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Courses (2024-25)

Renaissance Studies courses for the 2024-25 academic year. Please note: course listings change from year to year. Should you have any questions, please contact vic.academics@utoronto.ca.

REN240H1F | The Renaissance in Italy

REN240H1F
The Renaissance in Italy
Professor Ken Bartlett
T 11-1

This course is an introduction to the culture of Renaissance Italy. It begins with Petrarch (d.1374) and the invention of the modern concept of the autonomous individual capable of self-creation. This idea arose from the recovery and ancient Latin and later Greek texts whose content was then applied to the conditions and problems of 14th and 15th century Italy. From this, Humanism arose, a set of secular ideas which became the animating force, the “energizing myth”, of the Renaissance. This confident belief in individual genius, the power of words and images, and the celebration of beauty and proportion in art and architecture came to define the period, as represented by artists and writers such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante, Brunelleschi, and Castiglione.The rich and cosmopolitan Republic of Florence adopted these ideas as a collective elite ideology, making it the “cradle” of the Italian Renaissance. Our course will then follow these ideas throughout Italy, from Florence to Venice, the small despotisms, and papal Rome, to illustrate how these flexible concepts could animate an entire culture.  

Exclusion: VIC240Y1REN240Y0VIC240Y0
Distribution Requirement:
Humanities
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1), Society and its Institutions (3)

REN241H1S | Renaissance Masterworks and Remixes

REN241H1S
Renaissance Masterworks and Remixes
Professor Paul Stevens
T 1-2, R 1-3

The focus of this course is Paradise Lost. We discuss Milton’s “imperial epic” in a number of interrelated contexts: for instance, Adam and Eve, romance and gender relations; Satan, power, and nation formation; God, justice and the meaning of grace. All these issues are immediately relevant to the way we live now, from popular music to contemporary politics. Most importantly, we discuss the poem both in relation to the inherited “canon” of Scripture and the emerging “canon” of English literature. What are canons and to what extent did English literature become a “secular scripture”? This allows us to examine Milton’s influence in such very recent works of literature as Cormac McCarthy’s demonic epic Blood Meridian.

Cross-listed: LCT204H1F
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)
REN242H1S | Scientific Worldviews of the Renaissance

REN242H1S
Scientific Worldviews of the Renaissance
Professor Hakob Barseghyan
F 11-1

An in-depth study of late medieval and early modern scientific worldviews, with a focus on interconnections between natural philosophy, cosmology, theology, astronomy, optics, medicine, natural history, and ethics. Through a consideration of early modern ideas including free will and determinism, the finite and infinite universe, teleology and mechanism, theism and deism, and deduction and intuition, this course investigates some of the period’s key metaphysical and methodological assumptions, and reveals how an evolving scientific understanding informed the Renaissance worldview.

Exclusion: VIC242H1, HPS309H1
Distribution Requirements: Social Science
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
REN244H1S | The Renaissance in Europe and around the World

REN244H1S
The Renaissance in Europe and around the World
Professor Jennifer DeSilva
T 11-1

This class will investigate ways that Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas interacted between 1400 and 1600 CE and what constituted “renaissance”. Using texts, images, maps, and object, students will explore these interactions, Renaissance artifacts, and the cities that facilitated them. Students will follow global information flows and connect them through contemporary objects. Finally, as a capstone activity, the class will play Repatriating the Benin Bronzes to determine how non-Western skill, resources, and artifacts have been understood from the Renaissance period to the present. 

Distribution Requirements: Social Science
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
REN245H1S | Race and Power in the Renaissance

REN245H1S
Race and Power in the Renaissance
Professor Laura Ingallinella
W 3-5

This course explores the relationship between race, imperialism, and culture in the Renaissance world. Students investigate the intellectual frameworks through which early modern Europeans made sense of human diversity, with a focus on the enduring influence of these ideologies in the perception and representation of difference today. Course materials may include such examples as portraits of a Black duke in Renaissance Florence, trial records of falsely accused Jewish men, clothes to disguise oneself as an Ottoman princess, and plays featuring Roma fortune-tellers.

Distribution Requirements: Social Science
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
REN338H1F | Renaissance in the City

REN338H1F
Renaissance in the City
Professor Ken Bartlett
T 3-5

This new half course is taught with HIS327HF, Rome, the City in History, an illustrated lecture course that traces the development of Rome from its mythological foundation in 753 B.C. until the present, using the structures and sites of the city as material. Students in REN338H will share the lectures with the HIS327 students but will have readings and assignments that focus on the period of the Renaissance in Rome, beginning with the return of a united papacy after the Great Western Schism in 1420 and ending with the establishment of the baroque in the 17th century. After the addition of Rome to the united kingdom of Italy in 1870, subsequent regimes continued to refer to Renaissance models and greatness to reinforce their own agendas.  Emphasis will be on how the ancient traditions and memories of republican, imperial, and Christian Rome continued to inform the shape, function, mythology, and building in the urbs aeterna, the eternal city. 

Exclusion: VIC338H1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
REN342H1F | Woman and Writing in the Renaissance

REN342H1F
Woman and Writing in the Renaissance
Professor Manuela Scarci
W 10-12

Focusing on writers from various geographical areas, the course examines a variety of texts by early modern women (for example, treatises, letters, and poetry) so as to explore the female experience in a literate society, with particular attention to how women constructed a gendered identity for themselves against the backdrop of the cultural debates of the time.

Exclusion: VIC342H1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

REN346H1S | The Idea of the Renaissance

REN346H1S 
The Idea of the Renaissance
Professor Matt Kavaler
W 10-12

This course considers the formation of the Renaissance as an idea, not in the 16th century itself, but in the 19th, 20th, and 21st  centuries, when historians, art historians, and other intellectuals made the period a watershed moment in Western civilization. It will explore how the Renaissance began to be seen as the birth of the modern world, in which our ideas of individuality, creativity, political strategy, and historical self-consciousness came into being. Considering how modern writers imaginatively formulated a vision of the past that we have inherited, we will examine the Renaissance as an aesthetic, class-based, and politicized concept. Topics will include how representations of the Renaissance informed European national identities, changing definitions of the Renaissance after National Socialism in Germany (1933-45), gender history, and more recent scholarly efforts to de-centre Europe as the main focus of historical inquiry. 

Prerequisite: Completion of 4.0 credits
Exclusion: VIC346H1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

Renaissance Studies Independent Study

REN392 | Renaissance Studies Independent Study

REN392
Renaissance Studies Independent Study

This course provides an opportunity to design an interdisciplinary course of study, not otherwise available within the Faculty, with the intent of addressing specific topics in Renaissance studies. Written application (detailed proposal, reading list and a letter of support from a Victoria College faculty member who is prepared to supervise) must be submitted for approval on behalf of Victoria College. For application procedures visit the Victoria College website. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course is available in two formats, based on the nature of the independent study:
REN392H1F/S - 0.5 credit, completed in the Fall (F) or Winter (S) semester
REN392Y1Y - 1 credit, completed over both Fall and Winter semesters of the academic year

To request a Renaissance Studies Independent Study, please submit an application by August 1, 2023courseapps.vicu.utoronto.ca/secure/StudentHome

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 credits and permission of Program Coordinator.
Exclusion: VIC392H1 / VIC392Y1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
REN492 | Renaissance Studies Independent Study

REN492
Renaissance Studies Independent Study

This course provides an opportunity to design an interdisciplinary course of study, not otherwise available within the Faculty, with the intent of addressing specific topics in Renaissance studies. Written application (detailed proposal, reading list and a letter of support from a Victoria College faculty member who is prepared to supervise) must be submitted for approval on behalf of Victoria College. For application procedures visit the Victoria College website. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course is available in two formats, based on the nature of the independent study:
REN492H1F/S - 0.5 credit, completed in the Fall (F) or Winter (S) semester
REN492Y1Y - 1 credit, completed over both Fall and Winter semesters of the academic year

To request a Renaissance Studies Independent Study, please submit an application by August 1, 2023courseapps.vicu.utoronto.ca/secure/StudentHome

Your application with consist of the following:
1) Vic Independent Study Form 
Fill out separately and attach the file in the application
Please be sure to select the correct course code (ie: VIC390), on the form. 
2) Course description with Bibliography
3) Supervisor's letter of support
4) Unofficial Transcript

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 credits and permission of Program Coordinator.
Exclusion: VIC492H1 / VIC492Y1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities