31 - 40 of 789 results for: HISTORY

Grasping. Avarice. Covetousness. Miserliness. Cupidity. Overreaching ambition. Desire spun out of control. The deadly sin of Greed has gone by many names, appeared in many guises, and wreaked havoc on individuals and nations alike. Using a wide range of sources and methods, in this course we will use greed as a lens to understand the way moral precepts regarding wealth and its acquisition interacted with, shaped, and defined the course of economic life in early modern Europe.

Rising inequality is a defining feature of our time. How long has economic inequality existed, and when, how and why has the gap between haves and have-nots widened or narrowed over the course of history? This seminar takes a very long-term view of these questions. It is designed to help you appreciate dynamics and complexities that are often obscured by partisan controversies and short-term perspectives, and to provide solid historical background for a better understanding of a growing societal concern.

Before the year 1492, Spain had been a dynamic and complex region of Muslim and Christian kingdoms populated by Christians, Muslims, and Jews for nearly 800 years. What political, economic, and military exchanges took place among peoples of the three faiths in medieval Spain? Did community leaders and governments attempt to regulate and prohibit fluid identity boundaries? How has 20th-century Spanish nationalism shaped our understanding of medieval Spain? How have 21st-century questions of multiculturalism impacted our view of medieval Spain? These are the kinds of questions that this course will explore through chronicles, poetry, letters, legal documents, art, and architecture.

Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.

Medieval Europe is infamous for its persecutions. In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages were a uniquely unhappy time for Jews, heretics, lepers, witches, and countless other outsiders. But what is the truth about Europe's 'Dark Ages?' What was it actually like to be a Jew in medieval Italy, a leper in England, a heretic in France? Who carried out the persecutions, what motivated them to violence, and did they actually succeed? How do the experiences of medieval Europe's outsiders still inform our own notions of tolerance, human rights, and inclusion today?

( HISTORY 14B is 3 units; HISTORY 114B is 5 units.) Questioning traditional western narratives of the crusades, this course studies Latin and Turkic invaders as rival barbarian formations, and explores the societies of western Afro-Eurasia and the Mediterranean in the centuries before western European global expansion. We approach the crusades as a "Christianized Viking raid," and investigate an array of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish sources. In so doing, we emphasize the diversity of perspectives within the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities: in the Muslim case, the tangle of Turkic, Arab, and Berber ethnicities; in the Jewish case, Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkic speakers ranging from the Iberian peninsula to India; in the Christian case, the fragmented Greek, Latin, and Arabic traditions. We explore how these barbarian invasions transformed the societies of western Afro-Eurasia, how ancient Greek knowledge in Islamic translation came to medieval Europe, and how a fragmenting Byzantine Empire gave way to the rise of the Ottoman Empire. However foreign, the interactions and encounters between these societies continue to reverberate today.

In the third century, a group of Roman soldiers submerged themselves in baptismal waters in the Syrian desert and became Christians, a radical act. A thousand years later, the Jews of Spain were forced to do the same; in 1391, their mass forced baptisms sparked widespread panic. Traces of these historical events, and countless others like them, survive in texts, manuscripts and archeological remains, and prompt the following questions: how did people of the past judge the "authenticity" of a religious conversion? What was the relationship between religion, culture, ethnicity, and race? Was religion an internal conviction, or a cultural practice? This course will explore conversions, both willing and forced, in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Our exploration will focus on conversions among the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

( HISTORY 15D is 3 units; HISTORY 115D is 5 units.) This course provides an introduction to Medieval Europe from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. While the framework of the course is chronological, we'll concentrate particularly on the structure of medieval society. Rural and urban life, kingship and papal government, wars and plagues provide the context for our examination of the lives of medieval people, what they believed, and how they interacted with other, both within Christendom and beyond it. This course may count as DLCL 123, a course requirement for the Medieval Studies Minor.

Trade and crusade were inextricably interconnected in the high Middle Ages. As merchant ships ferried knights and pilgrims across the Mediterranean, rulers borrowed heavily to finance their expeditions, while military expansion opened new economic opportunities. Course themes include the origins of the Crusading movement; the rise of Venice and other maritime powers; the pivotal roles of the Byzantine and Mongol Empires; relations between Christians, Muslims, and Jews; new military, maritime, and commercial technologies; and the modern legacy of the Crusades.