MRST 110 / 111 The Gateway Course

Recent Course Offerings:

Giants of Italian Renaissance Literature

This course proposes an overview of some of the major literary and philosophical figures of the Italian Renaissance who have profoundly influenced Western thought and culture. The course starts with a thorough reading of Dante's Inferno, continues with selections of sonnets from Petrarca's Canzoniere, then moves on to a wide selection of stories from Boccaccio's Decameron and concludes with the reading of Machiavelli's The Prince and the play The Mandrake Root. The readings and discussion will focus on the evolution of humanist thought, of literary virtuosity and philosophical concepts as embodied throughout the various genres and centuries represented by this particular selection of authors and works. It culminates with a full-fledged theatrical Renaissance type performance of Machiavelli's play The Mandrake Root.

Plague: A Medieval Pandemic

Between 1347 and 1352 a pandemic spread across Europe that ultimately reduced the population of the continent by at least one third. Even worse, the same disease hit repeatedly and decimated each of the next four generations. This Introductory Seminar will utilize an interdisciplinary approach to explore the causes, experiences, and consequences of this disease, colloquially referred to as "The Pestilence" or "The Black Death." These explorations will allow us a window into some of the deepest tensions in the medieval world. Our attempts to understand these tensions will reveal just as much about the people of the Middle Ages as about those who now tell their stories: us.

Digital Florence: Life and Death in Dante's Florence

People ate and slept and worked and played in the city of Florence during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, just as they do today. They studied and prayed and fought with each other, too, and they read books and considered images and sang songs to their heroes and advocates right up to the day they died. In this introduction to the history of European culture on the cusp of the early modern era, we examine the way common people, communal leaders, and spiritual guides conducted themselves on a daily basis. We read contemporary critiques of a socio-economic system that favored some (but not others) and see representations of concepts that held together the fabric of this society. We consider lay spirituality, art for common people, and the realities of life for women and children in their homes and in their neighborhoods. We wince at Dante's bitter condemnation of his fellow Florentines in the Inferno and laugh at Boccaccio's bawdy tales of vice and villainy in the Decameron. Specific events that challenged, confirmed, or changed this society serve as landmarks to help us construct a loose narrative of one of the region's most influential and important centers, and help us understand how it came to be known as "the Cradle of the Renaissance." Students learn to translate historical, scholarly analysis into visually accessible formats, and collaborate on the "Florence As It Was" project, contributing to the digital mapping, data visualization, and virtual-reality reconstruction of medieval Florence.

The Age of Elizabeth: Politics, Personalities, Faith and Culture

We study the 45-year reign of Elizabeth I through a variety of lenses in order to develop a complex understanding of this fascinating and formative period of English history. We look at the politics (the war with Spain, marriage negotiations, internal factions); the personalities (Elizabeth herself, Mary Stuart, key courtiers, suitors, and councilors); the religious controversies (the Elizabethan Settlement, the transition from Catholicism, the rise of Puritanism); and the rich cultural heritage (popular theater, sonnet sequences, portraiture).

Dreaming in the Middle Ages

Do humans dream differently in different historical periods and cultures? Do dreams reveal individual and social truth, or are they mere byproducts of the body? Before Freud and Rapid Eye Movement sleep, the literary genre of dream vision enjoyed an extraordinary popularity in the West. This course explores a broad range of medieval dream theories and literature of dreaming by authors such as Boethius, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and Shakespeare, and asks how dream vision functions as a vehicle for understanding the human, the divine, the demonic, and the cosmic. We will consider how medieval dream literature engages with romance, epic, devotion and theology, philosophy, allegory, travel narrative, and early science fiction. At the same time, we will examine how modern cognitive science and psychoanalysis differ from medieval parallels, and how they might be useful in reading medieval texts; conversely, we will reinterpret contemporary literature and cinema through premodern concepts.