Department: Global Early Modern Studies
Coordinator: Professor Amanda Wunder
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Email: renaissance@gc.cuny.edu
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/global-early-modern-studies
FACULTY
Molly Aitken, Anna Ayse Akasoy, Nebahat Avcioglu, Herman Bennett, Barbara Bowen, Monica Calabritto, Clare Carroll, Sarah Covington, Joseph Dauben, Mario DiGangi, Paolo Fasoli, William Fisher, Allison Kavey, Erec Koch, Miles Grier, Erika Lin, José Martínez Torrejón, Gerry Milligan, Tanya Pollard, Bernd Renner, Dennis Slavin, Domna Stanton, Justin Steinberg, Andrew Tomasello, John Van Sickle, Emily Wilbourne, Amanda Wunder
THE PROGRAM
The Certificate Program in Global Early Modern Studies is designed to enable students pursuing degrees offered at CUNY Graduate Center interested in any aspect of the Renaissance/Early Modern period (c. 1350–c. 1700) to expand their studies in an interdisciplinary way. The program’s main goals are to provide students with the opportunity (1) to acquire innovative methods of cross-disciplinary research, including the techniques of early modern cultural analysis, that will enhance both their scholarship and teaching; (2) to study with faculty outside their home discipline; and (3) to acquire a Certificate in Global Early Modern Studies as a credential. Participating programs include Art History, Classics, Comparative Literature, English, French, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures, History, Music, Philosophy, and Theatre.
Resources for Research and Training
New York is especially suited to serve students interested in Global Early Modern Studies. In addition to the Mina Rees Library of the Graduate Center and the libraries of the CUNY campuses, CUNY graduate students have access to a broad range of resources, including the New York Public Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and Library, the Hispanic Society of America, the American Numismatic Society, the Academy of Medicine Library, and the libraries of the Union Theological Seminary and the Jewish Theological Seminary. The certificate program in Global Early Modern Studies is an affiliate member of the Renaissance Society of America, which now has its offices at the Graduate Center. As a member of the Folger Shakespeare Institute in Washington, D.C. (and, through it, of the Newberry Library in Chicago), the Graduate Center offers advanced students eligibility for funded participation in Folger Institute seminars and conferences. The Graduate Center hosts a Shakespeare Institute and the Society for the Study of Women in the Renaissance, and the Certificate Program sponsors a Renaissance Colloquium. Visiting scholars give talks regularly at the program’s Renaissance Colloquium, and students regularly present portions of their work in progress at an Early Modern Dissertation Colloquium.
SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS FOR THE CERTIFICATE IN GLOBAL EARLY MODERN STUDIES
Requirements for the Certificate in Global Early Modern Studies include two core courses (Introduction to Global Early Modern Studies; Topics in Material History), two elective courses outside the home discipline (these may include special topic courses in the certificate program), demonstrated reading proficiency in a second language related to the student’s field of study, and a thesis, which need not be in the area of Renaissance Studies. Upon fulfillment of the requirements for the Certificate Program in Global Early Modern Studies, a Certificate in Global Early Modern Studies is awarded by the state of New York.
Courses
GEMS 72100 Introduction to Global Early Modern Studies
3–4 credits, 30 hours. Topics have included case studies of interdisciplinary Renaissance scholarship.
GEMS 74100 Readings in Global Early Modern Studies
3–4 credits, 30 hours
GEMS 82100 Topics in Material History
3–4 credits, 30 hours
GEMS 83100 Topics in Global Early Modern Studies
3–4 credits, 30 hours. Topics have included: “The Impact of the New World on Early Modern Ideology”; “Foolishness in Renaissance Literature”; “Florentine Renaissance Patronage”; and “Renaissance and Early Modern Cities.”
GEMS 85100 Workshop in Renaissance Studies
4 credits, 30 hours
GEMS 89000 Independent Study
1–4 credits
In addition, the various doctoral disciplines offer about 10 Early Modern Studies courses each semester.
Representative Courses
Art in Italy and Beyond 1500–1600
Caravaggio and International Caravaggism
Classical Bodies
Descartes
Early Modern Print Culture
European Art and Architecture: 15th-Century Fresco Cycles
German Printing and Graphics 15th and 16th Centuries
Interactions Between Italian and Northern European Renaissance Art
Italian Renaissance Drawings
Italian Renaissance Painting and Sculpture
Jews in Early Modern Europe 1492–1760
La Celestina
Literature and the 17th-Century Cultural Revolution
Literature of Early Modern European History 1550–1800
Lope de Vega and the Spanish Comedy
Milton Matters
The New Cosmology
Performing the Renaissance: Theatre and Theatricality in Art and Society
Poetry, Poetics, and Authority in Baroque
Queering the Renaissance
Rabelais and Humanism
Race in the Renaissance
Renaissance Poetry
Restoration Poetry and Prose
Rhetoric and Language Theory: Early Modern Humanism
Sacred and Profane in Early Netherlandish Painting
The Scientific Revolution: Copernicus to Newton 1450–1700
Shakespeare and Sexuality
Spanish Literature of the Baroque
Spanish Literature of the Renaissance
Tragicomedy in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
Velazquez
Words and Music in the Renaissance