European History
European History
01:510:342 Reformation Britain (3)
- Course Code: 01:510:342
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall
- Academic Credits: 3
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Syllabus Disclaimer: The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.
This course explores the political, religious, intellectual, cultural and social histories of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, from the reign of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, until the death of his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth I, in 1603. We will focus on several interrelated themes across a century of dramatic change: The nature of royal authority and state power; the shifting forms of rebellion, protest and resistance; the fraying of traditional social bonds under the pressure of climate change, population growth and spiraling rates of poverty, vagrancy and crime; the revolution in ideas and beliefs fueled by the invention of print; the extension of English colonial authority over Ireland, and the explorations of English adventurers in the Americas; and, above all, the tortured processes—political, social, cultural and psychological—of religious reformation that, after many twists and turns, left the Britannic Isles forever divided. We will meet kings and peasants, farmers and fanatics, merchants and rebels, martyrs and witches, bards and preachers, poets and painters, playwrights and explorers. And we will learn to understand the evidence they have left us of a new world coming violently into being.
01:510:330 The Spanish Civil War
- Course Code: 01:510:330
- Semester(s) Offered: Spring
- SAS Core Certified: HST, WCd
- Academic Credits: 3
Analysis of the historical factors that led to war in twentieth-century Spain, how major powers influenced the conflict's outcome, and the war's impact on European and global politics.
01:510:101 Ancient and Medieval Europe (3)
- Course Code: 01:510:101
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring
- SAS Core Certified: HST
- Academic Credits: 3
Syllabus: Spring 2024
What does it mean to talk about “European” culture? Where did this culture come from and how did it develop into its present-day form? This course explores these questions and more as we explore the history of Europe from the first to the sixteenth century. We will begin with the period of the “Pax Romana” (or “Roman Peace,” which lasted from 27 BC until 180 AD) and trace the disintegration and transformation of the Roman Empire. We end when European kingdoms established distinctive national identities and began colonizing Africa and the Americas. The “Middle Ages” or the medieval period, covers a thousand years of history from about 500 until 1500 AD, and it is with the history of this period with which most of our course will be concerned. We will place the emergence of Europe within the context of developments in the Islamic World and Byzantium (the former Roman Empire in the east). We will trace the transformation of elites from Germanic warlords to mounted warriors with chivalric pretensions and the emergence of monarchs with authority over extensive royal courts and bureaucracies. We will explore the key religious, commercial, technological, and intellectual developments of medieval Europe such as the rise of monasticism, cathedral schools, the papacy, international trade and cities, and the birth of universities with their advances in science and philosophy. We will reconstruct the everyday experiences of medieval men and women of various social ranks, religious backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, “races,” and of the free and enslaved.
01:510:102 Europe in the Global Age
- Course Code: 01:510:102
- Semester(s) Offered: Spring
- SAS Core Certified: HST
- Academic Credits: 3
Syllabus: Spring 2023
Syllabus Disclaimer: The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.
Is “Europe” falling apart?! This course will treat major themes in the history of 17th- to 20th-century Europe, including the rapid, frequent, and radical movement of people and boundaries; continuities and ruptures in political regimes and social mores; ideas of modernity, modernization, and modernism; state-building and citizenship; nationalism and sub- and transnational allegiances; the rise of bourgeois culture, mass culture, and mass politics; colonization and decolonization; war and peace; “universal rights”; and notions of "progress" and "backwardness." It will also consider the meaning of Europe, and “the West,” and examine Europe’s changing place in the world and its relations with the rest of the world. Readings are composed of a wide variety of primary sources, which we will work on learning to analyze for their historical significance. Lectures will draw on historiographical trends, that is, how historians have conceptualized the processes and events we will discuss; we will compare these conceptualizations with our own assessments.
01:510:191 Topics in History (3)
- Course Code: 01:510:191
- Academic Credits: 3
Study of special topics in European history at the introductory level.
