Courses Offered This Semester
FALL 2025
Classics
Heroes, Gods, Monsters i.e. ancient mythologies
T/Th 9:30-10:45 or 11-12:15 Prof. John Van Sickle
M/W 2:15-3:30 online synchronous, Prof. Philip Thibodeau
Tyranny, Democracy, Empire i.e. ancient cultures
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:50–2:05 p.m., Professor Brian Sowers
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m., Professor John Griffin
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m., online synchronous, Professor Phil Thibodeau
Questions of Text and Truth i.e. Judaism, Christianity, Islam
Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30–10:45 a.m. or 11–12:15 p.m., Professor Matthew Westermayer
Gaming the Past tabletop/video games
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m., Professor Kevin Nobel
Sexuality and Gender in Ancient Greece and Rome
Wednesdays, 3:40–4:55 p.m., Professor Liv Yarrow
and Greek and Latin classes!
English
English 3112 Chaucer
Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30 a.m.–10:45 a.m.
Professor Karl Steel
We will read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a sprawling, unfinished masterpiece of fourteenth-century literature, a compendium of many medieval genres: history, saints’ lives, dirty stories, and philosophy, stories of men behaving badly, and some women getting their own back, strange voyages, and what to do if you meet the devil in the road. It’s a bit of everything, done in some of the most ironic, wild poetry you’ve ever met. At first, you’ll be flummoxed by learning to read Middle English, but trust me, you’ll be very good at it by the semester’s end.
History
The Shaping of the Islamic World, a history of Islam from the 6th century to today
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40–4:55 p.m.
Professor Ali Noori
Judaic Studies
JUST 1145 Classical Jewish Texts (11893)
Mondays and Wednesdays, 6:30–7:45 p.m.
Professor Sharon Flatto
Online (Pathways: World Cultures & Global Issues)
Have you ever wished you had more familiarity with the classical Jewish canon? A deeper knowledge of its key works, their historical context, and their role in traditional Judaism? This course will address these issues by exploring the masterpieces of Jewish literature that have profoundly influenced world religions, culture, and philosophy. It will begin by analyzing a range of genres of early Jewish sources, from the Bible to Maimonides. Subsequently, students will disentangle the layers and intertextuality of modern Jewish texts and films, which often riff on earlier classics, including thought-provoking works from Shalom Aleichem to the Coen brothers.
JUST 3405 / HIST 3552 Jews in the Muslim World: Sephardic Heritage (33932)
Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:40–4:55 p.m.
Associate Professor David Brodsky
In person (Capstone)
The Jewish experience in Muslim countries. Analysis of the Jewish communities in all aspects of life, culture, and mass emigration to Israel and the United States. This course is the same as History 3552.
JUST 4034 / HIST 3103 Kabbalah and Messianism (33931)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40–4:55 p.m.
Professor Sharon Flatto
In person (Capstone)
Kabbalah (a form of Jewish mysticism) is at the root of various messianic ideologies and movements that became highly influential during the Medieval and early modern eras. Examines the central doctrines of Kabbalah, the geographic and social contexts in which kabbalistic and messianic trends evolved, and the factors that led to their popularization. This course is the same as History 3103.
Philosophy
PHIL 3113 Medieval Philosophy
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
This course will provide you with a taste of some of the signature theories and themes of philosophy as it was practiced from roughly 900 to 1400 CE. We will sample from a variety of traditions and ways of doing philosophy in Western Europe, the wider Mediterranean, and greater Persia. Yes, there will be some establishment university professors (a.k.a. Scholastics) such as Thomas Aquinas. But we will also examine the work of figures like the Jewish Platonist Ibn Gabirol (who maintained that even angels have matter), al-Ghazali (who authored a book entitled The Incoherence of the Philosophers), and Catherine of Siena (both a profound mystic and an astute diplomat). A syllabus will be available by the middle of August. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please reach out to Prof. Andrew Arlig.
Spring 2025
UNDERGRADUATE
HIST 3030 Love, Death, and Magic
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m.
Professor David Troyansky (History)
HIST 3374 Indigenous History of the Americas
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Associate Professor Christopher Ebert (History)
HIST 3480 History of New York City
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Professor Benjamin Carp (History)
HIST 4003 Age and History
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:15–5:55 p.m.
Professor David Troyansky (History)
HIST 4006 Intellectual Formations of China
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:25–2:05 p.m.
Professor Andrew Meyer (History)
JUST 2047 American Jewish History (1935)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30–10:45 a.m.
Online (Pathways: US Experience in Its Diversity)
JUST 3022 Searching for God: Ancient Greeks, Jews, & Christians (1346)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m.
In person (Capstone)
PHIL 3105: Landmarks in the History of Philosophy
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Associate Professor Andrew Arlig (Philosophy)
Perhaps you have heard the old saying that “ignorance is bliss,” or in other words, that the more you reflect philosophically on your condition—and the human condition, in general—the less happy you will be. On the other hand, Socrates reportedly held that the unexamined life is not worth living. The Western tradition inspired by Socrates has generally assumed that philosophy is the key to living a flourishing and even pleasurable life. At the very least, philosophy is often thought to provide a buEer and consolation to people when they hit upon hard times. In this class, we will read several important elaborations and defenses of these claims. Possible texts: Plato The Apology of Socrates, Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, Lucretius On the Nature of Things, Epictetus Enchiridion, Boethius Consolation of Philosophy, Catherine of Siena Dialogues.
PHIL 4110 Seminar in the History of Philosophy: LOVE
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30–10:45 a.m.
Associate Professor Andrew Arlig (Philosophy)
In this seminar we will look at some philosophical approaches to love. The seminar will consider several forms of love, including not only romantic or erotic love, but also familial love, friendship, and charity. Some of the big themes and questions to be considered are these:
- Annihilation or Mutual Abiding? In the Western mystical tradition, there are two models of loving “union” with God: (1) the self is annihilated / absorbed into the Divine Essence; (2) the lover and the beloved are made one, but in such a way that both still abide within the union. We will consider both models and explore ways in which both models might be applied to human lovers and their beloveds.
- Aristotle (in)famously claims that a master and a servant cannot be friends. In general, it might seem that the truest or purest forms of friendship and love require that the parties be equals. But is that right? When we say that God loves us or we love God, or I love my puppy and he me, or I love my daughter and she me, are we using the word “love” improperly or in some extended, perhaps even figurative sense?
- Must love be given freely? For instance, can there really be such things as love spells or love potions? Can I do something to fall in love, or stay in love?
- Is love ever conditional? Is love always conditional?
- For that matter, what is love?
Possible texts: Plato Symposium, Al-Ghazali Revival of the Religious Sciences, book 35, or ‘A’ ishah al-Ba ‘uniyyah Principles of Sufism.
SPCM 3150 Performing the Middle Ages
Fridays, 10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Professor Lauren Mancia (History)
In this class, we will investigate the European Middle Ages (ca. 500–1500 CE) through the lens of performance. By thinking about how medieval people performed—e.g., regularly created theater, ritual, and ceremonies, on and off the “stage”—can we better understand their desires, their aesthetics, and their values? In this class, we will explore various arenas in medieval society: the Church, its liturgy, its ascetics (like monks and nuns), its music, its art, and its ceremonies; secular power structures, and the rituals of kingship, warfare, lordship, homage, and proto-nationalism; and the growing urban centers of the Middle Ages, with their merchants, craft guilds, cosmopolitan ideas, cross-cultural interactions, and proto-capitalism. The course will be highly interdisciplinary, with theoretical grounding in performance studies, trips to museums around New York City, and attention to all kinds of medieval sources, including art, music, maps, theology/philosophy, literature, and more traditional historical records.
GRADUATE/M.A.
ENGL 7503X: Pleasure (and Decay)
Professor Nicola Masciandaro (English)
This seminar is inspired by a passage from Clarice Lispector’s last novel, Breath of Life: “It’s all rotten. I feel it in the air and in the people frightened and starving huddled in a crowd. But I believe that in the depths of rottenness there exists—green sparkling redeeming and promised-land—in the depths of the dark rottenness there shines clear and captivating the Great Emerald. The Great Pleasure. But why this desire and hunger for pleasure? Because pleasure is the height of the truthfulness of a being.” The plan is to study the nature of pleasure and its representations across a series of ancient, medieval, and modern texts, keeping an eye on this insight, namely, that our belief in pleasure is found, not unlike the beauty of a still life whose objects have long decayed, in the midst of our sense of the rottenness of things, their decomposing, fermenting, and sometimes disgusting ephemeral nature. Filling our conceptual picnic basket with some ancient theories of pleasure, we will wander among medieval and Renaissance gardens in order to arrive upon the Romantic and decadent shores of modernity with a fresh sense of pleasure’s truth and taste for its question. Authors to be read include: Angela of Foligno, Aristotle, Augustine, Barthes, Bataille, Baudelaire, Behn, Blake, Cioran, Dante, Dickinson, Foucault, Huysmans, Julian of Norwich, Kafka, Leopardi, Levinas, Lispector, Lucretius, Marvell, Montaigne, More, Nietzsche, Pizarnik, Plato, Sappho, Wordsworth.
HIST 7730X/Themes in European History: Performing the Middle Ages
Fridays, 10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Professor Lauren Mancia (History)
In this class, we will investigate the European Middle Ages (ca. 500–1500 CE) through the lens of performance. By thinking about how medieval people performed—e.g., regularly created theater, ritual, and ceremonies, on and off the “stage”—can we better understand their desires, their aesthetics, and their values? In this class, we will explore various arenas in medieval society: the Church, its liturgy, its ascetics (like monks and nuns), its music, its art, and its ceremonies; secular power structures, and the rituals of kingship, warfare, lordship, homage, and proto-nationalism; and the growing urban centers of the Middle Ages, with their merchants, craft guilds, cosmopolitan ideas, cross-cultural interactions, and proto-capitalism. The course will be highly interdisciplinary, with theoretical grounding in performance studies, trips to museums around New York City, and attention to all kinds of medieval sources, including art, music, maps, theology/philosophy, literature, and more traditional historical records.