COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course explores the
rich legacy of Medieval Europe. Scholars generally agree that the
Middle Ages lasted from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west
(around 500 AD) until the so-called Renaissance (14th to 16th centuries
AD). This is an enormous time span, and I have no intention of trying
to cover every event and every aspect of the Middle Ages. Rather,
we will focus on several themes examined over three sub-periods of the
Middle Ages. We begin with the ancestors of the Middle Ages: the
civilization of Rome, its Christian overlay, and the arrival of the Germanic
tribes. From there we will look in turn at the Early (c.500-950),
High (c.950-1250) and Late Middle Ages (c.1250-1500). Within each
of these mini-periods we will examine the following themes: the nature
and effectiveness of government (primarily kingship), the role of Christian
belief and Christian institutions in shaping medieval life, the shape of
everyday life, and the capacity of women to exercise power.
The process of our trip
through the Middle Ages, however, will not merely be one of mastering names
and dates (although you certainly must do a fair amount of memorization).
Indeed, a major purpose of the class is to demonstrate to you the methods
by which historians approach the past. Thus we will be interested
in learning about the nature of the sources available to us, and, above
all, in learning how to interpret them. Interpretation, after all,
is the keystone of the historian’s craft, and it will be one of our purposes
in this course to subject all of the material at our disposal to careful
prodding, questioning, and criticism.
STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
A student who successfully completes this class should expect to:
-acquire broad knowledge of the political, religious, and social
history of the European Middle Ages
(c.500-1500)
-learn how to interpret primary sources from the period under
study and using both written and oral skills
to analyze them
-learn how to synthesize material read from a variety of sources
to produce a larger analytical conclusion
-understand some of the methods used by historians to analyze
the past (chronology, periodization,
comparison/contrast, continuity/change, and some theory, including
gender)
-practice writing analytical prose of a variety of different sorts