The internship, taken between the first and second year of enrolment, is a 12-week placement in a recognised museum, gallery or related institution. The goal of the internship is the development of competence in the practice of museum studies. It is an integral part of the curriculum, intended to reinforce knowledge gained in first-year course work and to apply it to museum situations. Each placement is designed to meet the individual student’s needs in relation to career goals and interests. Previous internships have been arranged in institutions and organizations throughout Canada, the US and abroad.

https://ischool.utoronto.ca/course/internship/

In this course a cohort of students in the second year of their program work together throughout the fall and spring terms to prepare one or more exhibitions. The exhibition(s) will take place at the end of the second year at various University sites or in conjunction with local museums. Whereas, Museum Studies staff and the respective museum staff establish the exhibit’s parameters, students are involved in all aspects of its development. Exhibition projects must be approved by the Director and the Program Committee.

In this course students undertake a directed study of a museum related application that cannot be met by the present complement of elective courses. Topics may relate to any aspect of museum operation or function.

This year-long course is a core requirement for the MA in Medieval Studies (except for students who achieved the Level One pass in Medieval Latin upon arrival in September). By the end of this course, students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of the full range of Latin grammar through sight translation and reading comprehension; identify and explain examples of specific Latin grammatical features in assigned readings; recall essential medieval Latin vocabulary (about 2,000 words); identify orthographical variations of words found in the word lists; have experience of using a range of medieval Latin dictionaries and lexica; and translate medieval Latin texts of simple to moderate difficulty with minimal use of a dictionary. This course also prepares students to sit the Medieval Latin Level I exam.

This year-long course is a core requirement for the PhD in Medieval Studies (except for students who achieved the Level Two pass in Medieval Latin). By the end of this course, students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of the full range of Latin grammar and syntax through sight translation, reading comprehension, and composition exercises; identify and explain examples of specific Latin grammatical features, and the particular idiosyncrasies of the main varieties of medieval Latin, in assigned readings; employ medieval Latin vocabulary well beyond the core vocabulary of MST1000Y; use a range of medieval Latin dictionaries and lexica; translate independently medieval Latin texts of moderate to advanced difficulty; and identify the varieties of medieval Latin texts and articulate a general sense of the history of Latin language and literature from late antiquity down to the early modern era. This course also prepares students to sit the Medieval Latin Level II exam.

This year-long course is a core requirement for the PhD in Medieval Studies. It prepares PhD students in Medieval Studies (in Years 1, 2, and 3) for the non-scholarly challenges of their doctoral degree, with specific attention to the job market. Sessions cover topics such as Planning, Careers for Medievalists in Academia as well as in Public and Private Sectors, Conference Circuit, EDIA, Coping with Academic Stress, Graduate Funding (Grants, Bursaries, and Fellowships), Teaching Portfolio, Postdoctoral opportunities, Publishing Research as a PhD Student, and CVs and Cover Letters. The course meets for 12 two-hour sessions, each addressed to students in a specific year of their degree and includes presentations from a range of faculty and guest speakers.

This course introduces students to extensive selections from a range of representative Latin epics in the Medieval tradition, with attention to the appropriation and transformation of classical traditions. Conceived as a reading seminar, the specific topic varies from year to year.

This course introduces students to the varied ways in which medieval writers thought about books as physical objects. In the Middle Ages, books were repositories of information, but also sacred objects to be venerated, and even totemic items to be slept with, caressed, and hugged, or alternatively to be slashed, dismembered, and discarded. Students will learn about the many responses authors had to books and libraries, from the learned villa-dwellers of late antique Gaul and Italy to the manuscript-hunters of the early Renaissance. Authors and topics to be studied may include Cassiodorus, Lupus of Ferrières, Alcuin, Photius, Dhuoda, Richard de Bury, Petrarch; and Christine de Pizan.

This course investigates the transmission of the Latin Classics from Antiquity to the invention of print, with a focus on the medieval centuries. Manuscript traditions will be considered as well as reception in all its forms: indirect transmission (testimonia, references, quotations and allusions), commentary, and imitation.

This course focuses on Latin and Greek poetry of late antiquity (c. 300 to c. 700 CE), its major genres (biblical epic, panegyric, hymnody, epigram) and the continuities with earlier classical and later medieval literature. Students will be introduced to the principal authors of the period (e.g., Proba, Prudentius, Nonnus, Eudocia, Venantius Fortunatus, Paul the Silentiary, Columbanus, Aldhelm, Agathias) and to trends in recent scholarship on late antique poetry.

This course introduces students to the study of the making and keeping of medieval manuscripts. Lectures and hands-on sessions are supported by selected readings on various aspects of manuscript production. The course includes a practicum on the codicological description of manuscripts.

This course combines scholarly research and practical experimentation to better understand the process of medieval writing and define the field of "practical paleography." Still today, nearly all research on medieval paleography involves little to no experimentation. Class activities depend largely on individual student projects. Term projects deal with specific questions related to any aspect of medieval writing on surfaces such as wax, parchment, paper or other historically attested materials. Activities cover all phases of writing, including the preparation of writing surfaces (e.g., preparing parchment by pricking, ruling or designing layout on wax), the preparation of writing utensils (e.g., sharpening quills), as well as the writing process itself (e.g., drafting text in wax, erasing script on parchment).

This course guides students through the study of Latin scripts from the late Roman Empire to the twelfth century. Lectures and hands-on sessions are supported by selected readings on various aspects of Medieval paleography. Training in reading scripts is provided through weekly exercises. The course includes a practicum on the transcription of Latin manuscripts.

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of Latin textual criticism. Emphasis will be on transcription and collation, with an eye to producing an edited Latin text with critical apparatus and apparatus fontium. The problems of writing an introduction, describing manuscripts, analysis of a textual tradition, stemmata, etc. will also be treated. Materials for practice will include scholastic texts, poetry, and narrative prose.

This course introduces students to diplomatics: the study of the creation, form, and transmission of written records. Besides literary texts copied in manuscripts, written evidence from the Middle Ages takes the form of archival documents — charters, contracts, account books, testaments, notarial protocols, administrative minutes, court records, and so forth — produced by royal, papal, imperial and municipal chanceries. Diplomatic sources, which often survive in a single copy, present modern historians and editors with special problems. Training in reading diplomatic sources from the eighth to the fifteenth century and diplomatic editing is provided through weekly exercises.

In this seminar, students are exposed to different approaches to editing medieval texts and have the opportunity to learn more about textual editing across the disciplines, as well as to present and discuss their editorial work with their peers.

This course teaches students to read medieval texts in Old or Middle English in manuscript form from the period up to and including the English reformations. The books in which we will read these will be from the same or later periods, in order to familiarize students with all hands, including post-medieval hands, in which medieval texts have been preserved. There will be some emphasis on reading contemporary and post-medieval marginalia and ownership inscriptions (up to 1800) in medieval manuscripts. Practical palaeographical exercises will be supplemented by broader reading, discussion of, and a short essay about the relationship between scripts and scribal cultures, literature and criticism, and the history of the book.

The study of handwriting in late-medieval medieval England is a complex and dynamic field. Since the publication in 1969 of M.B. Parkes' foundational English Cursive Book Hands, 1250-1500, English palaeography has diverged significantly from continental practice in terminology and approach. The specificity of the main scripts used in England — Anglicana and Secretary — has developed into a highly specialized field, often at the expense of acknowledging points of contact with continental and, especially, French handwriting.

This course will introduce students to the study of handwriting in late medieval England (1300-1500), with a focus on literary and administrative writing in English, though French and Latin will also be considered. We will study the main scripts used in England (Anglicana, Secretary, and Textura) in their administrative and literary guises, and we will explore the different systems to classify scripts as used by English and continental European scholars. Our approach will be both specialist and comparative, taking account of developments in France and elsewhere in Europe. In addition, we will examine in detail existing controversies in English palaeography, in particular the cases of Adam Pinkhurst and Thomas Hoccleve.

This course introduces students to one of the most important current debates in historical studies and invites them to broaden the geographical scope of their studies to adopt a comparative and global perspective. In the early years of the twenty-first century, it is clear enough that there is a divide between the so-called global 'north' and 'south,' or 'developed' and 'undeveloped' countries, or the 'first' and the 'third' worlds. The former are principally in western Europe and North America; and the latter are in the rest of the world. If we move back to c.1000, however, the picture changes considerably: India, China, and the Islamic Mediterranean were among the most prosperous parts of the world with the most complex and sophisticated economies, and most of Europe was comparatively poor. What brought about the rise of Europe, and the consignment of other regions to the 'third world'? When did this happen? Students will be expected to work on at least three geographical regions over the course of the semester.

The course introduces students to the early stages of the development of Middle English and its dialects through the examination of twelfth- and thirteenth-century texts, including the Peterborough Chronicle, the Orrmulum, and the Katherine Group. Students will gain a basic understanding of the linguistic and lexical processes by which Old English evolved into early Middle English and familiarize themselves with some of the major works of early Middle English literature.

The tenth-century manuscript known as the Vercelli Book is one of the most important codices to have survived from Anglo-Saxon England. In this seminar, we will explore the literature contained in this collection, which includes homilies, lyric verse, and narrative poetry. We will pay special attention to the last two.

The late tenth-century Exeter Book is one of the four major codices containing Old English verse, and includes the greatest variety of vernacular poems of any surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscript. With its eclectic mixture of both native secular heroic poetry and verse that draws deeply on the imported Latin Christian tradition, the Exeter Book offers a unique and compelling snapshot of the literary culture of Anglo-Saxon England. This course will introduce students to the full range of saints’ lives, elegies, riddles, translations, snippets of Germanic legend, and adaptations from Latin in the Exeter Book.

This course is dedicated to the Old English poems based on the Old Testament (Genesis A and B, Exodus, and Daniel) transmitted in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius MS 11, once known as the 'Cædmon manuscript.' It will address the ways in which the poets adapted the native tradition of Old English verse to the rendering of biblical narratives, what can be known about the origin and transmission of the poems and their compilation in the Junius Manuscript, and other topics particular to the individual works.

King Alfred is often credited with effectively inventing Old English prose, by sponsoring the production of an ambitious educational program of translation from Latin into the vernacular; still at issue is the extent to which the king was directly involved in several of the translations himself. Among the Alfredian texts to be considered are the prose renderings of the first fifty Psalms, as well as the versions of Orosius' Historiae contra paganos, Gregory's Cura pastoralis and Dialogi, Augustine's Soliloquia, Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae.

This course introduces students to the topic of medieval magic, which has recently developed into an important interdisciplinary area of scholarship. This seminar will serve as a broad introduction to magic in the Middle Ages for students working in disciplines ranging from literature to the history of science. Following an introduction to the different types of magic — from healing and astrology to exorcism and necromancy — the seminar will survey the historiography of medieval magic from the 1500s onwards. The bulk of the seminar will concern the vast range of mostly Latin literature related to medieval magic. While genres such as dream books have been relatively well studied, others, such as chiromancy manuals, have received less attention. Significant time will be devoted to well-known works such as the Secret of Secrets and the Notory Art.

This course provides an introduction to Old Saxon, the language of the continental Saxons and closely cognate with many dialects of Old English. This language has left very few surviving texts; its principal witness is one of the great poetic works of the period, the Heliand, a Bible epic based on a gospel harmony, composed in Germanic alliterative metre. Also extant is a fragmentary poem on Genesis, which is generally agreed to be the basis of the Old English Genesis B. This course will be devoted to reading and translating excerpts of the Heliand and in so doing also acquiring a competent reading ability in Old Saxon as well as an introduction to the literary, cultural, and historical context of the Heliand.