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.

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.

Fall 2025 Courses

ARTH 5305: Topics in Art History- Indigenous Arts of Colombia 

Instructor: Klinton Burgio-Ericson 
Meeting Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:30 - 7:50 PM (in School of Art B02) 
Modality: In-Person 

Course Description: In the centuries prior to encounters with Spanish conquistadors, the region now comprising Colombia was home to highly varied and creative Indigenous societies, known for their goldwork, lapidary art, and ceramics. Descendents of these cultures likewise comprise a vibrant component in the modern nation state and artistic world of Colombia. This course explores the history, context, issues, and cultural significance pertaining to Indigenous arts in Colombia, focusing on the Museum of Texas Tech University’s notable Diekemper collection of pre-Columbian art. We will be conducting hands-on research with these collections through the resources of the School of Art’s newly established Art History Lab, familiarizing students with collections-based research and handling. 
 
NB: Contact Dr. Burgio-Ericson directly to secure permission to enroll. 

CMLL 5309.001: Survey in Roman Archaeology (Official Listing “Studies in Literature and Culture: Archaeological Survey”) 

Instructor: Dr. Linda R. Gosner 
Meeting time: Wednesdays, 2-4.50 PM 
Modality: In-person 

Course description: This course provides an overview of Roman history, art, and archaeology, with a particular emphasis on the contributions of material culture to our understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world. It will cover aspects of political, social, and economic history of the Roman world from the Iron Age through Late Antiquity. Special attention will be paid to how archaeological and material methods—including excavation, survey, archaeological sciences, numismatics, and epigraphy—inform and complicate the historical record alongside key historical texts and literature. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the latest issues and debates in method, theory, and ethics in the field of Roman archaeology. 

NB: this course number alternates between Greek and Roman archaeology, and graduate students who enrolled in the Greek version of course in fall 2025 can enroll in this course, which has a completely different syllabus. 

ENGL 5302: Many Tongues: Translating Middle English Literature  

Instructor: Dr. Julie Nelson Couch
Meeting Time: Thursdays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM  
Modality: Online  
CRN: 49347  

Course Description: This course introduces students to the grammar, syntax, vocabulary, phonology, and prosody of Middle English. This course also introduces students to Middle English manuscript studies. This course will be of interest to MRSC certificate students interested in historical and literary contexts, manuscripts, form, prosody, book history, the theory and praxis of translation, and reading outlandish poetry! The term Middle English encompasses an array of regional dialects that coexisted in England roughly between the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the standardization of English in 1430. Class time will be spent translating and pronouncing Middle English, transcribing from manuscript facsimiles, and discussing related issues in translation, manuscript context, and literary interpretation. By the end of the course, students will be able to comprehend and read aloud Middle English poetry that ranges widely in dialect, form, and genre. This course also serves as the prerequisite for the spring ENGL 5303 Medieval British Literature course; 5302 will prepare students to study a Middle English corpus (such as the Canterbury Tales, the Gawain poems, Arthurian romances, or another set of texts) in the spring.  
 
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 5305: Studies in Shakespeare: The Question of Shakespearean Tragedy  

Instructor: Dr. Matthew Hunter
Meeting Time: Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 PM   
Modality: Hyflex (CRN 49340/49341D)  

Course Description: While there has been no shortage of theorizations of the tragic, Shakespeare's tragedies have long been esteemed deficient, limited, or at least unusual iterations of the genre when compared with their Greek predecessors. Shakespeare's tragedies, for instance, have been censured for their impropriety, their distracting moments of humor, their extravagancies of language, their inconsistencies of timing and plausibility, and their interest in character over plot. This graduate course asks if there is—or can be—a theory of Shakespearean tragedy. Is there a thematic, or poetic, or narrative concern that unites all of Shakespeare's tragedies, or are they too multifarious in their concerns to organize under a single theory? Readings will range from early Shakespeare to late and draw together a range of philosophers and literary critics.  
 
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. 

FREN 5310: Medieval & Renaissance Literature 

Instructor: Dr. Lucas Wood 
Meeting Time: Thursdays, 3:30 - 6:20 PM 
Modality: In-Person 

Course Description: Reading, analysis, and interpretation of selected works of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Conducted in French.  

NB: A more detailed course description is forthcoming. If you do not speak French but are interested in taking this course, please email Dr. Wood to let him know of your interest. 

HIST 5343: Studies in Russian History: Rus' in History and Memory 

Instructor: Dr. Jacob Bell 
Meeting time: Tuesdays, 6:00 pm - 8:50 PM 
Modality: Hyflex  

Course description: Less than a year before Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, invaded Ukraine in February 2022, he wrote an article about the “historic unity” between Russia and Ukraine under what he termed drevnei rusi or “Old Rus’,” citing medieval chronicles from that space as a justification for his territorial expansion. What was this drevnei rusi? How have scholars and political leaders understood and weaponized it over time? This seminar interrogates the historical reality and memorialization of Rus’, drawing on both primary medieval sources and secondary literature from across Eurasia. We will investigate what it is possible to know about this medieval entity through the scant sources that survive and the various frameworks scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have employed to think about it. At the end of the semester, you will have a better understanding of not only what we know about this elusive medieval polity, but also how we know what we know. 

MUHL 5331, Medieval Era Seminar: Musical Process and Performance in Pre-Modern Europe 

Instructor: Dr. Angela Mariani 
Meeting Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30-10:50 AM (in MUSIC 209) 
Modality: In-Person 

Course Description: European "medieval" music was but one of many global musical streams with multiple influences and a strong oral tradition. In this course, we will examine the genres, styles, processes, influences, instruments, performance practice, and historical contexts of western European music in a time period roughly covering 1000-1450 CE.  The course is designed to 1) help us to deepen our understanding of the diverse streams and paths by which music flowed in and out of Europe in the Middle Ages; 2) to think about the ways in which these musical streams continued into later music, from classical to the modal roots of folk and popular music; and 3) to contribute to the recovery of an enormous range and variety of music which has been little explored in the modern classical music canon.

NB: non-music majors are welcome! 

SPAN 5362 001: Golden Age Literature

Instructor: Dr. John Beusterien 
Meeting time: Thursdays 3:30 pm - 6:20 pm 
Modality: in-person 
CRN: 49957  

Course description: In the time of Shakespeare, theaters were built across Spain and the Spanish-speaking world. This course is an introduction to theater studies with a special focus on the Spanish Golden Age. Readings of plays in Spanish; dramatic interpretation; adaptations of themes and verse from classical Spanish theater.  

Spring 2025 Courses

MRST 5301: Methods in Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Instructor: John Beusterien
Time: Thursday, 5:30-8:30pm
Modality: Hybrid 

Description: Introduces the scholarship of medieval and renaissance studies. Examines how different academic disciplines analyze and interpret the post-classical, pre-modern past. Introduces resources available at Texas Tech University for the study of the middle ages and the renaissance. 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. It encourages students to reflect upon the common problems scholars of the pre-modern past encounter in their work, and the research methodologies they deploy to address these problems. 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: Spanish Borderlands Art in the Missions of New Spain
Instructor: Klinton Burgio-Ericson
Time: Monday & Wednesday, 6:00-7:00pm
Modality: In-person

Description: This course considers the Spanish missions of sixteenth-century Mexico, and their subsequent developments in the northern Borderlands as arenas of cultural negotiation among colonizers and Native participants; the expansive artistic output these interactions engendered; and the varied responses of historians to this period.

 

CLAS 5311: Classical Art and Archaeology: Rural Life in the Roman World
Instructor: Linda Gosner
Time: Wednesday, 2-4:50pm
Modality: In-person

Description: In the public imagination, ‘ancient Rome’ often evokes images of temples, amphitheaters, palaces, and other monuments of the capital and its cities across the Mediterranean. Scholarship on the Roman world has historically privileged these urban places and elite spaces. A vast majority of people across the Roman world, however, lived in rural landscapes and engaged in agriculture and other industries to make ends meet. In recent years, methodological advances and theoretical developments in archaeology and ancient history have allowed rural life in the Roman world to come into focus. Advances in survey archaeology; newly excavated farmsteads; and new scientific studies of the ancient environment, plants, and animals have all provided fresh data and catalyzed novel ways of understanding rural landscapes and everyday life in the Roman Mediterranean. Drawing from this recent work, this course will explore topics such as Roman perceptions of rural life; time and seasonality; houses, villas, and farmsteads; religion and funerary practices; production and extraction; and the legacy of the Roman rural past. Case studies will be drawn from across the Roman Mediterranean, especially (but not exclusively) Italy and Hispania, where much of the most cutting-edge research has taken place in recent years. By the end of this course, students will be familiar with diverse archaeological evidence from the rural Roman world, as well as methods and theoretical approaches to understanding rural landscapes, peasant/non-elite communities, and everyday life that are applicable to other times and places.

 

ENGL 5303: Studies in Medieval British Literature: Beowulf
Instructor: Brian McFadden
Time: Thursday, 6:00-8:50pm
Modality: Hybrid

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 online 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). Please note: ENGL 5301 (Old English Language) is a prerequisite for ENGL 5303. ENGL 5334 (History of the English Language is not a satisfactory substitute for ENGL 5301.

 

ENGL 5315: Studies in Fiction: The Lineage of Romance
Instructor: Julie Nelson Couch & Marta Kvande
Time: Wednesday, 6:00-8:50pm
Modality: Hyflex (Separate CRNS: 65311 (in-person), 65307D (online students))

Description: Romance may be among the most denigrated of genres these days (just think of Harlequins) . . . but it is also among the most venerable in its long history and tradition, with origins traceable to the Greeks. In this course, we will study romance as a genre that changes and adapts as it moves through history. What does it mean for a text to be a romance in the Middle Ages? In the eighteenth century? In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? And how do romances from these various historical periods both share generic characteristics and diverge from each other? As we read the capacious genre of romance and attend to its range of cultural contexts, we will investigate the particular aesthetic and ideological values sought by the readers of these texts. Assignments will include a presentation, annotation assignments, and a seminar paper. Pleasenote: In addition to fulfilling MRSC certificate distribution requirements, this course also fulfills separate requirements of English MA degree (British Lit., Early Period, Poetry). Meeting with ENGL 5307: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature.

 

HIST 5341: Studies in Medieval History: Slavery in the Premodern World
Instructor: Jacob Bell
Time: Monday, 3:00-5:50pm
Modality: In-person

Description: The American experience of racially-based chattel slavery dominates scholarly conversations (for good reason) of unfreedom, but it was itself a successor to nearly a millennium of practices of slavery, bondage, and trafficking across the medieval globe. This seminar interrogates systems of enslavement before the transatlantic slave trade through a global lens, drawing on secondary literature from across Eurasia and Africa, focusing roughly on a period of c. 300-1500 CE. At the same time we investigate unfreedom in its multifarious contexts, we will also analyze the ways of knowing and source bases that underpin studying such systems. How do we use, for instance, the archives of slave owners to understand the worlds of slaves?

 

HIST 5349: Studies in Early Modern European History: Knowledge-Making and Scientific Practices in Early Modern Europe
Instructor: Jacob M. Baum
Time: Wednesday, 3:00-5:50pm
Modality: Hybrid

Description: Popular narratives of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century have long informed our understanding of origins of modern science, but recent scholarship has considerably complicated the story, pushing the chronology back considerably into the later medieval period and highlighting the important role played by 'ordinary' sorts of people in the process. Additionally, historians of early modern science have drawn attention to important intersections with visual arts, material culture, the practical forms of knowledge plied by artisans and protected by craft guilds, and central role played by the human body in the making or scientific knowledge in the early modern period. This course will introduce students to recent studies by historians dealing with this topic and in doing so, challenge their understanding of the origins of modern science.

 

MUTH 5321: History of Music Theory I: Antiquity-1600
Instructor: Peter A. Martens
Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 3:30-4:50
Modality: In-person

Description: Students in this reading-intensive seminar will delve into the rich world of writings on the theory and practice of ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance music. These writings, frequently peppered with musical examples and close commentary thereon, also comprise a more general intellectual history of the western world. Working knowledge of musical notation is helpful but not required. Students will be encouraged to tailor class projects to their own interests and areas of study.

 

MUHL 5322: Historical Performance Research and Practice 
Instructor: Angela Mariani Smith
Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 9:30-10:50
Modality: In-person

Description: The Historical Performance “movement’ began in the mid-20th century, catalyzing a veritable avalanche of research, scholarship, performances, and recordings of music of the medieval and early modern period, particularly from, but not necessarily limited to, Europe and the surrounding regions. While "early music" has been its primary focus, Historical Performance is better defined not by a specific repertoire, but by its methodology: 1) the study of instruments and instrumental techniques used in the period of a music's origin; 2) the study of a given piece of music within its original historical, social, and cultural performance context; 3) the examination of original scores, practical or theoretical treatises, or other primary source evidence;  and 4) the practice of synthesizing 1-3 above to create engaging performances for 21st-century audiences. Also critical to the field of Historical Performance are questions of philosophical approaches to the music of the past, and the extent to which we can or cannot re-create music as it might have been heard at the time of its creation. Please note:While MUHL5322 focuses on topics directly relevant to performance, it is not limited to performers or TCVPA students, and will also speak to scholars of medievalism, performance studies, arts practice research, and cultural history. Participants are encouraged to tailor their papers and projects to their specific interests and strengths to the degree that they remain related to the field of historical performance.