Spring 2022 Undergraduate Courses

Courses normally accepted for credit toward the Undergraduate Concentration in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

As the situation surrounding COVID-19 develops please check https://covid19.columbia.edu/ for updates from the University's COVID-19 Taskforce. 

Some courses in the Core can count for MedRen. Permission will be given on a case by case basis, please contact the program for more information.

Please note the Department of Art History and Archaeology requires students to apply for courses in the department. Visit their website for more information.

GU 4027
Architecture and Associated Arts in Western Europe from 1066 until 1399: Building with Blood, Sweat, and Tears
S. Van Liefferinge

BC3928
Dutch Seventeenth Century Art
A. Eaker

GU 4031
Art of Italy: 1300-1520
I. Oryshkevich

GU4152
Medieval Latin Literature
C. Franklin

BC3164
Shakespeare II
P. Platt

BC3167
Milton
A. Guibbory

BC3246
Writing the Medieval Self
E. Petracca

UN3331
Shakespeare II
J. Howard

UN3385
Playing with Gender in the Middle Ages
P. Dailey

UN3932
Medieval English Texts: Gwain & the Green Knight
D. Yerkes

GU4625
Shakespeare Performance Studies
W. Worthen

GU4729
Canterbury Tales
E. Johnson

GU4932
Witchcraft and Law in the Early Modern World
J. Peters

GU4292
Queer Medieval France
E. Zingesser

UN1061
Intro-Early Middle Ages
A. Matthews

UN2060
Laws of War in the Middle Ages
A. Kosto

UN2353
Shadow of the Sun King: Early Modern France
C. Coleman

UN2701
The Ottoman Empire
T. Sen

UN3645
Jews in Early Modern Europe 1492-1750
E. Xarlebach

GU4711
Occult in the Muslim Past
T. Sen

GU4962
Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe
P. Smith

BC3130|
Failed Empire: Sweden in the Early Modern
C. Wennerlind

UN3669
Gender/Genre: Italian Renaissance Women
T. Colleluori

UN3685
C. Lopez
Regarding the Medieval Other: Inhibition, Individuality, and Identity

White supremacists have attempted to coopt the iconography of the Middle Ages in their campaign to legitimize their hateful agendas, glorifying the medieval period for its supposed racial and cultural homogeny. Yet literary, artistic, and historical sources from the period indicate that the Middle Ages were, in fact, far more diverse than many presume. This course offers a correction to the notion of a homogenous Middle Ages by focusing on the role and status of the Other in this period. We will examine those at the margins of medieval society, including women, enslaved persons, Muslims, Jews, queer folk, people of color, the impoverished, and the disabled. This interdisciplinary seminar will ultimately nuance students’ potential preconceived notions of the Middle Ages, demonstrating the degree to which medieval society defies modern assumptions of both its uniformity and stratification. Our primary focus on Italian literary and historical sources will be supplemented as appropriate by other medieval European perspectives, by critical theory, and by literature from the period. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students; no prerequisites; conducted in English

GU4060
Medieval Music Drama
S. Boynton

In this seminar we will study examples of music drama from the tenth century to the fourteenth, taking into account both the manuscript sources and methodological questions raised by performative works at the intersection of literature, music, and ritual. The course is open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students in all disciplines. Students will learn skills including the critical reading and analysis of both primary and secondary texts, and the assessment of  relationships between the original state of unpublished texts and music, their modern (edited) forms, and their modes of performance.

GU4625
Shakespeare Performance Studies
W. Worthen