SENIOR SEMINAR: ANIMALS & MONSTERS IN MEDIEVAL ART in Spring 2020 (AH4090)

Animals, both real and fantastic, abound in medieval art. Their meanings range from descriptive to heraldic to highly symbolic to even subversive. While animals could describe the natural world, stylized beasts also functioned as recognizable symbols for numerous saints. The medieval bestiary was one of the most popular and brilliantly illustrated texts of the era. Animal fables, drawing from Aesop and other traditions, also showed people, through their animal counterparts, how to behave. Hybrids and monsters, prevalent especially in marginal areas, also often challenged the ‘modern’ distinction between animals and humans. This course will also draw on recent scholarship in human/animal studies, which has spread widely across the humanities and social sciences. For their final projects, students will study depictions of particular animals, groups of animals, or specific artistic programs or contexts, along with engaging with recent theoretical approaches.This course explores the artistic production of the Low Countries, Germany and France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, focusing in particular on painting, sculpture, manuscripts, and printmaking. During this critical period the culture of this region witnessed dramatic upheaval in the political and religious spheres, as well as concomitant changes in the visual arts. In order to understand these complex and interrelated phenomena we will investigate a broad range of topics, including: technical, stylistic and iconographic innovations; devotional versus secular function of artistic objects; the changing role the patron and the market; and the dramatic impact of the Reformation. An essential aspect of the senior seminar will be the self-reflexive analysis of the process of historical writing itself, to which end a variety of different analytical frameworks will be employed throughout the semester. Museum visits are also an essential component of the course.