UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies

The CMRS Seminar is designed to give UCLA students an opportunity to meet and interact with prominent authorities in the field. The series was established in the Spring Quarter 1994 by the CMRS Director Patrick Geary, who coordinated the first seminar. That class, “Europe at the End of the First Millennium” (History 197G), drew great acclaim and prompted the decision to make a CMRS-sponsored seminar a regular event.

Each year, the Center selects one or more courses from proposals submitted by faculty members to be designated as CMRS Seminars. These classes receive special funding from the Center making it possible for distinguished scholars to be brought to UCLA to participate in seminars and symposia, to present lectures, and to have informal discussions with students and faculty.

CMRS Seminars for 2008-09

In Spring 2009, Professor Kendra Willson (Scandinavian Section) will offer a CMRS Seminar on Eddic poetry (Old Norse C135/235, Readings in Old Norse-Icelandic Verse). The Eddic poems, preserved in a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript, are a central source for the reconstruction of Germanic mythology, as well as an important document for reconstructing the linguistic history of North Germanic; the later reception of these texts has also played a fundamental role in shaping literary and cultural history in the Nordic countries and beyond. The seminar will combine translation sessions, where students will work to understand Eddic poems at a basic level, with lectures presented by a series of inivited speakers who will provide exposure to different approaches to Eddic poetry and present opportunities to discuss the texts from different perspectives (literary, linguistic, philological and mythological) and in a variety of comparative contexts. The course coincides with the CMRS Ahmanson Conference on mythology, co-organized by Professor Willson and Professor Joseph Nagy (English), which will include the contributions by Old Norse scholars such as Professor Margaret Clunies Ross (Director, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney). Thus, the spring of 2009 promises to be a very stimulating time for Eddic studies at UCLA. Students can enroll in the class using URSA in the usual fashion. The course presumes a knowledge of Old Norse; prerequisite Old Nore 152 or permission of the instructor. For more information, contact Professor Willson at willson@humnet.ucla.edu.

Past CMRS Seminars:

Winter 2007: “Arcadian Imaginaries” (English 246), coordinated by Professor Lowell Gallagher, will introduce students to a representative sample of early modern prose romances: the 1593 composite version of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Mary Wroth’s Urania (1621), and John Barclay’s enormously popular (but today little-known) Argenis (1622). The seminar’s aim will be to apprehend the aesthetic imagination, hermeneutic principles, and literary models informing these Elizabethan and Jacobean texts; to understand their placement in specific social, political, and religious networks; and to assess their ideological significance. Professor Jonathan Crewe (Dartmouth University) will be at UCLA for a week as one of CMRS’s Distinguished Visiting Scholars.

Winter 2006: Professor Patrick Geary (History) offered a course about ”Medieval Conflict Resolution.” It explored the means by which conflicts were pursued, resolved, and transformed in Europe during the Middle Ages, a time when conflict resolution relied less on formal governmental institutions than on practices based on religious and social custom and tradition. Students read original sources (in translation), as well as secondary literature on medieval conflict and dispute.

Winter 2006: Professors Joanna Woods-Marsden, Sharon Gerstel, and Charlene Villaseñor Black (all of the Art History Department) taught a course about the artist El Greco (1541-1614), examining the three phases of his career—El Greco's relationship to the Byzantine heritage of his native Crete; the artist in relation to the art and ideology of Counter-Reformation Italy; and his career in Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century. Important El Greco scholars, including Ferdinand Marías of the Complutense University in Madrid, Robin Cormack of the Courtauld Institute in London, and Nikos Hadjinikolaou of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies in Rethymnon, participated as guest lecturers.

Fall 2005 and Winter 2006: Professors Claire MacEachern and Debora Shuger (both of the English Department) taught a two-term graduate-level course sequence on political models from the ancients through the seventeenth century. In fall 2005, Professor Shuger's class explored ”The Forms of Power: Political Thought from Antiquity through the Middle Ages.” Then, in winter 2006, Professor MacEachern's class considered ”The Invention of the Legal Self in Renaissance England.”

Winter 2005: “Early English Stages: 1400-1576” (English 244), coordinated by Professor Gordon Kipling (English). Seminar participants examined a variety of plays, such as biblical dramas, courtly mummings, royal entries, and progress pageants. Guest speakers included Professors David Bevington (University of Chicago), Alexandra Johnston (University of Toronto), Barbara Palmer (Mary Washington University), and Meg Twycross (University of Lancaster).

Fall 2003: “Rebuilding Rome: Using Virtual Reality (VR) Modeling to Experience the Ancient City” (Architecture and Urban Design 19), taught by Professor Diane Favro (Architecture and Urban Design).

Winter 2003: “Medieval Writings by and for Women”(English 244), coordinated by Professor Christopher Baswell (English).

Winter 2002: “Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and the Early History of Peru” (Spanish 277B), coordinated by Prof. Efrain Kristal (Spanish and Portuguese).

Winter 2001: “Models of Epic and Ballad Performance in Oral Tradition: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern” (English M243A, The Ballad), coordinated by Prof. Joseph Falaky Nagy (English).

Fall 1999: “Rural Life in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe-Peasants, Lords, and Power” (History 201), coordinated by Prof. Teofilo Ruiz (History).

Spring 1999: “Cultures of Catholicism, 1590-1640” (English 246), coordinated by Prof. Lowell Gallagher (English).

Winter 1998: “Renaissance and Baroque Dance: Dance and Text” (WAC 130), coordinated by Prof. Emma Lewis Thomas (World Arts and Cultures).

Spring 1997: “Medieval Celtic Literature” (English M111E), coordinated by Prof. Joseph Nagy (English).

Fall 1995: “Dante and the Media” (Italian 110), coordinated by Prof. Massimo Ciavolella (Italian).