Celtic Studies

In this course, students study themes of medieval Welsh stories, techniques of the medieval Welsh storyteller, social and historical contexts of medieval Welsh stories, and the application of critical analysis to medieval Welsh texts.

Students engage with the cultures and histories of Scotland through a multi-disciplinary perspectives offered by archaeology, Celtic languages, history, and literature all with the common question of how Scottish society has interacted with the outside world. Students consider how Scotland’s migratory, economic, intellectual, and cultural links overseas as well as its own distinctive experience of globalization influenced the development of a range of other societies while simultaneously transforming the country’s own domestic character and culture. This central theme of both influencing and being influenced by links with the outside world enables students to assess the global history of a non-US society in a multi-disciplinary way. In doing so, this course demonstrates how humanities-based disciplines explore the mutually influencing nature of the global, the national, and the local.

The course provides a comprehensive overview of the origins, ideology, society, and history of the inhabitants of Ancient Ireland, and introduces the rich and violent world of early Irish literature. Ireland is studied in the context of its legal and historical material, mythology, poetry and legends, exploring the links between the tales, the landscape and the people. Other sources such as ogham stones and manuscripts are considered as well.

The Celts once occupied large parts of Europe including areas such as modern France, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, and Britain. This course introduces the early history of the Celts and discovers what kind of society they had, including the king, the druids, the position of women, what the Greeks and Romans thought about the Celts, and Celtic mythology.