units

APG5307

Faculty of Arts

18 September 2017 23 December 2024
Monash University

Postgraduate - Unit

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2013 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

print version

12 points, SCA Band 1, 0.250 EFTSL

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LevelPostgraduate
FacultyFaculty of Arts
Organisational UnitHistory
OfferedNot offered in 2013
Coordinator(s)Dr Peter Howard

Notes

Previously coded HYM5330

Synopsis

This unit examines the religious cultures of Europe from the twelfth to the early sixteenth century, including the recovery of the classical past in the re-envisioning of the Christian life, the boundaries between magic, superstition, and orthodox religion, the cult of the saints, shrines, and pilgrimage, the relationship between institutional religion and popular piety, high culture and popular expressions of devotion, the function of preaching and education by friars in local contexts, and the extent to which public theology shaped the cultural and material milieu.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this unit students will:

  1. Have acquired an understanding of the nature of Christianity as the matrix of experience in the Medieval and Renaissance city.
  2. Have acquired an understanding of the variety within that experience.
  3. Be critically conversant with the conceptual and analytical issues relating to the term 'popular'.
  4. Have worked with the conceptual complexities of 'religious culture'.
  5. Understand the nature of, and the religious and the social function of, devotion and devotional space.
  6. Have examined the Renaissance understanding of the nature of the natural order, sign and symbol, language and power.
  7. Understand the impact of the return 'to sources' which was part of the humanist agenda.
  8. Will have engaged the inter-relationship between the material world (piazza, building; representation) and the aesthetic, spiritual and religious medieval and renaissance Europeans.
  9. Have developed a capacity to analyse the processes which underpinned the construction of devotional and theological texts.
  10. Will have developed the capacity to detect the resonances of language and code embedded in particular texts and their relationship to social context.
  11. Will be able to engage in critical discussion of texts in relation to genre and context.

Students taking the subject at Level 5 have the additional objectives of acquiring a greater degree of analytical skills and a greater understanding of the key conceptual and methodological issues involved in using different kinds of literary and historical works in the context of social history.

Assessment

Essay related work: 60%
Critical journal: 20%
Seminar preparation and presentation: 20%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Peter Howard

Contact hours

2 hours per week

Prerequisites

A History or RLT Major

Prohibitions

ATS4307 and APG4307