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Three �鶹ӰԺ professors span the disciplines in teaching, travel focused on medieval Spain

Communications — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 14:49:47 +0000

What started as a shared interest in 13th-century Spain has turned into a joyous two-year interdisciplinary journey for three �鶹ӰԺ University professors.

Madera Allan, associate professor of Spanish, Sara Gross Ceballos, associate professor of music, and Danielle Joyner, associate professor of art history, led an alumni trip to Spain over spring break, the third leg of an intellectual adventure built around a fascination with the Middle Ages.

The trio first crafted an interdisciplinary course in 2022, exploring the intersections of art, music, and literature found in the hundreds of 13th-century songs and miniatures that are part of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. That led them to co-teaching a D-Term course that featured a trip to Toledo, Spain, where the topics explored in the earlier course came alive with exploration of the places and cultural dynamics that define that stretch of European history. Twenty students and two alumni traveled with the three scholars for the two-week course.

And this spring, Allan, Ceballos, and Joyner guided an alumni version of the trip, Medieval Delights in Modern Spain. The trip explored and celebrated the cultural legacies of the Middle Ages that endure in modern Spain. The group traveled through Al-Andalus, examined how the diverse Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities that populated these lands at the time contributed to the artistic and cultural traditions that make the study of medieval Spain so fascinating. The trip included visits to Madrid, Toledo, Córdoba, and Granada.

A D-Term course in December 2022 included a trip to Spain.

“These are manuscripts made in the 13th century that record songs celebrating miracles attributed to the Virgin Mary,” Joyner said of the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the interdisciplinary spark that first brought her, Allan, and Ceballos together. “Several of them also contain notated music for the songs and truly beautiful, and sometimes very weird, imagery depicting their stories. Because it’s 13th-century Spain, the relationships among the cultures occupying the peninsula are tightly woven and cross-pollinating and, yes, sometimes at odds with each other. Nonetheless, the mix of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian traditions in Spain was unique in European history. … Once the three of us started working together, the hardest part became narrowing down which songs and stories to choose because there are so many fascinating, funny, and weird possibilities.”

Teaching and learning

The three-unit course grew out of those initial conversations, with Allan, Ceballos, and Joyner jointly teaching the course, and all three learning along the way.

“Collaborating with Danielle and Madera was amazing,” Ceballos said. “We learned so much from one another, and very often that learning happened live in the classroom as we each took turns presenting materials and leading discussion. I imagine this was a pretty unique experience for some students to see their professors learning right along with them, asking questions, getting things wrong, and gaining new perspectives.”

None of them wanted the class to end.

“The class was so much fun,” Joyner said. “The students liked it, we liked it. We got to the end and thought, we have to do this again.”

So they did.

Learn more about �鶹ӰԺ Alumni trips

Allan has been on the Spanish faculty at �鶹ӰԺ since 2008. Her scholarship is focused on community formation in late medieval and early modern Spain and the colonial era of Latin America.

Ceballos has taught musicology at �鶹ӰԺ since 2008. Her scholarly work focuses on 18th century keyboard music. She has a fascination with early music and often performs on harpsichord, keyboards, and ukulele.

Joyner joined the art history faculty in 2018. Her scholarly work has most recently focused on intersections between the natural environment and the arts, publishing on topics such as sixth-century bird-shaped brooches, the ephemerality of gardens, animals in Anglo-Saxon arts, and representations of terra across the Middle Ages.

The three continue to find meaningful connections via 13th-century Spain in their respective fields. That power of shared knowledge and intersecting interests has driven this project in all three of its phases.

“They bring wisdom and intellectual enthusiasm to everything they do,” Allan said of Joyner and Ceballos. “I have learned so much from both of them. They are also models of patience and generosity—so I’m not the only one who has learned from them. The students in both iterations of the class have produced amazingly nuanced analyses incorporating architectural, musical, and literary elements.”

Taking the course to Spain

The D-Term trip took the experience to a new level. Joyner, who led the planning efforts, reached out to connections she had at Fundación Ortega-Marañon (FOM) in Toledo. With help from Yukiko Okazaki, the organization’s director of International Programs, they put together a travel course built around the Cantigas de Santa Maria.

“A number of the Cantigas refer to Toledo, and there are medieval mosques, synagogues, and churches that still stand in that extraordinary little city,” Joyner said.

The itinerary led the group from Madrid to Toledo to Córdoba and back to Madrid.

“We stayed at the FOM campus in Toledo and had a bus that took us on our various outings,” Joyner said.

A highlight was a private musical performance by the scholar Antoni Rossell. Ceballos had discovered his award-winning album, Galicia e as Cantigas de Santa Maria, during research for the earlier course.

“His album is unique in that he and his collaborators worked to make medieval Galicia and its sound worlds come alive on record, and they also endeavored to situate the Cantigas in that world,” Ceballos said. “In the opening track, you hear the creaking of a boat and the sounds of a powerful storm, and then the a cappella voices of singers praising the Virgin Mary and imploring, ‘Holy Mary, morning star, show us the way to God and guide us.’ Antoni’s performance blew me away and he was so engaging and generous.”

Hannah Frank, a senior history major from New Canaan, Connecticut, called the D-Term trip a “unique and special opportunity” for the students.

“Besides having classes with the professors throughout the term and learning historical context from them, we also got guided tours throughout Spain that were really important for me actually understanding the significance of the places we were in,” Frank said.

The D-Term course was aided by two �鶹ӰԺ alumni, Robert ’79 and Janet Stevens ’82, who joined the trip. The presence of the Stevens enriched the D-Term course, and it sparked talk of a wider alumni trip.

“We could have conversations with them that followed different paths than those we had with the students,” Joyner said. “Because of their own lives and experiences, they posed questions that likely would never come out of a 20-year-old’s mouth, and those questions made us think in different ways about what we were doing. It was fantastic, and it made me want to try it on a bigger scale.”

With 14 alumni and family joining them on the spring break trip, it was the next step in an academic adventure that Allan, Ceballos, and Joyner continue to embrace.

“I do always want to share the medieval love with anyone who wants to listen, and sometimes even with people who don’t,” Joyner said. “We knew that we had an exciting and unique way of thinking about Spain, and we wanted to share it with another �鶹ӰԺ audience. I think I can speak for Madera and Sara when I say that we firmly believe in the importance of the humanities and fine arts and that an important component of a liberal arts education is that it instills in those who are receptive a joy in life-long learning.”

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International Medieval Congress fits well with Joyner’s interdisciplinary teaching

Communications — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 14:50:12 +0000

Interdisciplinary teaching is a mantra for Danielle Joyner. As a scholar of medieval studies, it sort of comes with the territory.

For those who share Joyner’s scholarly interests, there’s no better place to be in mid-summer than the University of Leeds in Leeds, England, where the International Medieval Congress annually gathers to explore, dissect, and debate topics ranging from art to literature to architecture to philosophy, all through the lens of the Middle Ages.

The associate professor of art history at �鶹ӰԺ University was in Leeds for the festivities in early July, presenting a paper, The Migration of Birds Across Late Antique and Early Medieval Arts, and partaking in a panel discussion, The Mediterranean and Southern France, II: Beyond Braudel—The State of Medieval Environmental History, moderated by Harvard University’s Daniel Smail.

“There were more than 2,000 medievalists wandering around,” Joyner said. “It was wonderful.”

The congress drew scholars from 61 countries, with more than 600 sessions presented.

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Whether working in class, studying abroad, or curating objects in Wriston Art Galleries, you’ll deepen critical, analytical thinking and refine writing skills.

It was Joyner’s first visit to the medieval congress held in England—a U.S. version, the International Congress on Medieval Studies, happens each year in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She’s been to that one multiple times, and it’s always robust and interesting, but there was something special about experiencing it in England, where you are immersed in the history, she said.

“Europeans do medieval studies differently than Americans do medieval studies because they live in the ongoing presence of monuments and traditions,” Joyner said. “They are surrounded by all this material culture, architectural remains; their libraries are right there at hand. And because it’s so at hand and so familiar, they tend to ask different types of questions.”

Joyner, who holds a Ph.D. in history of art and architecture from Harvard, and master’s degrees in medieval studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto and art and art history at the University of Utah, returned from Leeds ready to share with students her insights and reflections—get your hands on primary sources, if not by traveling then via museums and libraries; history can not only teach us, it can inspire us; and international travel can be transformative.

Not lost in all of that is the interdisciplinary approach that Joyner has been such an advocate for since arriving on the �鶹ӰԺ faculty in 2018.

“To get at any aspect of an object made 1,200 years ago, you have to do history, you have to do literature,” she said. “If it’s a church object, which many of them are, you need to understand the liturgy. I think all of art history is very interdisciplinary, but medievalism especially opens itself up to those different approaches.

“Most people don’t go around thinking about the Middle Ages or medieval art or art history. And, so, the interdisciplinary approach I feel gives students ways of finding connections between the long ago and the now, connections that they maybe never would have thought about.”

Joyner saw her students’ eyes open wide last academic year when she joined with colleagues Sara Ceballos, an associate professor of music, and Madera Allan, an associate professor of Spanish, to team-teach Cantigas de Santa Maria, a course focused on a 13th century songbook from Spain that blended art, music, and history. The collaboration between musicology in the Conservatory and Spanish and art history in the College of Arts and Sciences was exhilarating, she said.

“The class was so much fun,” Joyner said. “The students liked it, we liked it. We got to the end and thought, we have to do this again.”

They’re planning a follow-up class during December Term (known as D-Term), the two-week optional session between fall and winter terms. Joyner, Ceballos, and Allan will take 10 to 12 students to Spain for two weeks. A foundation is helping to organize experiences in Toledo, Cordoba, and Madrid, Spain, where the group will study the Cantigas songbook while analyzing depictions of relationships among Christians, Muslims, and Jews and visiting surviving medieval architecture.

Meanwhile, in the coming Fall Term, Joyner will join Martyn Smith, associate professor of religious studies, to co-teach a course examining the differences between the travels and lessons of two famous explorers—Marco Polo, a Venetian traveler of the 13th century, and Ibn Battuta, a Muslim traveler of the 14th century.

It’s all part of the interdisciplinary approach that brings Joyner so much joy. It’s about lighting a spark, she said, whether it’s an art history major who wants to be a curator or a biology major who has never given the Middle Ages a second thought.

“My favorite thing is learning new stuff,” Joyner said. “And I love it when the window opens and a connection happens, or I can see something pop in other people. I love that. It is a vicarious thrill. So, whether they decide to do this forever, that’s exciting, or whether they never thought about it, but something made them go, ‘Whoa,’ that is equally as exciting. That’s the joy of teaching. It’s pretty thrilling.”

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Digging into tropes, stereotypes part of deep immersion during 2021 D-Term

Communications — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 17:07:08 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a yankee. Clad in striped pants and a patched vest, this country-bumpkin character was immediately recognizable on stage, created by British authors in the colonial period to represent—and often mock—Americans at large.

But it didn’t stay that way. Rather than taking offense, Americans embraced the yankee, adopting the character as their own.

Now, as time has moved forward, the yankee has continued to evolve. One could argue that in the modern day, the yankee has morphed into the character of the redneck, stereotypically portrayed with a shotgun in one hand and a Bible in the other.

From insult to patriotic symbol and then back to a new kind of insult, this trope has evolved over time while remaining immediately identifiable, giving the audience a clear picture of who that character is and how he behaves through stereotypical mannerisms—a phenomenon that �鶹ӰԺ’s Introduction to Tropes and Stereotypes in Theatre, Film, and Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly class has been studying this December Term (D-Term).

As an optional two-week addition to the academic calendar, this year running from Nov. 28 through Dec. 10, D-Term gives students the opportunity to take a focused, three-unit course of their choosing during winter break. For students who choose to stay, they often work with professors who are diving deep into a particular subject of interest within their field. Six courses were offered during this year’s D-Term, ranging from Food, Politics and Culture,��ٴ��The Science of Superheroes,��ٴ��Happiness: Meditation and Science.

In the case of Introduction to Tropes and Stereotypes, Austin Rose, lecturer of theatre arts, built the course based on his M.F.A. research into tropes and stereotypes in American theatre, focusing on gay and lesbian, Black, and Latino representation.

With only two weeks at their disposal, the class moves fast by necessity, providing an overview of how tropes and stereotypes function, which common tropes persist in American media, and how to stop the perpetuation of harmful and negative portrayals.

“We consume so much media that there are stereotypes and tropes everywhere, and it’s really hard to recognize them when you haven’t learned about them before and how harmful they are,” said sophomore Lucie Peltier, a philosophy and creative writing major enrolled in the course. “I’m hoping to become more aware of all the tropes in everyday life, in film, in theatre, in media.”

With each trope covered and each piece of media introduced, Rose will turn to the class and ask, “What are your thoughts?” Through this discussion-based structure, students said they are able to process the information verbally with their classmates to understand the trope in all its forms, whether positive, negative or neutral. The course culminates with in-depth student presentations on a specific trope of their choice, enabling students to do their own research and supplementing the surface-level introductions that have occurred throughout the week.

As well as the structure of the class itself, the format of D-Term has allowed students to focus more time and energy on the subject matter, becoming closer with classmates in the process. After every class period, the nine-student class will go to lunch together, where discussions of the class material often continue, according to sophomore Nayla Brunnbauer, a film major enrolled in the course. Since students are also only taking one course during the two-week period, they go to each class feeling more energized, Peltier said, and can take the time to understand the subject better.

“I think one of the big appeals of a D-Term course is that you don’t have all the other stuff hanging over your head,” Rose said. “It feels a little more relaxed and a little more privileged, I would say, than the regular term feels.”

That said, D-Term can also serve as a way to experiment with introducing a new class, workshopping the format and gauging student interest, before expanding the course to 10 weeks for a standard term—an idea that Peltier and Brunnbauer both supported. They hope that future students will get the chance to delve even deeper into the complex world of tropes and stereotypes.

“Identifying these different tropes and different characters, maybe we can identify something about ourselves and how we fit into our society,” Rose said. “Along the way, we can try to knock out the goofy stuff and not perpetuate the bad stuff anymore. We’ve learned why it’s bad, so let’s stop it.”

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