“Monks and Heretics: Using Eco’s The Name of the Rose as a Textbook in an Upper-level, Undergraduate History Seminar,” was the lead essay in Postscript to the Middle Ages: Teaching Medieval Studies through Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, edited by Alison Ganze (2010).
A great book for anyone who teaches the Middle Ages. Here's the opening of my essay:
As a graduate student in 1996, I attended the International Congress of Medieval Studies Congress at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. One of the distinct memories I hold from that conference is overhearing a conversation about a professor using Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose as a text in a medieval history class. This seemed like a stroke of genius to me, and it impressed me enough to want to give it a try someday. I have since developed my own version of such a course and taught it twice. I have also had some time to mull over how it worked, what it meant, and how the teaching of the course might be useful to others.
"Medieval Monks and Heretics," an upper-level, undergraduate topics course, was designed to reflect my own research interests in monastic history. The title for the course, "Medieval Monks and Heretics" -- rather than just "Monks" or "Medieval Monks" or whatever -- was influenced by the work of the German historian Herbert Grundmann. Throughout his seminal book, Religiöse Bewegunugen des Mittelalters, Grundmann argued that orthodox monasticism and heresy were essentially two sides of the same coin, the expression of medieval men and women yearning for religious experience. Key to Grundmann's interpretation is the concept that there is no heresy without orthodox authority, hence there is a great emphasis put on point of view. Understanding the subtlety of this distinction, as opposed to "good orthodox Christians" and "bad heretics" was the first learning goal I set for the course.
A great book for anyone who teaches the Middle Ages. Here's the opening of my essay:
As a graduate student in 1996, I attended the International Congress of Medieval Studies Congress at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. One of the distinct memories I hold from that conference is overhearing a conversation about a professor using Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose as a text in a medieval history class. This seemed like a stroke of genius to me, and it impressed me enough to want to give it a try someday. I have since developed my own version of such a course and taught it twice. I have also had some time to mull over how it worked, what it meant, and how the teaching of the course might be useful to others.
"Medieval Monks and Heretics," an upper-level, undergraduate topics course, was designed to reflect my own research interests in monastic history. The title for the course, "Medieval Monks and Heretics" -- rather than just "Monks" or "Medieval Monks" or whatever -- was influenced by the work of the German historian Herbert Grundmann. Throughout his seminal book, Religiöse Bewegunugen des Mittelalters, Grundmann argued that orthodox monasticism and heresy were essentially two sides of the same coin, the expression of medieval men and women yearning for religious experience. Key to Grundmann's interpretation is the concept that there is no heresy without orthodox authority, hence there is a great emphasis put on point of view. Understanding the subtlety of this distinction, as opposed to "good orthodox Christians" and "bad heretics" was the first learning goal I set for the course.