Medieval

This course offers a broad introduction to the European Middle Ages through both textual and material sources. Change - as an individual experience and as a social phenomenon - is a central theme. Why did medieval people make radical changes in their lives? Why did European political systems, cultural expressions, and religious ideals change so dramatically over the course of the Middle Ages?

An introduction to the history and historiography of Europe and the Mediterranean c. 300 – c,1500, emphasizing broad patterns of change and key interpretive debates. Themes include the end of the ancient world and the character of early medieval societies; political transformations east and west over the central Middle Ages; economic expansion and urban development; changes in ecclesiastical institutions and religious cultures.  Students should expect to read and analyze c.

The Middle Ages ended, according to common wisdom, in the "calamitous fourteenth century." It is true that the period from 1250 to 1450 saw warfare, social tensions and peasant revolts, papal schism and disillusionment with the church, not to mention the Black Death. However, these two centuries also saw the strengthening of national monarchies, an outpouring of artistic innovation and the rise of vernacular literatures, new forms of piety and worship, as well as exploration and economic innovation.

This seminar introduces graduate students both to classics in the field of religious history and to recent new approaches to the history of medieval Christianity. Although spanning the entire medieval millennium (500-1500), the course will give most attention to the central and later Middle Ages where the most innovative work on Christian history has focused.

This course offers a broad introduction to the European Middle Ages through both textual and material sources. Change - as an individual experience and as a social phenomenon - is a central theme. Why did medieval people make radical changes in their lives? Why did European political systems, cultural expressions, and religious ideals change so dramatically over the course of the Middle Ages?

1948 was the year that America-after the Great Depression, after the Second World War, after sixteen years of the all but revolutionary experiment in national government of the New Deal and even in the face of a Red Scare that in many ways would dominate the next decade-let out its breath. Finally, that great exhaling said, we can go back to real life- but what was ";real life";?