AHI 001C Baroque to Modern Art
Location: Everson Hall 176
Time: M,W 10:30-11:50
Instructor: TBD
- Section A01 (CRN: 30546); T 9:00-9:50- Everson Hall 157
- Section A02 (CRN: 30547); T 10:00-10:50- Everson Hall 157
- Section A03 (CRN: 30548); W 9:00-9:50- Everson Hall 157
- Section A04 (CRN: 30549); R 9:00-9:50- Everson Hall 157
- Section A05 (CRN: 30550); F 9:00-9:50- Everson Hall 157
- Section A06 (CRN: 30551); F 10:00-10:50- Everson Hall 157
COM 002 Major Works of the Medieval & Early Modern World
Section A01 (CRN: 35347)
Location: Lecture/ Discussion Olson Hall 217
Time: T,R 12:10-2:00
Instructor: Staff
COM 002 Major Works of the Medieval & Early Modern World
Section A02 (CRN: 35348)
Location: Lecture/ Discussion Hunt Hall 110
Time: M,W 2:10-4:00
Instructor: Staff
ENL 113A Chaucer: Troilus & the "Minor" Poems (M)
Location: Lecture Olson Hall 118
Time: M,W,F 10:00-10:50
Instructor: S. Changanti
- Section A01 (CRN: 39673); W 6:10-7:00- Hutchison Hall 102
- Section A02 (CRN: 39674); W 7:10-8:00- Olson Hall 117
- Section A03 (CRN: 39675); R 6:10-7:00- Olson Hall 159
- Section A04 (CRN: 39676); R 7:10-8:00- Olson Hall 159
This course uses the work of Geoffrey Chaucer to think about the relation of medieval and modern life, particularly in regard to issues of racial and social justice. The Chaucerian texts we read will be paired with modern film, literary texts, and other media in order to draw out the political meanings of Chaucer's work. Through these pairings, we will consider how reading Middle English poetry can advance our sense of where we are politically now and where we want to be. The works of Chaucer on which we will focus include his dream visions, short lyrics, and his narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer's account of the Trojan War.
The class also includes discussion sections where you can get to know your peers and work closely together on the material.
Please note that we will make extensive use of the electronic version of the required textbook, which allows shared annotation, hyperlinked word definitions, and other useful features.
ENL 115 Topics in 16th and 17th Century Literature: Objections and Replies: Early Modern Philosophy and/as Literature
Location:
- Section A01 (CRN: 55677); M,W,F 11:00-11:50- Lecture Wellman Hall 1
- Section A02 (CRN: 55678); M,W,F 11:00-11:50- Lecture Wellman Hall 129
- Section A03 (CRN: 55679); M,W,F 11:00-11:50- Lecture Olson Hall 244
- Section A04 (CRN: 55680); M,W,F 11:00-11:50- Lecture Olson Hall 159
Instructor: O. Cahalan
- Section A01 (CRN: 55677); W 6:10-7:00- Extensive Writing/Discussion Social Science & Humanities 70
- Section A02 (CRN: 55678); W 7:10-8:00- Extensive Writing/Discussion Social Science & Humanities 70
- Section A03 (CRN: 55679); R 6:10-7:00- Extensive Writing/Discussion Olson Hall 151
- Section A04 (CRN: 55680); R 7:10-8:00- Extensive Writing/Discussion Olson Hall 151
ENL 122 - Milton’s More-than-human Multi-verse
Location: Lecture Olson Hall 146
Time: T,R 3:10-4:30PM
Instructor: T. Werth
- A01 (CRN 55379): Extensive Writing/Discussion Social Science and Humanities 70, R 6:10-7:00 PM
- A02 (CRN 55380): Extensive Writing/Discussion Social Science and Humanities 70, R 7:10-8:00 PM
- A03 (CRN 55381): Extensive Writing/Discussion Wellman Hall 129, F 9:00-9:50 AM
- A04 (CRN 55382): Extensive Writing/Discussion Wellman Hall 129, F 10:00-10:50 AM
Image: Gustave Doré 19th century illustrations for Paradise Lost “Him, fast sleeping, soon he found / In labyrinth of many a round, self-rolled” (IX.182,183)
Course Description: In this course, we will be engaging with some of the seminal works of John Milton, including Paradise Lost and a sample of his early poetry and prose. Our way of reading will explore the built environment of the story as poem: its sound, its verse, its rhetoric, and its characters. We will be particularly attentive to the worlding (that is the world building) that the language of the poem enacts. Simultaneously, we will be exploring the poem as story by noting its origins, atmosphere, and climate environs. We will follow its crosshatching of multiple worlds and life forms—including human beings, vegetal, mineral, animal, and more-than-human entities—as they traverse space and time. We will be attentive to how matter, energy, information, and physical laws or cosmology, as well as religious views, constrain and construct domains. We will also examine Milton’s unconventional representations of creation, the natural world, and human systems such as justice and government. As we read, we will ask what it means to be human and how the stories we tell might create interpenetrating dimensions, alternate planes, and potential futures.
Required Text: Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Edited, with Introduction, by David Scott Kastan. Hackett, 2005. ISBN 978-0-87220-733-2.
GEs: AH, WC, WE
ENL 153 - Topics in Drama
Section A01 (CRN: 55684)
Location: Lecture/ Discussion Veihmeyer Hall 116
Time: M,W,F 10:00-10:50
Instructor: Gina Bloom
Shakespeare and New Technologies: From AI to VR
This course examines how recent technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) are shaping Shakespeare’s delivery to 21st century audiences. We will read about and, when possible, explore first-hand Shakespeare projects that employ VR, AI, and related technologies alongside Shakespeare plays that are the focus of these projects, including The Tempest and Hamlet. What are the limitations and affordances of recent technologies for reimagining Shakespeare in the 21st century? To what extent do these technologies help us gain new insights into Shakespeare’s plays? How are experiments with new technologies changing more traditional ways of experiencing Shakespeare in classrooms, theaters, popular media, and public spaces? Are these changes beneficial and, if so, for whom and why?
One aim of the course is to offer students interested in early modern drama an opportunity to learn more about a hot topic in the field of the Shakespeare studies. An additional aim is to help students think about how a passion for Shakespeare could be channeled into career paths where new digital technologies have been gaining traction: K-12 teaching, theatre production, game-making, and academic scholarship. To that end, students will focus their term project on a career path that most interests them. For instance, those on a teaching path might create course materials for teaching Shakespeare with new technologies; those on a game-making path might prototype a game designed to be played using one of these technologies; those on a theatre path might write a pitch for a theatre production that uses a particular technology to adapt a Shakespeare play; those on a scholarship track might write a research essay examining one or more digital Shakespeare projects.
Students do not need any background or familiarity with VR, AI, and other digital technologies in order to take this course. They just need to be open to experimenting with them.
FRE 141- Selected Topics in French Literature
Section 001 (CRN: 41611)
Location: Seminar Hart Hall 1128
Time: T, R 10:30-11;50
Instructor: T. Warner
HIS 125 Topics in Early Modern European History
Section 001 (CRN: 43359)
Location: Lecture/Discussion Young Hall 184
Time: T,R 3:10-4:30
Instructor: Stuart, Kathy
About 50,000 people perished in the European witch-hunt, mostly in the century between 1560 and 1660. We explore the particular set of circumstances that encouraged these “burning times” in the era of the baroque. We study earlier prosecutions of heretics and Jews as a kind of model for the witch trials that followed. Prosecutions of Jews focused mostly on men, but most victims of the witch-hunt were older, post-menopausal woman. What were the gender stereotypes that led to this particular construction of the witch? About 15 % of accused witches were men, however. What made these men vulnerable to witchcraft accusations? Did warlocks practice a different, masculine magic? At the same time as thousands of witches were dying at the stake, more and more Europeans believed themselves to be victims of demonic possession. We compare the roles of witches and demoniacs and study rituals of exorcism. Children played a problematic role in the witch-hunts. Witchcraft often served as an explanation for high infant mortality, and children featured prominently among the accusers of witches. But after 1680, children took on a new role: as perpetrators of witchcraft. We will explore the paradox that on the eve of the Enlightenment, the so-called “Age of the Child” that recognized childhood as a special stage of life that needed to be protected and nurtured, children were accused of—and executed—for witchcraft more than ever before. Finally, we ask when, how, and why the witch-hunts ended. People didn’t stop believing in witchcraft—why did they stop burning witches?
HIS 131B- European History During the Renaissance and Reformation (EM)
Section A01 (CRN: 55637)
Location: Lecture/Discussion Olson Hall 223
Time: M,W,F 9:00-9:50
Instructor: A. Katie Harris
History 131B, “European History During the Renaissance and Reformation” explores the history of western Europe between the late fifteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, a complex period that marked the turn from the medieval to the modern world. Over the course of the quarter, we’ll explore this slow shift and the ideas and events which characterized it. This period is often called the “Early Modern” period, and we’ll spend some time thinking about that label, examining what made it “modern,” and what linked it to periods that came before, especially the “Medieval” era. We’ll devote particular attention to shifting concepts of community and identity and to links between religious ideas and social, political, and cultural change. Topics include humanism, European expansion in the Americas and beyond, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, social status and gender roles, and the development of the modern state and of modern economic forms. Assignments will include two papers, a midterm, and a final exam, as well as regular reading responses.
ITA 118 - Italian Lit of the 18th Century (EM)
Section 001 (CRN: 55418)
Location: Lecture/Discussion Wellman Hall 105
Time: T,R 12:10-1:30
Instructor: E. Russell
Taught in Italian: open to students who have completed or are currently completing ITA 23
In this class, we will explore everyday Italian through the close examination of gialli, popular detective novels rich in dialogue. We will explore language use in real-life situations – to show anger or deference, make demands and ask questions, engage in seduction or subterfuge, establish relationships that are distant and cold or close and amorous, and much more. We will also collaboratively write our own giallo, creating original characters who reflect contemporary Italian languacultural reality, while also continuing to hone language skills.
LAT 104 - Sallust (M)
Section 001 (CRN: 55574)
Location: Wellman Hall 101
Time: M,W,F 3:10-4:00
Instructor: C. Seal
LAT 116 - Vergil: Eclogues & Georgics
Section 001 (CRN: 55575)
Location: Wellman Hall 3
Time: T,R 1:40-3:00
Instructor: J. Rundin
MSA 181C - Topics in Regional Middle East / South Asia Studies: Comparative Perspectives
Section 001 (CRN: 56007)
Location: Lecture Social Science and Humanities 80
Time: T, R 10:30-11:50
Instructor: M. Al-Shatarat
MST 020B Intro To Late Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (via alchemy)
Section A01 (CRN: 47501)
Location: Lecture Wellman Hall 109, Discussion Bainer Hall 1134
Time: T, R 12:10-1:30; Discussion: T 3:10-4:00
Instructor: T. Werth
A global quest of Promethean ambitions for the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone
Spring 2025
Course Description:
This course introduces you to late medieval and early modern worlds through a global perspective via a shared ambition to perfect nature. It covers a time frame of roughly 1100 – 1700 CE and follows people in different cultures and locales along the fabled silk road stretching from its eastern terminus in China throughout Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and western endpoints in Europe. The organizational rubric for this journey is the magical, occult, and early scientific quest for the Philosopher’s Stone as recorded from a variety of interlocking perspectives. While this alchemical tradition at first blush appears to concern itself with the transmutation of metals, the esoteric tradition contained within it held truths about the structure of the universe, the place of humans within the natural cosmos, and held forth the promise of enormous wealth, prolonged life, and the transformation of energy. As such, its practical and philosophical principles touched on subjects as diverse as astrology, art, magic, medicine, philosophy, religion, and statecraft. After laying out a fundamental critical framework of concepts and orientations, the course will proceed along the silk road in search of the tiger, the dragon, the green lion, the golden city, and the salamander while attending to more modern concepts such as views of the self, identity (race, gender), class hierarchy, and the ethics of genetic modification. In what historian of science William Newman calls “the quest to perfect nature,” we will explore the mysterious workings of power and the pursuit of empire that cuts across the major premodern civilizations of Arabic, Chinese, European, Indian, and Ottoman cultures.
Learning Outcomes:
- Demonstrate broad familiarity with multiple premodern societies through their exploration of alchemy and the discipline of the history of science and medicine
- Analyze primary source readings in philosophy, literature, and art
- Synthesize secondary scholarship produced from different disciplines into a coherent narrative
- Compare the political, social, philosophical, and artistic contributions of different early societies
- Develop a holistic sense of how premodern societies are similar to and different from modern societies
This course meets the UC Davis Global Learning Curricular objectives.
GEs: AH, WC, WE
MUS 121 - Topics in Music Scholarship
Section 001 (CRN: 47576)
Location: Lecture Music 230
Time: Lecture M,W 11:00-12:50 PM
Instructor: Staff
PHI 145 - Christian, Islamic, & Jewish Philosophers of the Middle Ages (M)
Section 001 (CRN: 55993)
Location: Giedt 1006
Time: T,R 6:10-7:00
Instructor: J. Szaif
This course studies philosophers that belong to three different cultural traditions in the Middle Ages: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish. Medieval philosophy, while being a continuation of ancient Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism, also refines and modifies these ancient conceptual frameworks, adapting their models of scientific rationality to the new cultural situation of a society based on authoritative ‘revealed’ religion and monotheistic theology. Thematically, this course focuses on questions in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion. It also highlights the ways in which these three traditions influenced each other through processes of intellectual exchange and reception. Medieval philosophical and theological texts are often highly technical. The lecture will explain the central concepts in the selected texts and discuss the underlying philosophical questions.
RST 115 - Mysticism
Section 001 (CRN: 56219)
Location: Wellman Hall 25
Time: M,W 2:10-3:30
Instructor: R. Brizendine
RST 130 - Topics in Religious Studies
Section 001 (CRN: 53287)
Location: Olson Hall 101
Time: T,R 1:30-3:00
Instructor: L. Little
SPA 134A - Don Quijote I (EM)
Section 001 (CRN: 56200)
Location: Wellman Hall 201
Time: M,W,F 11:00-11:50
Instructor: C. Oriel
An examination of the first part (1605) of Miguel de Cervantes's masterpiece, Don Quijote, within the context of 17th-century Spanish history and culture, with a specific focus on Cervantes's work as both beginning and defining the modern novel. Aside from the Bible, Don Quijote is the most published book ever, and is an absolute "must-read," if you're interested in how literature functions and in understanding the essence of Hispanic culture. Taught in Spanish.
Readings include a student edition of Don Quijote (which includes vocabulary, as well as cultural, historical and mythological glosses) and several critical readings.
SPA 142 - Special Topics in Spanish Cultural & Literary Studies
Section 001 (CRN: 55492)
Location: Wellman Hall 201
Time: M,W,F 10:00-10:50
Instructor: C. Martinez-Carazo