| 01 | -T----- | 2:30P-5:30P | Eads / 102 | Pegg | No final | 15 | 7 | 0 |
| Desc: | THE STUDY OF THE MIDDLE AGES: This course studies the major issues, debates, problems, themes, and methods, adopted and adapted by historians of the Middle Ages. A great deal is not only learned about the Middle Ages themselves, from 200 to just after 1500, but also about the history of medieval history, from the the seventeenth century up to the twenty-first. Each week we will explore the various methodologies for discovering and reading primary sources of various kinds, whether a chronicle, a poem, a land contract, inquisition records, and even textual fragments that nevertheless that help us imagine the past. How an historian writes is as important as what he or she says and so this course will pay close attention to the art of the historian. It also addresses the question of whether history is a science? Topics to be explored are the Christianization of Europe in the early Middle Ages, the relationship of popes to kings, of cities to villages, of Jews to Christians, of vernacular literature to Latin, of knights to peasants, of the sacred to the profane. Along the way, our attention will be directed to things as various as different forms of religious life, the establishment of frontier communities, the crusading movement, heresy, magic, witchcraft, the shift from a penitential culture to a confessional one, the beginnings of the inquisition, Gothic art, the devil, chivalry, manuscript illumination, definitions of feudalism, female spirituality, and the Black Death. Finally, the question of "medievalism" will be thought about - in other words, how ideas about the Middle Ages, whether bizarre or not, have shaped nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century Europe and America. Students will participate in weekly discussions and write two 10-12 page papers. PREREQUISITE: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor. Pre-modern, Europe. |
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| Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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