PT|EN
Questioning the Medieval Studies: Problems and Theories
Courses PhD in Medieval Studies
Cod: 33020
Department: DCSG
ECTS: 18
Scientific area: Medieval Studies
Total working hours: 468
Total contact time: 50

This seminar aims at familiarizing students with the main issues and debates that affect Medieval Studies today. Therefore, the major classical themes are approached – such as medieval periodization, temporalities, and spaces – as well as the interdisciplinary dialogue between the Social Sciences. The reflection will also focus on the new perspectives of analysis arising from the “Linguistic Turn” and the “Visual Turn”, such as the senses and emotions, globalization, the return of the semiotics of the document, post-colonial studies applied to the Middle Ages and, in methodological terms, the dialogue with other disciplines, namely with pure sciences. 

Interdisciplinary work
Questioning Medieval Studies

1.to familiarize the students with the problems and questions which define the very nature of the medieval studies in current day research.
2.to enhance their ability to assess critically the information from classical and most recent paradigms and questions that characterize the medieval studies, and to develop a critical approach to them;
3.to promote the capacity of using the knowledge about the past and recent problematics in the students' own work in progress
4.to develop the understanding of the students of their own standing in the big picture of present-day Medieval Studies and the questions that their work poses to present-day society.

 5.to capacitate the students with the understanding of the need to apply and practice principles of interdisciplinary research in Medieval Studies and to combine those with other fields of research.

PART 1-Traditional Questions
1.The time of the Middle Ages: periodization, new and old. Longue durée and short life
2.Territoriality and Space:traditional paradigms vs. post-modernity
3.Middle Ages, Sociology and Political Science: old fashion in permanent renewal
4.Medievalisms today: introspection and projection
PART 2- New Visions
1.From "Linguistic Turn" to "Visual Turn": spinning perspectives in revolution
2.Emotion and Senses in the Medieval Studies: interdisciplinarity at play
3.From Global to Local: Glocalism and its virtues
4.Debates on Interdisciplinarity: From dialoguing with Social Sciences to debating with Science
5.Cultural Sudies, Visual Studies, Literary Studies, Power Studies: "new fields", new approaches.
6. Return to the past: new visions of the semiotics of the document
7.From post medievalism to post-colonialism in medievalism… where do we go from here?
8.Conceptual History and the Middle Ages: which way to go?

APPLEBY,J. et al. (eds) Knowledge and postmodernism in historical perspective.NY: Routledge, 1996
ALTSCHUL, N. R., "The future of Post colonial approaches to medieval Iberian Studies", Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 1(2009) 5-17
BAILEY, F. G., Stratagems and Spoils : a social anthropology of politics.Boulder; OUP, 2001
CARRUTHERS, The Craft of Thought. Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Image. Cambridge: CUP.1998
GULDI, What is the Spatial Turn?  [http://spatial.scholarslab.org/spatial-turn/what-is-the-spatial-turn/]
NICHOLS, S. et alii (eds), Rethinking the Medieval Senses. Baltimore; John's Hopkins UP. 2008
Perspectives Médiévales. Trente ans de recherches en langues et litératures médiévales (R. VALETTE-ed). Paris; SLLMOO.2005
Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012» [http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/index.html]
ROSENWEIN, B.H., Emotional Communities in the early middle ages. Ithaca&London: Cornell . 2006

The evaluation of the doctoral students will be made by continuous assessment, the final mark resulting from the combination of all  elements of assessment. Presentation and public defense of the Final Thesis Project. To be argued in a public oral final examination, by a pannel including external examinors, or by videoconference,. The student will not be able to register the thesis without approval in this element.