Celtic Studies
Undergraduate Course
Celtic 146A | Medieval Welsh Language and Literature
Location: Dwinelle 79
Time: Tu, Th - 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Instructor: Myriah Williams
Whether you are looking for tales of King Arthur, romance or war, saints or the supernatural, medieval Welsh literature has it all. In this class, students will be introduced to the grammar of Middle Welsh and will learn to read tales of the legendary figures of Wales in the original language. Regular in-class translation will give students the opportunity to apply and build on their knowledge of Middle Welsh grammar, and will give them the skills and experience necessary to read and translate a range of Middle Welsh texts on their own following the completion of the class. The reading of texts will be accompanied by lectures contextualizing the works within wider Welsh literature, history and tradition.
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Undergraduate Course
MONGOLN 116 | The Mongol Empire
Location: Dwinelle 243
Time: Tu, Th - 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Instructors: See course link above
This course examines the Mongol Empire founded by Chinggis Khan. We will study the empire from the time its founding in 1206 until its decline in the mid-14th century. The greater extent of the course covers the matter of the Mongol conquest: military technologies, methods and strategies, logistics, and the events of specific battles and actions. These events are framed in the context of the Mongolian culture: its scientific, political, and economic systems and over-arching worldview. The course also covers what comes from the conquest in terms not only of destruction but what the Mongols make of the world they've won. Readings for the course are of primary sources in translation.
English
Undergraduate Course
English 110 | Medieval Literature
Location: Wheeler 200
Time: Mo, We - 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Instructor: Jennifer Miller
Development of literary form and idiom throughout the Christian West from the first to the fifteenth century.
Graduate Seminar
English 205B | Beowulf
Location: Dwinelle 6220
Time: Mo - 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Instructor: Shu-han Luo
Surviving in a single manuscript copy written around the year 1000, Beowulf is the longest extant poem in Old English, and a work of many dimensions and extraordinary subtlety. In this class, we will read the whole poem in the original language, attending closely to its verbal texture, intricate syntax, and challenges of linguistic and literary interpretation. Our work will be supplemented by readings in medieval analogues and critical scholarship, to help orient us in the poem’s cultural world and understand cruxes in its modern reception. Students will translate 250-300 lines of Old English each week, and work towards a final research paper.
French
Undergraduate Course
French 121B | Aquatic Imaginations: Medieval to Modern
Location: Dwinelle 4125A
Time: Tu, Th - 9:30 am - 11:00 am
Instructor: Henry Ravenhall
In this ecocritical class, we’ll look at the representation of rivers, lakes, and seas in French and Francophone literature, art, and film from the Middle Ages to the present. We’ll begin with sacred and enchanted aquatic spaces in medieval texts, before examining early modern maps and seafaring accounts, romantic poetry’s contemplation of lakes and seas, and the symbolic and formal affordances of water in impressionist painting. In the second half of the course, we’ll examine scientific and aesthetic visions of the ocean, colonial and postcolonial crossings, and contemporary reflections on memory, maternity, and indigeneity. Throughout we’ll explore how water is entangled with, and is creatively used to rearticulate, issues of ecology, gender, race, and history. Works will likely include poetry by Lamartine and Hugo, Painlevé’s marine documentaries, Duras’s “L’Amant,” Diop’s “Atlantique,” Hadžihalilović’s “Évolution,” and Chantal Spitz’s “Et la mer pour demeure.” With Nina Léger’s “Mémoires sauvées de l’eau,” our course naturally concludes with the waters of California.
Italian
Undergraduate Course
Italian 130B |Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso (in English) | Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso- The Journey Beyond
Location: Social Sciences Building 170
Time: Mo, Wed, Fri 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Instructor: Akash Kumar
This course continues the journey begun in Dante’s Inferno, climbing the island mountain of Purgatorio and ascending to the stars and beyond spacetime itself in Paradiso. We will explore how Dante treads new ground in crafting his afterlife vision, creating new realms that dramatically complicate what we thought we knew after our descent into hell. Themes explored will include love and gender, politics, cultural clashes and Mediterranean mingling.
Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures
Undergraduate Course
MELC 126 | Silk Road Art and Archaeology
Location: Social Sciences Building 271
Time: Tu, Th 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Instructor: Sanjyot Mehendale
The course will outline art and archaeology of the Silk Roads from the 5th century BCE to the 10th century CE. A number of specific sites located along the Silk Roads will be selected and explored in depth, as examples which reveal the manifold cultural currents along the trade routes. Special attention will be paid to the eclecticism in Silk Road cultures brought about by the movement of peoples and merchandise which facilitated the spread and fusion along these trading routes of various ideas, cultural forms, art styles, and religious concepts. The social and political underpinnings of this eclecticism will be examined.
Graduate Seminar
MELC 298 | Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī: Knowledge and Soul in Medieval Islamic Theology
Location: Social Sciences Building 252
Time: Mo 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Instructor: Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed
In this course, we will delve into the life and works of one of the most influential theologians of medieval Islam: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210). We will focus on his theological and philosophical works, reading excerpts relating, in particular, to questions of knowledge formation, the soul, spiritual practice, and the occult. Advanced Arabic is required for the course, as nearly all of the works upon which we will focus are untranslated.
Music
Undergraduate Course
Music 128 | Topics in the History of Music: Global Early Music
Location: Morrison 128
Time: Mo, Wed 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Instructor: Emily Zazulia
For majors and non-majors. A study of issues in the history of music and sound. Topic will vary from class to class. For more details, see link to Berkeley Class schedule or contact instructor.
Graduate Seminar
Music 220 | Topics in Music History and Criticism
Location: Hargrove 210
Time: Tu., 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Instructor: Emily Zazulia
A specialized course in musical criticism. The topic will change each time the course is offered. For more details, see link to Berkeley Class schedule or contact instructor.
Scandinavian
Undergraduate Courses
Scandinavian 160 | Scandinavian Myth and Religion
Location: Social Sciences Building 166
Time: Tu, Th - 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Instructor: Jonas Wellendorf
We will begin by familiarizing ourselves with the grand narrative arc of the Prose Edda, which outlines the history of the mythological story world from beginning to Ragnarok and beyond. We will then open the hood of the Prose Edda and see how its author constructed this text by combining traditional materials and adding his own interpretations.
The approach will primarily be source-critical, with some use of comparative materials from related traditions. By the end of the course, students should know the textual sources well, have an understanding of the major problems involved in the study of this material, and be aware of the more important scholarly trends in the field.
All readings are in English.
Scandinavian 101B | Introduction to Old Norse II
Location: Dwinelle 6415
Time: Tu, Th - 9:30 am - 11:00 am
Instructor: Jonas Wellendorf
We will read a broad range of texts, intended to give a taste of the genres and styles of Old Norse prose and poetry, supplemented by secondary literature illuminating the historical context in which the primary texts were written, transmitted and read. Students will also learn how to work critically with modern editions and reference tools.
By the end of the course, students will have a solid basis for literary and philological work in the Old Norse field. They should be able to read Old Norse prose fluently and decode Old Norse poetry. They should also be capable of analyzing and situating Old Norse literary works in their literary, cultural and historical contexts.
Graduate Seminar
Scandinavian 220| Early Scandinavian Literature: Law and Literature
Location: Dwinelle 6415
Time: Wed - 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Instructor: Jonas Wellendorf
In this seminar, we will study the intersections and interactions of law and literature in medieval Scandinavian texts with an emphasis on materials composed in Old Norse. While most saga authors remain anonymous, prominent figures such as Snorri Sturluson and Sturla Þórðarson both served as lawspeakers, suggesting that the saga tradition to a large extent was shaped by a deep familiarity with legal materials. We will therefore read Icelandic sagas that stage disputes, trials and reconciliations alongside the major legal compilation Grágás.
To illuminate the workings of early medieval Scandinavian society, particularly in a western Norwegian context, we will also study the Gulaþingslǫg, and consider the juridical reforms of Magnús lagabœtir.
Texts will be approached in their original linguistic forms, with attention to the distinctive language of law as compared to saga prose and to the complex transmission history of the earliest Old Norse laws. Participants will gain experience in philological analysis, legal-literary interpretation and familiarize themselves with the history of the study of Old Norse law and literature, from Konrad Maurer through William Ian Miller to the most recent efforts.
Slavic
Graduate Seminar
Slavic 210| Old Church Slavic
Location: Dwinelle 6115
Time: Th - 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Instructor: Darya A Kavitskaya
This course is an introduction to Old Church Slavic (OCS), the oldest documented Slavic language. The goal of the class is to learn to read OCS texts with the aid of dictionaries and grammars. The students will be introduced to the OCS grammar, concentrating on inflectional morphology. We will also discuss what the “canon” of the OCS texts is and its relationship to Church Slavonic texts produced throughout the Orthodox Slavic world into the eighteenth century.
Text: Whitfield, Francis J. 2004. Old Church Slavic Reader. Berkeley.
The text and supplementary materials will be provided by the instructor.
Course requirements: Reading, attendance, active class participation, occasional quizzes, an in-class midterm exam, and a final. During each class session we will read and parse (identify the forms and the syntax of) selected words and phrases from the readings assigned for that day. At the midterm and the final, you will be presented with texts from the Whitfield reader we have covered and asked to parse a certain number of forms.