Courses

CSI 158: Women’s Writing, Art, and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (ca. 1100-1800)

This course is an introductory history course based entirely on primary literature, art, and music written and produced by women. We will read letters, scientific treatises, autobiographies, and political writings by prominent mystics (Saints Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Avila), proto-feminist writers (Christine de Pizan and Moderata Fonte), female physicians and midwives (Trotula and Jane Sharp), Jewish businesswomen (Glickl van Hameln), fake saints (Cecilia Ferazzi), courtesans (Veronica Franco), cross-dressing soldiers (Catalina/o de Erauso), and French revolutionaries (Olympe de Gouges). In addition, we will listen to music by Francesca Caccini and Italian nuns and view the art of Artemisia Gentileschi, Lavinia Fontana, and Sofonisba Anguissola. Mix of creative writing assignments and analytical papers.

 

CSI 241: Renaissance Bodies: Sex, Art, Medicine

The eroticization and medicalization of the female body were invented during the Italian Renaissance. A point of convergence between the two developments was Renaissance art with its focus on sensualized beauty and the anatomically correct representation of female nudes. In this history course, we will read recent historical scholarship and primary literature on topics such as the discovery of the clitoris, anatomical representations of gender difference, the professionalization of midwifery, the debates surrounding breastfeeding, the role of the female imagination during pregnancy, male homoeroticism in Renaissance portraits, and the invention of the erotic nude in Venetian art. Mix of shorter papers on the reading assignment plus an independent research paper. Fieldtrip to the Met depending on availability of funds.

 

CSI 230: Women and Gender in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 1300-1800)

This course invites you to assume a comparative perspective when analyzing issues relating to women’s properties, marriage, divorce, child rearing, and sexuality in both “eastern” and “western” parts of the Mediterranean. Our case studies are located in Renaissance Italy, early modern France, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and Mamluk Egypt, with brief forays into England, Spain, Iran, as well as Jewish communities in France and Italy. Rather than determining whether women had more or less agency, freedom, property rights etc. in either “western” Europe or the Islamic “east,” we will stress the need to integrate the respective bodies of historical scholarship, separate the issue of religious denomination from family history, and foreground the question of commensurability. The course is subdivided into 5 sections. At first, we will read historical analyses of remarkable court cases involving women, sexuality, and marriage in both early modern France and Anatolia. Our second section is devoted to the interrelated question of marital gift exchange and divorce/separation in Renaissance Italy and Mamluk Cairo. Next comes a section on women in the imperial harem of the Ottoman Empire, Byzantine empresses, and queens of early modern Europe. We will discuss ruling women’s agency, authority, and informal influence in their respective cultural settings, as well as male resistance against women’s access to formal positions of power. Our fourth section is devoted to recent historical literature on male and female same-sex desire in Renaissance Italy, Tudor-era England, the Ottoman Empire, and a variety of other Islamic settings. We will discuss the differences between modern homosexuality and earlier configurations of same sex desire such as sodomy as well as the remarkable resemblance of male same sex practices in both the Islamic “east” and the Catholic “west.” The paucity of documents regarding female love compared to the ubiquitous documentation of “sodomy” might be another point for debate. The last section deals with questions of parenting under particular consideration of the precarious position of widowed mothers in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian communities. We will conclude the course with a discussion of the respective merits and possible shortcomings of this all-Mediterranean approach to questions relating to women and gender, followed by student presentations of their final projects.

 

SS 112T: Queering the Renaissance

Since the nineteenth century, the Italian Renaissance is believed to be the birthplace of the modern “individual.” Decades ago, feminist and social historians have pointed to the gendered nature of such individualism, and to family and kinship bonds within which the male self was allowed to thrive. More recent historical scholarship has added to this critique, showing the ubiquity of same-sex eroticism for men and the near total invisibility of lesbian desire. While the male dominated public and private spheres created homo-social environments within which “sodomy” flourished, relationships between women were relegated to convents. Preventive clitoridectomy was recommended for all women after the clitoris was “discovered” by travelers to Africa. Cross-dressing was a frequent occurrence, and traces of trans-gendering can be found in early modern Spain. This course will explore issues of self-identity in a period that, to contemporary observers, can seem hauntingly familiar and irrevocably foreign at the same time.

 

CSI Tutorial 157: Nuns, Saints, and Mystics: Women and Catholicism from Late Antiquity to Early Modern Europe

Early Christianity had a tremendous appeal to women and slaves, because its forms of devotion were part of a broader cultural revolution aimed at subverting existing patriarchal family structures, slavery, and the political structures of the Roman Empire within which they were embedded. The high numbers of female converts, martyrs, and donors testify to the extent to which the church in its formative phase relied on women and their spiritual and material contributions. In medieval Catholicism, women mystics formulated a theology according to which Christ in his human nature could be thought of as entirely female. In the early modern period, female religious rallied to withstand the onslaught of the Counter-Reformation, which was aimed at purging the religious public sphere from its many female protagonists. Female imagery, and the orchestration of cults devoted to the Virgin Mary played a key role in converting Native Americans. In Africa, female warrior queens presented themselves as Catholic saints.

In this course, we’ll read Sarah Dunant’s recent novel Sacred Hearts as a point of departure. It introduces themes such as mysticism and self-starvation, convent escapes and forced encloisterment, as well as the harsh convent reform measures of the Council of Trent (1545-63) — but also, on the positive side, the nuns’ theatrical and musical performances. We investigate those themes in greater depth with the help of historical methodologies and the critical analysis of primary sources. In addition, we discuss topics such as “contagious” demonic possessions among nuns; forms of sensual, embodied spirituality and their visual and literary expressions; and the racial politics surrounding the foundation of the first convent in colonial Cuzco in 1551. Finally, we examine the long and complicated history of the emergence of the cults of major saints. The writing assignments will be a mix of historical analysis and creative writing.

 

CSI 231: Portugal and the Indian Ocean Region (ca. 1500-1650)

his course explores the history of the Indian Ocean Region in the age of Portuguese colonization. We’ll read primary sources as well as historical literature on the impact that Portugal’s military presence in Goa had on trade relations and cultural exchanges between India, Africa, and the Middle East. A particular focus is on women and gender, and the impact Portuguese missions had on family structure and women’s property rights. Other topics include the Jesuits’ engagement with South Asian cultures and religions, the Mughal (Islamic) presence in South Asia, and the economic and cultural repercussions of colonization on Portuguese society.