Medieval Sex (330-0-20)
Instructors
Dyan H Elliott
847/491-7652
Harris Hall Room 337
Meeting Info
University Hall 101: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM
Overview of class
Christian theorists were convinced that human sexuality underwent an irreversible debasement as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Their negative assessment has remained with us until the present day. This course will grapple with the both the origins of this negative bequest as well as some of the anomalies of the medieval tradition. For example, despite the insistence that heterosexuality was ordained by God, the disparagement of physicality and women led to the institutionalization of clerical celibacy in the West. This, in turn, fostered a gay subculture. Likewise, despite the theoretical insistence on a separation between the sexes that was even present in the afterlife, these same theorists not only praised "virile women," but occasionally celebrated cross-dressing in female saints! This course will examine the institutions and ideas that dominated the construction of gender in the Middle Ages. It will also lend insight into not one, but many "sexualities."
Learning Objectives
Learning Objectives (HD-FS): The readings in this course introduce students to an array of primary sources: theology, canon and civil law, legal proceedings, autobiography, fiction, medical treatises, and inquisitorial manuals -- to name but a few. The diversity of these texts will provide a textured and multi-vocalic perception of the Middle Ages that resists being flattened out into a simplistic narrative. Secondary sources will be used to contextualization medieval documents and provide models for constructing historical arguments through the application of appropriate methodologies and a judicious assessment of evidence. Discussion sections will focus on primary sources. Students will engage in the joint analysis of historical documents, learning to recognize and respect the alterity of the historical past, while at the same time respecting one another. Course assignments are designed to develop students' historical skill set. The two essay assignments (ca. 5-8 pp. each) raise provocative questions to be addressed through primary sources (appropriately contextualized by secondary readings). These assignments will help foster analytical abilities, writing skills, and stimulate the historical imagination. The midterm and final exams contain broad essay questions, cultivating a capacity for historical synthesis. This course also emphasizes scholarly mechanisms for documentation, such as footnotes and bibliography. Learning Objectives (FD-SBS) Since this course spans late antiquity to the later Middle Ages (ca. 300 CE to 1400), students will learn to appreciate how change over time is variable and affected by contingencies like literacy, class, gender, as well as unconstructed realities like climate and natural disasters. Medieval Sexuality is a field of multiple contestation on both micro and macro levels, and will be assessed as such. This course will highlight the overt and covert conflicts between men and women, adults and youths, clergy and laity, parents and children, as well as celibacy and marriage. Both qualitative and quantitative sources will be enlisted to explore these tensions. The medieval church's attempt to exercise a hegemonic control over sexuality never fully succeeded. The distance between church mandated behavior and actual sexual practice will alert students to the wide gap between ideology and historical reality, and how efforts to narrow this gap resulted in the persecution of sexual minorities. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon the way in which the values of the medieval church continue to affect perceptions of gender, attitudes to sex, and institutions like marriage and the family in our own time.
Evaluation Method
midterm (15%); 1st essay (15%); 2d essay (25%); final exam (30%); attendance and participation (15%)
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Associated Classes
DIS - Fisk Hall 217: Fri 10:00AM - 10:50AM
DIS - Kresge Centennial Hall 2-415: Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM
DIS - Kresge Cent. Hall 2-380 Kaplan: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM