Summer 2026 Courses

ENGL 5306 - Japanese Haiku and English Sonnets: Bashō and Shakespeare  

Instructor: Dr. Ryan Hackenbracht 
Meeting Time: Thursdays, 6:00-8:50, 10 weeks 
Modality: Online 
CRN: 77632;
English DGS Permission Required

Course Description: This course is a comparative study of the haiku and sonnet traditions in Japan and England, respectively, as perfected by Matsuo Bashō (1644-94) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Aesthetic iconoclasts of their day, Bashō and Shakespeare wrote poetry as no one had done before. The fruit of their labors is evident in the ubiquity of haiku and sonnets today—without question, the most recognizable poetic forms in the world. What made these two poets so unique and compelling? How did Bashō and Shakespeare reinvent the literary materials they inherited? How did they navigate the relationship between religious thought and poetic form—a relationship that, whether in Protestant England or Buddhist Japan, was fraught with nuance and even peril? We will also read works by Onitsura, Ryokan, Buson, and Issa, as well as by Sidney, Donne, Milton, and Rossetti. This is a class in academic professionalism. We will learn about professional activities—conferences, publishing, dissertating, etc.—and master a number of genres of academic writing. The semester concludes with a paper/portfolio on a subject in your own area of specialization. 

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.