From the point of view of a twenty-year retrospective, the seminar will offer a multiform, student-driven assessment of recent
attempts to integrate innovative critical approaches into the traditional disciplines of Medieval Studies. Specific discussion will address Feminist and Gender Studies-linked criticism; Queer Theory and other alterity-linked approaches; the New Historicism; the New Philology; hermeneutic and reception-theoretical criticism; oral-formulaic analysis and textual/bibliographical theory; and specific implementations of approaches promoted by Adorno, Benjamin, Bakhtin, Gadamer, Lacan, Bataille, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Moi, Ciexous, Deleuze and Guattari, among others.