Professors

• Mawy Bouchard – Département de Français
• Victoria Burke – Department of English
• Marie-Pierre Bussières – Department of Classics and Religious Studies
• Antoine Côté – Department of Philosophy
• Dominique Côté – Department of Classics and Religious Studies
• Jitse Dijkstra – Department of Classics and Religious Studies
• Kouky Fianu – Department of History
• Louise Frappier – Department of Theatre
• Geoffrey Greatrex – Department of Classics and Religious Studies
• James Nelson Novoa – Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
• Cristina Perissinotto – Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
• Pierluigi Piovanelli – Department of Classics and Religious Studies
• Kathryn Prince – Department of Theatre
• Geoffrey Rector – Department of English
• Andrew Taylor – Department of English

Part time professors

• Geneviève Bazinet, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Department of Music
• Pascale Duhamel, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Department of Music
• Caroline Prud’homme, PhD, Département de français

Areas of Research

• Manuscript culture
• Women’s writing
• Gender and sexuality
• History of reading
• History of literary, religious and universitary institutions
• History of the book and of booktrades in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
• Renaissance Italy
• Jews and Christians in the Renaissance
• French literature of the Middle Ages
• Literature, religion, and philosophy from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance
• Literature and historiography in Late Antiquity
• Production and social use of writing
• Rhetoric and education in Late Antiquity
• Theatre in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

MDV 4900 : Recherche dirigée en Études médiévales et de la Renaissance

• Proposition de projet de recherche
• Acceptation de supervision

Cours à thème variable / Variable topics courses, 2025-2026

Automne / Fall 2025

MDV 2100 Heroes and Great Epic Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

• Prof. Andrew Taylor (ENG)
• Fall 2025, Tuesday and Thursday, 17:30-18:50
• This course explores the figure of the hero in some of the major narratives of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We will examine the shifting reputations of warriors such as Beowulf, knights such as Roland, Lancelot, and Gawain, and the Sultans Saladin and Baybars, as well as the critique of heroism by writers such as Jean Froissart, Christine de Pisan, and Miguel de Cervantes.

MDV 2500  Initiation à la civilisation médiévale et de la Renaissance :Société, Corps et Culture

• Prof. James Nelson Novoa (LLM)
• Automne 2025, Lundi 14:30-15:50, Jeudi 16:00-17:20
• Cours à thèmes variables portant sur divers aspects de la civilisation médiévale et de la Renaissance dans une perspective interdisciplinaire : arts, histoire, littérature, musique, philosophie et théologie.

MDV 3100/ ITA 3106 The Italian Renaissances 1300-1600

• Prof. James Nelson Novoa (LLM)
• Fall 2025, Monday 8:30-11:20
• This course is designed to critically consider the cultural life of the Italian Peninsula during the period that has come to be known as the Renaissance. It will present some of the representative works of literature, pictorial art, architecture, and music while at the same time considering the societies in which they were produced especially given that it was only a small elite that was involved in their creation and circulation during the period. It will also critically engage with the very notion of Renaissance which is increasingly subject to scrutiny in the academic world.

HIS3505 / MDV3500 Jeanne d'Arc, de l'hérétique à la sainte

• Prof. Kouky Fianu (HIS)
• Automne 2025, Mercredi 16:00 -17:20, Vendredi 14:30-15:50
• Active sur la scène politique pendant deux ans seulement (1429-1431), Jeanne d’Arc est l’une des figures marquantes de l’histoire occidentale. Présentée tour à tour comme prophète, hérétique, sainte ou folle, son mythe a traversé les siècles, porté par différents mouvements religieux, culturels ou politiques. Ce cours a pour objectif de comprendre comment et pourquoi ont été créées ces différentes facettes de Jeanne (textes, images, représentations, films), quels usages on en a fait au cours des siècles et comment les analyser. Ensemble, nous étudierons la façon dont différentes périodes et divers lieux ont exploité la figure de Jeanne d’Arc, ou comment l’on est passé tout au long des siècles de la « source » au « texte ».

ENG  6320 /MDV 5100 Middle English Literature /Research Methods and Tools

• Prof. Andrew Taylor (ENG)
• Fall 2025, Friday, 8:30-11:20
• How do you read an old manuscript? How do you find your way through an archive? This course will provide some preliminary answers, introducing you to the experience of working with a range of medieval and early modern books and documents. We will consider how works were composed, copied, and annotated, how they have been and can be transcribed and edited, the challenges they present, at a material level, to modern scholars, and their shifting institutional context, from the medieval monastery or college library to the renaissance library to the modern library to the internet. The focus this year, outside individual projects, will be on Harley 2253, a trilingual (French, English, and Latin) miscellany now in the British Library, and on William Shakespeare’s King Lear, in its various forms.

Hiver / Winter 2026

ENG 4120 / MDV 4100/Storytelling in a Digital Age                             

• Prof. Andrew Taylor (ENG)
• Winter 2026, Monday, 8:30-11:20
• We will explore various forms of narrative that are offered in a digital milieu, both older stories that have been reworked (remediatized), such as medieval romances, and new works, including long-form cable drama, fan fiction, blogs, social media posts, and what is sometimes called digital storytelling (that is, the construction of personal narratives with user-friendly software). We will also consider several pre-digital works, including Chaucer’s House of Fame, as a commentary on oral storytelling.

HIS 4720 / MDV 4500 La sorcellerie en Europe, 14^e- 17^e siècle

• Prof. Kouky Fian (HIS)
• Hiver 2026, Mercredi 14:30-17:20
• Ce séminaire a pour objectif d’étudier le développement de la sorcellerie en Europe entre le XIVe et le XVIIe siècle. La figure du sorcier et de la sorcière se développe à partir de celle de l’hérétique, caractérisé par la désobéissance aux normes dictées par l’Église. La sorcellerie telle qu’elle se manifeste au XVe siècle associe des pratiques occultes, magiques, à la présence du Diable, pour élaborer un personnage menaçant la société tout entière et que les autorités laïques ou religieuses ont pourchassé. 
  Le séminaire est fondé sur l’analyse de documents produits entre XIVe et XVIIe siècles (traités, procès, récits, images) pour comprendre la manière dont les sorciers et les sorcières ont été décrit.e.s et perçu.e.s, mais aussi comment leur description a évolué au cours des siècles. Nous tenterons de saisir qui étaient ces agents diaboliques qui terrorisèrent les Européens.

MDV 5900 - Séminaire de recherche interdisciplinaire / Interdisciplinary Research Seminar

• Prof. Kouky Fianu (HIS)
• Hiver 2026, Mardi, 8:30-11:20
• Séminaire bilingue à thèmes variables destiné à explorer le sens et la valeur du travail interdisciplinaire en études médiévales et modernes. / Bilingual seminar using varying themes as a vehicle for exploring the meaning and value of interdisciplinary work in medieval and modern studies.