History 16:510:593 Problems and Directed Readings in Medieval History

Fall Semester, 2009

Course Coordinator: Jim Masschaele, Van Dyck Hall 109. Tel.: 732-932-8250; email: massch@rci.rutgers.edu

Contributing Faculty: Rudolph Bell (rbell@rci.rutgers.edu); Samantha Kelly (slkelly@rci.rutgers.edu); Stephen Reinert (sreinert@rci.rutgers.edu); Sarolta Takacs (STAKACS@rci.rutgers.edu).

Course Description: History 593 is designed to orient students to medieval history and historiography. The course will examine the views and methods of a number of prominent scholars whose work has shaped and defined the principal research areas within the broad field of medieval history. Students who take this course can expect to acquire an appreciation of basic literature in the field of medieval history, an awareness of the kinds of historical approaches that have characterized the work of medievalists, and a richer understanding of the general nature of historical interpretation. Most of the works selected for review in the course are drawn from the department’s core reading list for the medieval major and minor fields.

Course Format: We will meet once a week through the term to discuss the readings assigned for each class. This is a team-taught course which will have different professors conducting class on different days. The course will begin with two weeks devoted to articles that are explicitly oriented to historiography. These readings should raise some general questions about what medievalists do and why they approach their field in different ways. The remainder of the course will involve weekly meetings to discuss influential books that have shaped our modern conception of the period. A single book will be the focus of discussion in most weeks, sometimes supplemented by short articles or reviews that assess the contribution of the main featured work.

Grades and Assignments: Fifty percent of the final grade will be based on class participation and fifty percent will be based on a series of short papers. Your class participation grade will be based on the frequency and quality of your comments and questions in the weekly meetings and the quality of the presentations you are asked to make over the course of the semester. The short papers will require you to critique a book assigned for discussion and/or summarize reviews of a book. The short papers should be approximately five pages long and will be due one week after the book has been discussed.

Availability of Books: You will find copies of the books we will use in this course on graduate reserve in ALEX. Additional copies of many of them are also available in our library system. Most of the books we will read are classics in the field and I encourage you to consider purchasing your own copies.

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

Tuesday Sept. 8 NB: Note that the first class session is on a Tuesday, while all subsequent sessions are on Mondays.

Introduction to the course (Masschaele)

NB: These three articles can be accessed electronically via IRIS. Please read them before our first class session.

Gabrielle Spiegel and Paul Freedman, "Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies," American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (1998): 677-704.

John H. Arnold, “Responses to the Postmodern Challenge: or, What Might History Become,” European History Quarterly 37:1 (2007): 109-32.

Carolyn Bynum, “Perspectives, Connections and Objects: What’s Happening in History Now,” Daedalus 138:1 (2009): 71-87.

Sept. 14 (Masschaele) Some traits of medieval historiography.

Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources. An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca and London, 2001), pp. 119-50;

John Van Engen, ed., The Past and Future of Medieval Studies (Notre Dame, IN, 1994), pp. vii-xi, 1-57, 245-72, 401-31.

Julia M. H. Smith, “Introduction: Regarding Medievalists: Contexts and Approaches,” in Michael Bentley, ed., Companion to Historiography (London and New York, 1997), pp. 105-16.

Sept. 21. (Takacs) Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005).

Sept. 28. (Takacs) Peter Brown, The Body and Society : Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988).

Oct. 5 (Reinert) Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades: A Short History (New Haven, 1987).

First Paper Due: Analytical review of Ward-Perkins OR Brown.

Oct. 12 (Reinert) Cohen, Mark. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1994).

Oct. 19 (Bell) Tabacco, Giovanni. The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy (New York, 1989)

Second Paper Due: Analytical Review of Riley-Smith OR Cohen.

Oct. 26 (Bell) Howell, Martha. Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late-Medieval Cities (Chicago, 1986).

Nov. 2 (Kelly) Clanchy, Michael. From Memory to Written Record, 2^nd ed. (Oxford, 1993).

Nov. 9 (Bell) Bynum, Caroline Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987).

Nov. 16 (Kelly) Grundmann, Herbert. Religious Movements in the Middle Ages : the Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women's Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans. Steven Rowan (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1995).

Third Paper Due: Analytical Review of Tabacco, Howell, OR Bynum.

Nov. 23 (Kelly) Elliott, Dyan. Proving Woman : Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2004).

Nov. 30 (Masschaele) Smyth, Alfred. Medieval Europeans. Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Europe (New York, 1998).

Fourth Paper Due: Analytical Review of Clanchy, Grundmann, OR Elliot.

Dec. 7 (Masschaele) Jacques Le Goff, My Quest for the Middle Ages (New York, 2005).

Dec. 11. Fifth Paper Due: Analytical Review of Smyth OR Le Goff.