HIS 3942 – Weekly Topics
August 21: Introduction to the course. What is love? What is marriage? Why is the history of love and marriage important?
Read: Rampolla 1-8
August 24: Why does the medieval history of love and marriage matter?
Read: McCarthy 33-36, 38-39, 66-69, 257-270
Klaus Oschema, “Sacred or profane? Reflections on love and friendship in the Middle Ages,” in Love, Friendship, and Faith in Europe, 1300-1800, edited by Laura Gowing, Michael Hunter, and Miri Rubin (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), pp. 43-65.
August 26: Discussion: What is a historical source and (why) is it important?
Written assignment: Imagine you are traveling by plane. You enter a conversation with the person sitting next to you, who is very curious to know why you want to study history. He/she cannot understand why you study history when so many other subject matters are faster tracks to money-making professions. In a two-page essay (due in class), develop an argument that history is worth the effort and can lead to a life-fulfilling profession. You need to explain to him/her 1) why history is important as a subject of study in and for itself; 2) why teaching history is in fact a key component of any profession. Come to class prepared to discuss.
August 28: Falling in love in the Middle Ages
Read: McCarthy 257-270, 293-295, 297-298
Bernard McGinn, “Love’s last millennial turn,” in Truth as Gift. Studies in Medieval Cistercian History in Honor of John R. Sommerfeldt, edited by Marsha Dutton, Daniel M. La Corte, Paul Lockey (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2004), pp. 3-26.
Ruth Mazo Karras, “Love, sex, and sexuality,” in A Cultural History of Marriage in the Medieval Age, edited by Joanne Marie Ferraro and Frederik Pedersen. A Cultural History of Marriage, 2 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), pp. 115-129.
Jill Mann, “Falling in love in the Middle Ages,” in Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature. The Influence of Derek Brewer, edited by Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 88-110.
August 31 : Discussion. How to study history?
Read: Rampolla 106-107
Written assignment: In a paragraph, discuss three differences between your studying habits regarding history and any other discipline of the General Education area, such as physics, chemistry, or biology. Come prepared for class discussion, using examples from your own experience.
September 2: A medieval invention: courtly love.
Read: McCarthy 233-236, 250-255
Sarah Kay, “Courts, clerks, and courtly love,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, edited by Robert L. Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 81-96.
Albrecht Classen, “Dialectics and courtly love: Abelard and Heloise, Andreas Capellanus and the Carmina Burana,” Journal of Medieval Latin 23 (2013), 161-183.
Georges Duby, “The courtly model,” in A History of Women in the West, 2: Silences of the Middle Ages, edited by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap, 1992), pp. 250-266.
September 4: Discussion: How to succeed in the history major? How to take notes in a history course?
Read: Rampolla 9-13
Written assignment: Come to class with notes (they can be electronic) on all of the readings for this week (McCarthy, Kay, Classen, and Duby).
September 9: Discussion: Reading and evaluating primary sources
See a guide to how to read primary sources
Written assignment: in a one-page essay (due in class), reflect on two of the secondary literature items for September 2 pertaining to one of the primary source readings in McCarthy–either Andreas Capellanus or Marie de France. How did the analysis in these items either support or undermine your interpretation of that source? How are those two items different from each other in their interpretation of that source? Be specific and include at least one footnote (using the Chicago Manual of Style) in your response.
September 11: Marriage in the early Middle Ages
Read: McCarthy 50-51, 105-110, 186-189
Auđur Magnúsdóttir, “Women and sexual politics,” in The Viking World, edited by Stefan Brink (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 40-48.
Bart Jaski, “Marriage laws in Ireland and on the Continent in the early Middle Ages,” in The Fragility of Her Sex? Medieval Irish Women in the European Context, edited by Christine Meek and Katharine Simms (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), pp. 16-42.
Martha Rampton, “Love and the divorce of Lothar II,” in On the Shoulders of Giants. Essays in Honor of Glenn W. Olsen, edited by David F. Abbleby and Teresa Olsen Pierre (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), pp. 91-115.
September 14: Discussion: Interrogating primary sources and deriving research questions from them.
Read: Rampolla 13-18, 34-40
Written assignment: choose two sources from among those in the assigned readings for last week—a narrative (e.g., Beowulf) and a non-narrative (e.g., laws of Canute)—and answer the following questions: 1. When was the text written, and who was (or may have been) the author? What is the broader historical context in which this text was created? 2. What genre is the text, and how is it organized? 3. What is the goal of the author, and who is the audience? 4. What are the main points or arguments in the text? 5. Are there any indications of rhetorical strategies, and if so why are they used?
September 16: Marriage in the High Middle Ages
Read: McCarthy 61-64, 57-60, 123-129
Gillian Kenny, “When two worlds collide: marriage and the law in medieval Ireland,” in Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe, edited by Cordelia Beattie and Matthew Frank Stevens (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 53-70.
Jörg Peltzer, “The marriages of the English earls in the thirteenth century: a social perspective,” Thirteenth-Century England, XIV. Proceedings of the Aberystwyth and Lampeter Conference, 2011, edited by Janet Burton, Philipp Schofield, and Bjorn Weiler (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 61-85.
Sara McDougall, “Marriage: law and practice,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law, edited by Anders Winroth and John C. Wei (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 453-474.
Cynthia Johnson, “Marriage agreements from twelfth-century southern France,” in To Have and to Hold. Marrying and its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400-1600, edited by Philip L. Reynolds and John Witte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 215-259.
September 18: Discussion: Reading and using secondary sources.
Read: Rampolla 19-26, 43-51
Writing assignment: In a two- to three-page essay highlight what you believe to be the three most important characteristics of marriage in Western Europe between ca. 1000 and ca. 1300. You must select one trait from each of the four secondary literature items. In the second part of the essay consider the legal sources in the readings for September 16. Do they complement or contradict the conclusions of the secondary literature? Explain. Do these texts approach the question of marriage in the Middle Ages in different and perhaps conflicting ways, or do they really agree in perspective and outlook? Make sure you support your answer with examples from the texts (both primary and secondary sources).
September 21: Discussion: Secondary literature in foreign languages
Writing assignment: Scanning the readings covered so far in this course, identify at least three titles of books, chapters in books, or articles written in (a) language(s) other than English, and explain in a paragraph why you would want to know what is in each one of them.
September 23: Marriage in the Late Middle Ages
Read: McCarthy 77-83, 206-207, 277-281
Charlotte Vainio, “Empowered spouses: matrimonial legal authority in Sweden, 1350-1442,” in Authorities in the Middle Ages. Influence, Legitimacy, and Power in Medieval Society, edited by Sini Kangas, Mia Korpiola, and Tuija Ainonen (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 283-305.
Patrick J. Hornbeck II, “Love and marriage in the Norwich heresy trials, 1428-1431,” Viator 44 (2013), no. 3, 237-255.
Christine Peters, “Gender, sacrament, and ritual: the making and meaning of marriage in late medieval and early modern England,” Past and Present 169 (2000), 63-96.
September 25: Discussion: How to study for a history course? History exams and test-taking strategies.
Read: Rampolla 51-54
Writing assignment: Using all the readings for last week (including the primary sources), bring a list of 7-10 discussion questions (in the form of important ideas, people and events) that highlight the major themes of this week’s topic—marriage in the Late Middle Ages. Bring the list to class as a hard copy.
September 28: Discussion: History exams and test-taking strategies.
Writing assignment: In a paragraph, describe three key strategies that you have used to succeed in preparing either for Midterm or Final exams in any course in History that you have taken at the University of Florida. Come prepared to discuss those strategies in class.
September 30: Heloise and Abelard—a sex scandal or a great love story?
Read: McCarthy 164-166
Deborah Fraioli, “Heloise’s first letter as a reponse to the Historia Calamitatum,” Mediaevistik 26 (2016), 119-141.
Donald Ostrowski, “Heloise. Philosopher of love and friendship,” in Portraits of Medieval Europe, 800-1400, edited by Christian Raffensperger and Erin Thomas Dailey (London: Routledge, 2024), pp. 127-135.
Constant J. Mews, “Abelard, Heloise, and discussion of love in the twelfth-century schools,” in Rethinking Abelard. A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Babette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 11-36.
October 2: Discussion: Developing a thesis.
Read: Rampolla 55-65
Writing assignment: Developing a topic that is effective and appropriate for an undergraduate research paper requires significant thought and work. You will describe and justify a topic in class by means of a brief presentation to your peers. So come to class with notes that address three major issues:
- What is the broad theme or issue you will be addressing?
- How you are going to examine that theme? What is the specific gateway to your topic? It needs to be discrete, concrete and worthy of study.
- What are the primary sources that you will use to examine that specific focus of your paper? Also briefly mention the types of secondary sources you will use.
October 5: Discussion: Constructing an argument.
See a guide on how to build an academic argument.
Writing assignment: Using the primary and secondary sources for last week, select three facts (elements of evidence) and establish causal links between them, in order to draw a conclusion of historical nature out of that. Present your constructed argument in class.
October 7: Family love and affection
Read: McCarthy 192-194, 197-217
John Moore, “Inside the Anglo-Norman family: love, marriage, and the family,” in Anglo-Norman Studies, XXVIII. Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 2005, edited by C. P. Lewis (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), pp. 1-18.
Diane Owen Hughes, “Domestic ideals and social behavior: evidence from medieval Genoa,” in Medieval Families. Perspectives on Marriage, Household and Children, edited by Carol Neel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 125-156.
Stanley Chojnacki, “The power of love: wives and husbands in late medieval Venice,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, edited by Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 126-148.
October 9: Discussion: A bit of Aristotelian logic.
Read: Rampolla 65-77
See a guide to Aristotle’s logic and examples of logical fallacy in common language
October 12: Adultery, domestic violence, and divorce
Read: McCarthy 42-50, 85-87, 270-273
Ronald P. Akehurst, “Adultery in Gascony,” in De sens rassis. Essays in Honor of Rupert T. Pickens, edited by Keith Busby, Bernard Guidot, and Logan E. Whalen (Amsterda: Rodopi, 2005), pp. 1-15.
April Harper, “Punishing adultery: private violence, public honor, literature, and the law.” Haskins Society Journal 28 (2016): 167-184.
Sara M. Butler, “Attitudes to domestic violence in Christian Europe.” In A Companion to Crime and Deviance in the Middle Ages, edited by Hannah Skoda (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2023), pp. 397-414.
Constance B. Bouchard, “Eleanor’s divorce from Louis VII; the uses of consanguinity,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine. Lord and Lady, edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), pp. 223-235.
October 14: Discussion: Editing for grammar.
Read: Rampolla 77-88
Writing assignment: In no more than two paragraphs, answer the following questions. What is April Harper’s argument concerning adultery? In what way is she changing your own interpretation of Akehurst’s arguments about the same? What is the unique perspective that each brings onto this social phenomenon in the Middle Ages, and how do their ideas contrast with the work of other scholars mentioned in their articles?
October 16: Discussion: Editing for style.
See a guide to editing for clear style
Writing assignment: In three paragraphs, identify three characteristics of the style in any one of the readings for this week. You may wish to proceed comparatively, contrasting the style of one author with that of another.
October 19: Midterm.
October 21: Auxiliary disciplines in the study of the Middle Ages
See brief presentations of medieval paleography, numismatics, and sigillography
October 23: Same-sex love
Read: McCarthy 194-195, 256-257
Matthew Kufler, “Male friendship and the suspicion of sodomy in twelfth-century France,” in The Boswell Thesis. Essays on “Christian, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality”, edited by Matthew Kufler (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006), pp. 179-212.
Marc Boone, City and State in the Medieval Low Countries, Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), 52 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 241-260.
Carol Lansing, “Donna con donna? A 1295 inquest into female sodomy,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 2 (2005), 109-122.
Karma Lochrie, “Between women,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 70-88.
October 26: Discussion: Conducting research – bibliographical databases (I)
Read: Rampolla 93-105
Written assignment: Use the library catalog to identify one “traditional” primary source that offers a window onto some aspect of love and marriage in the Middle Ages. Provide complete citation information. Using the Brepols Medieval and Early Modern Bibliographies, identify two articles and/or chapters dealing with homosexuality in the Middle Ages. Justify your selection and, in a single paragraph, explain how you are going to obtain a copy of each article.
October 28: Discussion: Conducting research – bibliographical databases (II)
Written assignment: Using the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, find at least two medieval authors of a century of your choice who used the word raptus, and count the number of that word’s occurrences in the text of each author. Come to class prepared to discuss the statistical value of your results.
October 26: Discussion: Conducting research – bibliographical databases (III)
Written assignment: Using the Index of Medieval Art, find two images of prostitutes produced in the Middle Ages. Come to class prepared to discuss the context and meaning of those images.
November 2: Raptus (rape or abduction) and prostitution
Read: McCarthy 102-104, 137-139
Stacey E. Murrell, “Concubinage in new contexts: interfaith borrowings and the rulers of Castile-León in the high Middle Ages,” In Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe, edited by Christian Raffensperger (London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 60-82.
Trevor Dean, “A regional cluster? Italian secular laws on abduction, forced, and clandestine marriage (fourteenth to fifteenth century),” in Regional Variations in Matrimonial Law and Custom in Europe, 1150-1600, edited by Mia Korpiola (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 147-159.
Caroline Dunn, “The language of ravishment in medieval England,” Speculum 86 (2011), no. 1, 79-116.
Julie Coleman, “Rape in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, edited by Guy Halsall (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), PP. 193-204.
Keiko Nowacko, “Persecution, marginalization, or tolerance: prostitutes in thirteenth-century Parisian society,” in Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France, edited by Meredith Cohen and Justine Firnhaber-Baker (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 175-196.
November 4: Discussion: What is plagiarism and how to avoid it?
Read: Rampolla 111-118
Written assignment: Complete the following exercises on plagiarism
https://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/exercises.cfm
https://usm.maine.edu/sites/default/files/library/PlagiarismExercise.pdf
November 6: AI and history education
Written assignment: In a paragraph, compare and contrast the arguments for and against the use of AI in the teaching of history using the following short articles.
https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/practice-history/artificial-intelligence-a-warning-for-history/
https://www.historica.org/blog/ai-in-history-classrooms
https://activehistory.ca/blog/2025/06/12/steering-a-middle-course-on-ai-in-the-history-classroom/
November 9: Contraception, abortion, and infanticide
Read: McCarthy 277-281
Emily R. Coleman, “Infanticide in the early Middle Ages,” in Women in Medieval Society, edited by Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), pp. 47-70.
Danuta Shanzer, “Voices and bodies: the afterlife of the unborn,” Numen 56 (2009), nos. 2-3: 326-365.
Marilyn Sandidge, “Changing contexts of infanticide in medieval English texts,” in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, edited by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Wlater de Gruyter, 2005), pp. 291-306.
November 13: Discussion: To quote or not to quote
Read: Rampolla 119-124
Writing assignment: Analyzing secondary material. Read Danuta Shanzer’s essay, “Voices and bodies…”. Your writing assignment consists of no more than two paragraphs. In one paragraph, summarize her arguments and answer the following questions: what is the main point? what are her major claims? In the other paragraph, analyze her use of evidence through the footnotes. What are the sources she uses? How many can you identify? How does she deploy them to support her claims? Does she ever make a claim that she does not seem able to substantiate?
November 16: Bigamy and celibacy
Read: McCarthy 162-163, 196-217
Trevor Dean, “’Bigamists’ in Bologna, 1350-1500,” Journal of Family History 48 (2023), no. 1: 47-59.
Brian Patrick McGuire, “In search of the good mother: twelfth-century celibacy and affectivity,” in Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400-1400. Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser, edited by Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 85-102.
Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, “The sexual lives of medieval Norman clerics: a new perspective on clerical sexuality,” in Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme, edited by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 471-483.
November 18: Discussion: Documenting sources
Read: Rampolla 124-126
Writing assignment: Read and complete the following exercises on documenting sources:
http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/writing_citations.html
http://www8.esc.edu/htmlpages/writerold/exwhedoc.shtml
November 20: Marriage patterns: nobles, peasants and “the right of the first night”
Read: McCarthy 133-135
Robert F. Berkhoffer, “Marriage, lordship, and the ‘greater unfree’ in twelfth-century France,” Past and Present 173 (2001), 3-27.
Paul Branda and Paul R. Hyams, “Seigneurial control of women’s marriage,” Past and Present 99 (1983), 123-133.
Michael Sheehan, “Theory and practice: marriage of the unfree and the poor in medieval society,” Mediaeval Studies 50 (1988), 457-487.
November 30: Discussion: Documentation models
Read: McCarthy 133-135; Rampolla 127-158
Writing assignment: Using the resources discovered in this class, create an annotated bibliography on the topic presented on October 2. Your bibliography should have at least 25 titles—books, articles, or chapters.
November 2: Discussion: University Scholars Program and advanced research
December 8, 3:00 to 5:00 pm: Final exam