New Course for Spring 2019 Europe in the Middle Ages HIST 212-01 Monday/Wednesday. 10:45AM-12:00PM Rathaus 214 Dr. Billado [cid:E187A2C5-FD39-49E3-91AE-5E39ECEBE656] [cid:5C1C04AC-6C23-489D-9BF7-37DA65C454A3] [cid:2E8702DD-332C-41E2-9552-D34C84BA51B5] This course is a survey of European history from the end of the ancient world through the late Middle Ages. We will analyze medieval primary sources (texts, art, and archaeological materials), the writings of modern scholars, as well as later "medievalisms" (i.e., later recycling of the Middle Ages in literature, film, art, architecture) to examine medieval Europe in three different ways: · as formative period to which many aspects of modern western society can trace their origins, including law courts, bureaucratic government, certain types of discrimination and persecution, market economies, and religious institutions; · as a time and place that indeed seems a "foreign country," in which: saints were venerated for licking the wounds of lepers, medicine and magic coexisted, "private" violence was sanctioned by law, human bodies could seem to change from male to female, and priests could have wives; · as an endlessly flexible repository of stories, images, and ideals that later peoples (including in our own culture) have recycled to all sorts of contradictory purposes, in everything from Hollywood entertainment to reenactments at cultural centers, and even to advocating for such disparate ideologies as socialism and fascism.
