Lifelong Learners Center | CALLI Classical and Middle Ages

Lifelong Learners Institute

The Lifelong Learners Institute offers open courses for the community independent of Canisius University degree programs. Our instructors come from a wide range of academic disciplines to give our courses a broad cross-section of knowledge, experience, and experience. No papers or tests are given! Just much good discussion!

Classes meet weekly for six weeks and are limited to 16 students. Cost is $60. Questions? Contact Yvonne Widenor at 716-888-2531.

Spring 2023

Reading the Crusades in Literature: Negotiating War & Change

Tuesdays, April 16 to May 21

12:00-1:00 PM

Via ZOOM

To Register

The true history of the Crusades has been mythologized and virtually lost to the modern society by conscious and unconscious misrepresentation of its battles and ﬁgures in lore and mass media, especially in light of real historical events such as 9/11 (understood as a crusade). Nonetheless, literature developed both during and after the Crusades that presents a far diﬀerent perspective than that currently presented in world popular culture. We shall examine in this course the spirit and adventures (both successful and unsuccessful) of those persons who made this pilgrimage known to history as the Crusades. We will read accounts written by participants and by later, creative eﬀorts in poetic, myth, and epic form, i.e. The Song of Roland, in hope of enlightening and deepening our awareness and understanding of this civilization-altering epoch.

WK 1: A Brief History of the Crusades

WK 2: Fulcher of Chartres: Excerpts from History Of The Expedition to Jerusalem

WK 3: Excerptes From Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso

WK 4: Sir Thomas Malory: Books 3 & 7, Morte D’Arthur

WK 5: The Song of Roland

WK 6: The Song of Roland, cont.

Professor Johanna Fisher is an adjunct professor in the Department of English and Co-Director of the Women & Gender Studies Program at Canisius University. Professor Fisher has taught courses such as Romancing the Grail: High Adventures and Chivalrous Knights and The Quest in Medieval Literature for over 20 years. She has also taught German and German literature courses with an emphasis on the contemporary era in ﬁction. Professor Fisher teaches Representations of Nazis in Euro Fiction. She is originally from Bayern, Germany, and lives there part-time when she is not teaching at Canisius University.