In the upcoming 2026-2027 Winter session, we are excited to launch a new course introducing students to various interdisciplinary approaches & debates in Global Medieval and Early Modern Studies, MDVL_V 200. We will also explore the interconnectedness of the various Romance regions & language in the feudal period.
Our courses are open to all UBC students!
Introduction to Global Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MDVL_V 200)
Term 1 | Mondays/Wednesdays, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Detail from the Catalan Atlas Sheet 6 showing Mansa Musa. Gallica Digital Library
Twenty-first century studies of the Medieval and Early Modern past (ca. 500- 1800 CE) have transformed to embrace global interactions, communications, and exchanges including Europe but also the wider world. This course will introduce you to the global Middle Ages and the Early Modern era as transformational historical periods as well as to the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary practice of studying these periods: our goal is not to absorb random historical “facts” but to learn how to critically engage this past through the interdisciplinary contributions of disciplines, such as Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Asian Studies, Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, Economics, English Language and Literatures, French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, History, Information Studies, Music, Philosophy, and Writing and Media. A fundamental goal of this course is to recognize that the Medieval and Early Modern global past was not a Eurocentric phenomenon. We will therefore pursue a greater plurality of perspectives than what scholars of Medieval and Early Modern Studies have traditionally examined.
This course will introduce you to important concepts, interdisciplinary approaches, and debates in Global Medieval and Early Modern Studies. You will learn to think critically about the past and the fundamental issues that are at stake in the present day as we engage multidisciplinary perspectives of the past as scholars and engaged members of the general public. This course will support current and future coursework in specific geographies, disciplines, and interdisciplinary studies as well as encourage global thinking in the Humanities and Social Sciences. There are no prerequisites for this course, nor any expectations of prior knowledge related to the course content.
Cross-listed with HIST_V 202A
European Literature from the 5th to the 14th Century (MDVL 301): The Art of Love in Occitan and Old French Literature
Term 2 | Tuesdays/Thursdays, 9:30am – 11:00am
Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, f° 249v
What is love? Is it an ultimate force, stronger than human rules and laws, deeper than religious faith? Or a dangerous illusion that leads us down a path of misery, strife, and despair?
In the 12th century, Western Europe became passionate about love. Fin’amor, or courtly love, was born in the Occitan regions with the songs of the troubadours. It migrated to the North of France and langue d’oïl, where it gave birth to specific genres of narrative literature (lays and romances), before spreading throughout Western Europe under various guises.
Courtoisie (courtliness) is both an aesthetic system and an ideology. It puts love and sensual desire at the top of its hierarchy of values, redefining and challenging social and moral conventions – especially the sanctity of marriage. The aim of this course is to study this important cultural phenomenon across different spheres of the medieval Romance world, beginning with troubadour poetry in langue d’oc. We will then shift to courtly fictions in langue d’oïl, specifically the legend of Tristan and Isolde, which depicts major courtly topics such as adultery, amour de loin (love from afar) and erotic longing, as well as the courtly lays of Marie de France. The study of the allegorical Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and the latin De amore (“About Love”) by Andreas Capellanus will help us understand how clerical authors reinterpreted courtly love at the dawn of the 13th century.
This course introduces students to a foundational aspect of medieval literature and culture at the European level. We will focus on the interconnectedness of the various Romance regions during the feudal period, as well as study the way each linguistic area (Occitan, Anglo-Norman, continental Old French) and each sociolinguistic stratum (Latin vs. vernacular languages) reinvents courtly ideology and aesthetics. This will lead to a better understanding of the medieval period as a whole and of the role it still plays in our modern cultural conceptions.
Cross-listed with RMST_V 321
