While sexuality is an inescapable human experience and touches the core of everybody’s personality, it always is religiously and socially normalized, regulated, and sanctioned. This certainly was the case in the rigorously-Christian world of medieval and early-modern Europe, when sexuality had a close connotation to the concepts of sin and pollution. This turns sexuality into an exciting, rich, as well as complex subject of historical research. Of course, as historians, we are largely dependent on written sources, in which specialists on the history of medieval sexuality distinguish different ‘discourses’: the medical, the theological, the canonical discourse as well as various literary discourses (classical, courtly, pornographical). Each of them has received much attention in recent scholarship, whether or not in connection with new theoretical approaches like gender studies. The participants of this course can pick the fruits of this rich harvest as a starting-point for developing their own research project, which must be based on the use of primary sources.
Timetable
Semester I, see timetables.
Method of Instruction
Research Seminar; attendance is compulsory ( see the rules and regulations of the Department of History, art. 2).
Course objectives
*to get thoroughly acquainted with the main discourses on sexuality in medieval and Renaissance Europe; *to discuss theoretical approaches to the theme; *to learn how to find, read and analyze some important corpuses of primary sources; *to report on research findings orally (by reading a paper) and in writing, in accordance with the basic standards of scholarship.
Required reading
Obligatory books (entrance exam on this book, week 1):
*Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in medieval Europe: doing unto others (Londen/New York 2005);
Recommended books
*James A. Brundage, Law, sex, and Christian society in medieval Europe (Chicago 1987); *John W. Baldwin, The language of sex: five voices from Northern France around 1200 (Chicago 1994); *Katherine Crawford, European sexualities, 1400-1800 (Cambridge etc. 2007).
Important articles and book parts, to be discussed collectively, will be photocopied and be made available in the History Department Library (VGB).
Examination
*literature report (20%); *paper (read)(40%); *paper (written)(40%)
Overview
Entrance exam on book Mazo Karras (1 week); General introduction (1 week); discussion of introductory literature (2-3 weeks); presentation of primary sources (1-2 weeks); selection of subjects + literature research + literature report; analysis of primary sources; reading papers; writing final paper. The exact number of classes in the second part of the course depends on the number of students.
Application Courses, Seminars and Exams
MA course enrolment forms can be downloaded here.