Upcoming & Current Course Offerings
Spring 2026 Courses
MRST 5301: Methods in Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Instructor: Jacob M. Baum
Meeting Time: Mondays, 6-8:50pm.
Modality: Online
CRN:
Course Description: This course, offered each spring semester, is a requirement for the MRST graduate certificate. The course provides a multi-disciplinary introduction to the study of medieval and early modern Europe. Guest speakers representing core disciplines associated with the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center at TTU, including History, Art History, English, Literatures & Languages, and Music will give students a chance to learn in more detail how study of the medieval and early modern centuries works in practice. Course assignments will be geared towards introducing students to resources available at TTU for the study of medieval and early modern Europe, and towards getting students to apply the methods they encounter in readings and discussions to their own work.
ARTH 5320: Arts of Medieval Europe: Medieval Monsters
Instructor: Theresa Flanigan
Meeting Time: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:30-4:50pm CST
Modality: In-person
CRN: TBD
Course Description: This course examines the monsters that populate medieval images, from the margins of manuscripts to the painted and sculptural decoration of buildings, and from the edges of maps to the subjects of illustrated apocalyptic accounts, medical treatises, romances, travel literature, and more. While focusing primarily on late medieval Europe (ca. 1000-1500), we will also compare medieval European monsters with monsters from other cultures as well as our own modern-day monsters. We will study monster theory and the visual representation of monsters as historical evidence, providing deeper insight into both the societies that created them and our own. We will ask: Why do humans create monsters? What do monsters and their visible features symbolize? What beliefs and values do monsters communicate? What emotions do monsters evoke? What social functions do monsters serve? What are you afraid of?
Prerequisite: Instructor consent. Multiple critical, theoretical approaches to the art and architecture
of Medieval Europe. 3 credits. Note: Undergrads may take as ARTH 4320 Topics in Medieval
Art Fall 2026 Courses
ENGL 5303: Studies in Medieval British Literature - Beowulf
Instructor: Dr. Brian McFadden
Time: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:00 – 3:20 PM CST
Modality: Hyflex
CRN 74076 / 18340D
Note that ENGL 5301 (Old English Language) is a prerequisite for ENGL 5303. History
of the English Language is not a satisfactory substitute for ENGL 5301. Email instructor
to get permit.
Description: This course will be an in-depth translation and analysis of Beowulf, the first major
epic poem in the English language. Topics to be discussed: early medieval English
conceptions of monstrosity and Otherness; Germanic social structure as depicted in
the poem versus the realities of early medieval English society; the role of women
in the poem and women in early medieval English society; the tension and accommodation
between Christian and Germanic elements in the poem; the paleography and codicology
of the text and the application of digital technology, especially the online Electronic
Beowulf project at the University of Kentucky, to the study of the poem and the Beowulf
manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv). Requirements: leading
one class discussion; one 20- to 25-page seminar paper; weekly translation and reading
in Old English. Texts to be announced but will probably include Mitchell and Robinson’s
edition of Beowulf, Klaeber’s Beowulf Fourth Edition by Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, The
Beowulf Reader (ed. Bjork and Niles) and A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Orchard).
English 5305: Shakespearean Consequence
Instructor: Dr. Matthew Hunter
Time: Thursdays, 9:30-12:20
Modality: Hyflex
CRN: 74072 / 74073D
Description: This course introduces students to Shakespeare’s dramaturgy by focusing on the theme
of value. From Hotspur and Hamlet to Helena and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s characters
are famously devoted to values that we tend think of as immune to chance. Yet Shakespeare’s
plays tend to feature accidents, contingencies, and misfortunes that put those values
to the text, exposing their inescapable vulnerability to—and hence dependence on—luck.
This course introduces students to Shakespeare’s drama by proposing that his plays
are endlessly preoccupied with a single question: what happens when values we hold
dear—like goodness, love, friendship, nation, poetry, heroism, humanity, or simply
our own self-conceptions—are repudiated by circumstances outside of our control? In
the face of accident, misfortune, and chance, ought Shakespeare’s characters abandon
their values or hold fast to them? In the face of accident, misfortune, and chance,
ought we think anew about what it means to live a good life?
Over the course of the semester, students will come to terms with major aspects of
Shakespeare’s dramaturgy by thinking about the relationship, as important to fictional
characters as it is to our own lives, between value and chance. Our readings and our
discussions will span genres from comedy to history to tragedy to tragicomedy, and
they will range from the early stages to the later stages of Shakespeare’s career;
they will focus at times on the psychology of Shakespeare’s characters, other times
on the performance of his plays, and other times on their language, all the while
asking what it means to commit oneself to values that our worlds either cannot or
will not accommodate.
NOTE: email julie.couch@ttu.edu to receive permit to register for this course.
Fall 2026 Courses
ARTH 5305: Spanish Borderlands Art in the Missions of New Spain
Instructor: Dr. Klinton Burgio-Ericson
Meeting time: Wednesdays, 5:00pm-7:50pm
Modality: in-person
CRN: 16754
Instructor Permission Required
Course Description: Vast swathes of the Early Modern Americas fell under the Spanish campaign to colonize
and convert Indigenous peoples between 1530 and 1800, creating thousands of religious
establishments stretching from the present U.S. states of California, Georgia, and
New Mexico to the southern cone of South America. This was the most extensive architectural
and artistic project of the Early Modern period, yielding a rich material record largely
created by Native and mixed-race artists as they engaged and transformed European
cultural ideas through their labor, worship, creativity, and everyday life. In many
ways, Central Mexico was ground zero for these cultural interactions, where the official
evangelization campaign of mendicant missionaries took shape. This course considers
the Spanish missions of sixteenth-century Mexico, and their subsequent developments
in the Borderlands regions of the Maya territories and new Mexico as arenas of cultural
negotiation among colonizers and Indigenous participants; the expansive artistic output
these interactions engendered; and the varied responses of historians to this period.
CMLL 5309 Studies in Literature and Culture: Archaeology Survey
Instructor: Dr. Christopher Witmore
Meeting time: Wednesdays, 2:00pm-4:50pm
Modality: in-person
CRN: 16369
Course Description: From the economies of Bronze Age palaces, through the classical age of Greek art
and architecture to the rise of Rome, Empire and its aftermath, this course sets the
latest issues and debates in Greco-Roman archaeology against the general background
one would expect of a survey in Mediterranean Archaeology. It aims to not only engage
key debates in archaeology but works through the questions archaeologists ask of the
ancient world.
ENGL 5301: Old English Language
Instructor: Dr. Brian McFadden
Meeting Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:00-3:20 PM
Modality: Hyflex
CRN: 51307 (in-person); 51308 (online)
English DGS Permission Required
Course Description: This course will introduce students to the grammar, syntax, vocabulary, phonology,
and morphology of Old English and examine its relationship to the language we speak
today, in addition to learning some of the basic background and history of the Early
Medieval English period and developing an understanding of early English manuscripts.
Our primary focus will be to develop a reading knowledge of Old English for the study
of basic prose and poetic texts, as well as to prepare students for Beowulf in the
Spring 2027 semester (for which this course is a prerequisite; any student contemplating
the Beowulf course should plan accordingly). Course requirements: daily translations;
midterm exam, periodic quizzes, and one final translation/transcription project. Texts:
Moore, Knott, and Hulbert, The Elements of Old English; Mitchell and Robinson, A Guide
to Old English, 8th ed.; Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; supplemental
materials to be delivered via Blackboard.
Requirements fulfilled: Philology Sequence; British Literature; Period: Early; Medieval
and Renaissance Studies Certificate; Book History Certificate
HIST 5371 - War and Memory
Instructor: Dr. Andrew Donnelly
Meeting Time: Wednesday 3-5:50 PM
Modality: In person
CRN: 51777
Course description: This class examines the ways in which ancient societies, especially Greece and Rome, commemorated warfare and the dead. We will consider textual examples of such commemorations, including epic poetry, inscriptions, and narrative accounts, and also physical monuments and structures meant to celebrate victory and honor the fallen. We will conclude by examining the legacy of ancient warfare in accounts of 20th century conflicts, including the First World War and Vietnam.
SPAN 5362 Golden Age Literature: Don Quixote, the High Plains, and the Hydrohumanities
Instructor: Dr. John Beusterien
Meeting Time: Thursdays, 3:30 p.m. - 6:20 p.m.
Modality: In-Person
CRN: 22460
Course description: Lectures focus on the Spanish Golden Age and the impact of Miguel de Cervantes on
literature and culture more widely. Selections from Don Quixote will be read out loud
in Spanish and English. Student research topics focus on Cervantes in the context
of place-based studies and the hydrohumanities.
Course requirements: active in-person attendance and participation, field trips, short
papers, and a research paper. Taught primarily in Spanish.
Spring 2026 Courses
MRST 5301: Methods in Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Instructor: Dr. Jacob Bell
Meeting Time: Wednesdays, 6:00-8:50
Modality: Hyflex
CRN: 71391
Course Description: This course, offered each spring semester, is a requirement for the MRST graduate certificate. The course provides a multi-disciplinary introduction to the study of medieval and early modern Europe. Guest speakers representing core disciplines associated with the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center at TTU, including History, Art History, English, Literatures & Languages, and Music will give students a chance to learn in more detail how study of the medieval and early modern centuries works in practice. Course assignments will be geared towards introducing students to resources available at TTU for the study of medieval and early modern Europe, and towards getting students to apply the methods they encounter in readings and discussions to their own work.
ARTH 5305: Topics in Art History: History of the Book
Instructor: Dr. Theresa Flanigan
Meeting Time: Tuesdays/Thursdays, 9:30-10:50
Modality: In-Person
CRN: 19311
Course Description: This graduate-level seminar course on the art history of the book traces book history, design, and making from early medieval scrolls and manuscripts to the advent of movable type and the printed book in the early modern period (ca. 500- ca. 1700). Our study will explore various early book types, including development of the Bible and secular texts, personal luxury books, secular romances, travel literature, maps, and books of knowledge and wonder. In addition, we will consider book-making materials and techniques, typologies of script and early musical notation, early word and image theory, medieval literacy and approaches to reading, the functions and meanings of marginal imagery (including hybrids and monsters), and reader engagement with books, such as touching, kissing, annotating, censoring, etc. Classes will occasionally meet in the Southwest Collection’s Rare Book Room, where we will perform object-based research using Texas Tech University's unique collection of manuscript facsimiles and early printed books.
CLAS 5311-001, Classical Art & Archaeology: Archaeology, Society, and Technology
Instructor: Dr. Christopher Witmore
Meeting Time: Fridays, 1:00-3:50
Modality: In-Person
CRN: 18130
Course Description: From Olduvai Gorge to banks of the Nile; from the Mediterranean Sea to the Manhattan Project; this course explores relationships between humans, society, and techniques over the long term. How do we understand relationships between humans and techniques (what is often glossed as technology)? In what ways do techniques shape society? Each week explores a different juncture in the long story of humans and techniques. Moving between hand axes, fire, and Homo erectus, boats, sails, and Mediterranean societies, electrification, the automobile, and modern nation states it will introduce students to archaeological theories of things, philosophies of technology, and anthropological ideas of externalization, where tools or media were seen as outward and amplified forms of human organs. Ultimately, students will learn how humans, both as composite beings and components of societies, have continued to change saltationally through mergers with nonhuman objects, which has been ultimately generative of myriad humanities in the plural. The course will include pertinent examples from medieval, renaissance and early modern societies.
CLAS 5315: Topics in Classics: Papyrology and Epigraphy
Instructor: Dr. Michael Freeman
Meeting Time: Wednesdays, 2:00pm - 4:50pm
Modality: In-Person
CRN: 71053
Course Description: Fragments of literature and glimpses of history survive from the ancient and medieval world, preserved on pieces of stone and metal, papyrus and parchment, clay and wooden tablets. This course will teach the disciplinary skills required to decode and analyze these texts and to incorporate them into history craft and literary analysis. We will focus on papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt and on Greek and Latin inscriptions from around the ancient Mediterranean world. The course will be taught in translation; a basic knowledge of ancient Greek or Latin will be helpful but is not required.
ENGL 5303: Studies in Medieval British Literature: Quest!
Instructor: Dr. Julie Nelson Couch
Meeting Time: Tuesdays, 6;00-8:50
Modality: Synchronous Online
CRN: 18340
Course Description: This course will introduce students to Middle English romances, dream visions, and other questing genres where travel engenders meaning. As we read these poems and attend to their manuscript contexts, we will investigate aesthetic and ideological values sought by and validated for the readers of these texts; we will also consider how these narratives construct identity (hero, knight, maiden, saint) in various ways that produce and question cultural knowledge.
Prerequisite: English 5302, Translating Middle English, Fall 2025 (or professor approval)
NB: Contact the English Department’s Director of Graduate Studies to secure a permit to register for an English graduate class. You may also email Dr. Couch for more information.
ENGL 5334: History of the English Language: Who Owns English? Authority in a Worldwide Language
Instructor: Dr. Brian McFadden
Meeting Time: Wednesdays, 6:00 – 8:50
Modality: Hyflex
CRN: In-person section: 70706; Online section: 70707
Course Description: This course examines the history and development of English from its origins in Early Medieval England through the high Middle Ages and the Early Modern period to Modern English, including the internal history, external history, and the development of its morphology, phonology, semantics, and syntax, in addition to examining orality and literacy and the effects of developing methods of textual production. We will also be reading short pieces written at different times through English history (e.g. Ælfric of Eynsham, Alfred the Great, Chaucer, Milton, Sidney, Johnson, Swift, Jefferson, Orwell) for a historical perspective on how authors perceived the language in which they were writing and how they claim authority to define and use the English language for their social and political ends. The earlier parts of the course will be highly technical; as the course progresses, there will be more opportunity for discussion and development of topics of interest to the student. The requirements will be a dialect project, a seminar paper on a topic of interest to the study of English as a language, a prospectus at midterm to give me an idea of what you wish to discuss in the seminar paper, and an oral presentation on one of the texts to be discussed in class. Primary texts: Gramley, The History of English: An Introduction; Knowles, A Cultural History of the English Language; Orwell, 1984; McCrum, Globish; George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion; Wilton, Word Myths; plus additional reading assignments via Canvas.
NB: Contact the English Department’s Director of Graduate Studies to secure a permit to register for an English graduate class. You may also email Dr. McFadden for more information.
HIST 5347 Studies in Early Modern British History
Instructor: Dr. Abigail Swingen
Meeting Time: Thursdays, 6:00-8:50
Modality: Synchronous Online
CRN: 73016
Course Description: Britain from the 16th-18th centuries experienced dramatic transformations in terms of politics, religion, family structures, empire, and the economy. The purpose of this course is to provide graduate students with an overview of some of the major topics and themes debated by scholars in early modern British history. We will consider historical works in terms of how they have been constructed as pieces of historiography, as well as the research methods used by scholars of British history. Central to our discussions each week will be the question “why England/Britain?” Topics include the English Reformation, household and family structures, the Civil Wars, empire, the environment, and economic and social change.
MUHL 5333 Seminar in the History and Literature of Music: Baroque: Eloquence, Faith, and Empire; 16-18c
Instructor: Dr. Angela Mariani Smith
Meeting Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:00-3:20
Modality: In-person
CRN: 17018
SPAN 5370: Indigenous Intellectuals in the Colonial “Lettered Cities”
Instructor: Dr. Sara Guengerich
Meeting Time: Tuesdays 3:30-6:20
Modality: In-person
CRN: 71108
Course Description: Ángel Rama’s La ciudad letrada portrays the colonial city as both a physical and symbolic embodiment of imperial order, governed by a privileged class of letrados (lettered men) who wielded power through writing and education. Yet, recent studies highlight the key intellectual roles of indigenous peoples as writers, historians, and artists who shaped colonial and national cultures. This graduate course examines these overlooked contributions, arguing that colonialism and nation-building in Latin America were collaborative processes. Through different texts, it broadens Rama’s concept of the “lettered city” to include additional participants in knowledge creation and cultural transformation.