MSc in Renaissance to Enlightenment / MSc in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
from the 2012/2013 session the programme will be MSc in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
Option Courses
Each year we will offer students a full range of option
courses across the humanities. Because these options
will be dependent upon the availability of specialist
teachers, and updated according to the latest research,
they will change year by year.
The following list is of courses offered in the academic
year 2011/2012. Availability of courses may be dependent
upon student numbers; other courses may be taken by
students at the discretion of the Programme Director.
Semester 1
Expanding the Book: Image and Literacy in Valois France (Tom Tolley, History of Art) (Monday 11 -1pm, Geddes Room)
This course examines the development of illustrated books in France from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, exploring ways in which illuminated manuscripts and early printed books were designed to function visually and aesthetically, as well as textually. Particular attention is given to programmes of illustration for which textual expositions of the pictures have survived, permitting clear assessments of the aims of the artists, their supervisors and their patrons. Several kinds of book are considered, including Books of Hours, new translations into French of works by classical authors, and late medieval romances and collections of poetry. A special focus is how the demands of audiences for new forms of book illustration expanded considerably during this period, challenging artists to devise evermore imaginative decorative schemes and pictorial possibilities. The interplay of sacred and secular themes is one topic that characterises the whole period.
Medicine, Science and Society in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Monica Azzolini, History, Classics and Archaeology) (Tuesday 2 - 4pm)
Medieval and Renaissance history of medicine and history of science are two well-established fields of studies in the humanities. Their teaching, however, has often remained constrained within History and Philosophy of Science Departments. In recent decades the methodological contributions of social and cultural history have done much to change the field, producing much innovative research that has made the history of science and the history of medicine much more integrated within mainstream social, intellectual and cultural history. The present course aims to strengthen the current offerings in the history of medicine and the history of science in the School. It builds on recent scholarship in order to introduce students to elements of the history of science and medicine that are very relevant to the study of late medieval and Renaissance society at large. Given the substantial body of primary sources and scholarship available, this course will concentrate mostly on Italy, with occasional references to other European countries as a source of comparison.
Religion and the Enlightenment: The Birth of the Modern (Stewart Brown, Divinity) (Thursdays 2-4pm, Baillie Room)
The course will explore the relationship of religion and the Enlightenment within its national contexts in Europe and North America. It will consider the challenges posed to revealed religion by the radical Enlightenment, with its roots in the thought of Spinoza, and its rejection of divine revelation and the existence of angels, demons, spirits and prophecy. It will also examine the far more influential and mainstream movement that can be described as the Christian Enlightenment, including an emphasis on a rational belief, human passions, and the growth of toleration.
New Course: Propaganda in Renaissance Scotland (Julian Goodare, History, Classics and Archaeology) (Thursday 9-11am)
Description to follow.
Mind and Body in Early Modern Philosophy (Pauline Phimister, Philosophy) (Wednesdays 11-1pm)
Through an examination of core texts, this course will explore the principal accounts offered to explain the relationship beteen the mind and the body in the mid- to late-seventeenth century: the Cartesian doctrine of interaction, Spinoza's theory of mind-body identity, Malebranche's theory of occasionalism, and Leibniz's doctrine of pre-established harmony.
Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Edinburgh Archives and Sources (Adam Fox,History, Classics and Archaeology) (Wednesday 11.30 -1pm)
The aim of this survey course is to introduce Masters students to some of the principal categories of source material utilised by historians of culture and society in early modern Britain. Each week of the course will focus upon a different class of document or type of record and will be concerned to explore its characteristics and nature, as well as its potential and limitations for researchers. The course is especially designed to acquaint students with the extensive library and archival resources available in Edinburgh and to provide an introduction to some of their rich manuscript holdings. As a result, each session will be based, as far as possible, upon a particular research collection in a different repository.
Semester 2
Rubens: The first European painter (David Howarth, History of Art) (Tuesday 11-1pm, Geddes Room)
Rubens has rightly been described as "the most learned man" in the world of his day. It is in the context of Rubens as polymath that I wish to consider his unique skills as propagandist: artist, architectural historian and authority on the sculpture of the ancients; classical scholar trained in the best school of letters and rhetoric in early modern Europe; brilliantly gifted linguist; courtier, and diplomat who was known personally be the kings of Spain, France and England. The purpose of this course is to construct a cultural biography of this Promethean figure whose output within the tradition of western art was not even surpassed by Picasso.
Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Texts, Objects and Practices (Jill Burke, History of Art)
This course is designed for postgraduate students interested in research in Medieval and Renaissance Europe in general, and Italy in particular. It will be taught intensively (approximately four hours a day) over one week on site either in Florence or Venice, normally in week 7 of semester 2. There will be one meeting with the Course Director in Edinburgh before the course starts, and one after to discuss the assessed essays. Daily seminars will take place in the Monash University Centre in Prato (near Florence) OR in the Centro Culturale Don Orione in Venice, though the majority of learning will take place on site in archives, museums, and galleries of Venice or Florence. Classes may be shared with staff and students from members of the Prato Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
The emphasis during the course will be to study in detail and at first hand a range of texts and artefacts written during the later medieval and renaissance periods in Italy. Some may be canonical in medieval and renaissance studies generally - for instance Dante's Divine Comedy, Machiavelli's The Prince, or Botticelli's Birth of Venus; others may be less well known - vernacular letters, diaries and sermons for example, or renaissance costume, furniture and scientific instruments in institutions such as the museum of domestic life in the Palazzo Davanzati. As well as the major civic museums, this unit will also include an introduction to archival work in Venetian and Florentine archives, including an opportunity for students to study original archival documents if they wish to. Research students will be expected to attend or, if agreed with their supervisor, take part in the postgraduate consortium that takes place at the end of the week.
History as Romance, Profession, Critique (Adam Budd, History, Classics and Archaeology) (Thursday 4-6pm)
Critical engagement with the history of historical inquiry now extends into and beyond the province of intellectual historians. Indeed, attempts to trace the methodological, epistemological, ideological, institutional, and stylistic trends that have characterised the theory and practice of historical scholarship now constitute a growing preoccupation for social, material, cultural, and political historians. In turn, such preoccupations with the history of our professional endeavours have made their mark on the ways that we teach our students, justify our applications for research funding, frame our written and oral presentations, and to an extent evaluate the rigorousness of historical scholarship. While knowledge-transfer becomes a significant means of evaluating the public benefits of historical studies, so have historians' abilities to make sense of our own professional pasts.
The Material Culture of Gender in Eighteenth-century Britain (Stana Nenadic, History, Classics and Archaeology)
This course provides an advanced analysis of the material and visual cultures of gender in Britain in the eighteenth century; it builds on themes introduced in the course 'Britain and America in the 18th Century: Material and Visual Cultures', including key themes and methodologies associated with the study of gender in a historical context. It is designed as an in-depth preparation for dissertation research. Teaching (11 sessions) is based on set reading and small-group tutorial discussion. Contemporary testimony - based on diaries, journals and letters - is a particular focus for reading and analysis. Themes include theories and methodologies of gender and material culture; gender, space and the city; comfort and the home; country houses and masculinity; style and taste; the gendered consumer; material culture and the cult of politeness; emotions and the social life of things; sexual boundaries and clothing.
|
