possible in journals and books. Helpful bibliographical guides include Douglas D. Short, Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1980), Robert J. Hasenfratz, Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography 1979-1990 (New York, Garland, 1993), the Old English Newsletter, and the journal Anglo-Saxon England has topically-arranged annual bibliographies. R.M. Liuzza provides a useful introduction to the poem in his Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000).
Past consortium seminars
Students must register with the Center. For course descriptions and other information or to register for a class, please contact the Center for Renaissance Studies at 312.255.3514, or at renaissance@newberry.org.
Funds may be available for students and faculty members of Consortium institutions to travel to the Newberry to attend Consortium seminars. For more information, please contact the Center.
Students and faculty from universities outside the Center for Renaissance Studies Consortium are welcome to apply to attend a seminar; please note the $500 mandatory course fee for non-Consortium students.. If you are unsure of the status of your university, please consult the list of Consortium institutions or contact the Center for Renaissance Studies.