printer friendly pageHISTORY 231G: The Battle for Souls: Europe's Religious Reformations, 1500-1650
How do you get to heaven, and who has the right to decide? The Reformation ruptured Europe and ultimately fractured Western Christianity with competing claims about the soul's health, and the necessary personal beliefs and communal norms to sustain it. It plunged this world into compounding crises of faith, politics, and conscience. At the same time, a media revolution heralded an age of propaganda and censorship. The emergent technology of printing unleashed fiercely public debates that encouraged people to question everything, giving rise to new ideas about skepticism, doubt, and certainty, and new social methods of controlling opinion. We will examine the Reformation by looking at the intersections of media, science, and politics with faith, and grapple with religion's inadvertent role in secularizing society.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Thun-Hohenstein, C. (PI)
HISTORY 232G: Early Modern Cities (HISTORY 332G)
Colloquium on the history of early modern European cities, covering urbanization, street life, neighborhoods, fortifications, guilds and confraternities, charity, vagrancy, and begging, public health, city-countryside relationship, urban constitutions, and confederations. Assignments include annotated bibliography, book review, and a final paper. Second-quarter continuation of research seminar available (HIST299S or HIST402).
Last offered: Summer 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 233: Reformation to Civil War: England under the Tudors and Stuarts (HISTORY 333)
English political and religious culture from the end of the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War of the 1640s. Themes include the growth of the size and power of the state, Reformation, creation of a Protestant regime, transformation of the political culture of the ruling elite, emergence of Puritanism, and causes of the Civil War.
HISTORY 333 is a prerequisite for
HISTORY 402 (Spring quarter).
Last offered: Winter 2021
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-SI
HISTORY 233C: Two British Revolutions (HISTORY 333C)
Current scholarship on Britain,1640-1700, focusing on political and religious history. Topics include: causes and consequences of the English civil war and revolution; rise and fall of revolutionary Puritanism; the Restoration; popular politics in the late 17th century; changing contours of religious life; the crisis leading to the Glorious Revolution; and the new order that emerged after the deposing of James II.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Como, D. (PI)
HISTORY 233F: Political Thought in Early Modern Britain (HISTORY 333F)
1500 to 1700. Theorists include Hobbes, Locke, Harrington, the Levellers, and lesser known writers and schools. Foundational ideas and problems underlying modern British and American political thought and life.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-ER, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Como, D. (PI)
HISTORY 233G: Global Visions: Faith and Knowledge in the Early Modern World
The early modern world saw Catholicism transform itself into a global faith. Missionaries traveled with expanding Portuguese, Spanish, French empires, and beyond to translate their message of salvation into every culture possible from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy to the Japanese shogunate. No group was more instrumental in this regard than the Jesuits. Between 1534 and its suppression by the pope in 1773, the Society of Jesus grew from seven founding members to several thousand worldwide. As evangelizers they operated at boundaries of political, cultural, and metaphysical conflict. As global observers they became astronomers, linguists, ethnographers, historians, and mapmakers. We will critically examine Jesuit strategies to expand their religious network across every inhabitable continent, as well as the distinctive range of reactions from host societies. The extraordinary range of mission fields challenges us with issues of political and cultural conflict, integration, and appropriation. What did it mean to globalize religion in this era? How did missionaries facilitate and maneuver societal confrontation, and how did this conflict shape lasting knowledge and faith?
Last offered: Spring 2023
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 234P: The Age of Plague: Medicine and Society, 1300-1750 (STS 200U)
(Undergraduates, enroll in 234P. Graduates, enroll in 334P) The arrival of plague in Eurasia in 1347-51 affected many late medieval and early modern societies. It transformed their understanding of disease, raised questions about the efficacy of medical knowledge, and inspired new notions of public health. This class explores the history of medicine in the medieval Islamic and European worlds. Changing ideas about the body, the roles of different healers and religion in healing, the growth of hospitals and universities, and the evolution of medical theory and practice will be discussed. How did medicine and society change in the age of plague?
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 235J: The Meaning of Life: Modern European Encounters with Consequential Questions
(
History 235J is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units;
History 335J is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) Across two centuries of social, political, and religious upheaval and transformation, modern Europeans confronted a series of interconnected ¿big questions¿: What is humanity¿s relationship with deity? Where does life, including human life, come from, and where is it going? What considerations should shape human beings¿ relationships with, and actions toward, one another? What is socially and morally acceptable¿or transgressive? Is there life after death, and a spiritual realm distinct from the material world? Through case studies in the history of religion, evolutionary thought, gender and sexuality, and the aims and ends of empire, this course will examine European engagement with these questions across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with some background in earlier periods), paying attention to the ways in which the questions people asked¿and the conclusions they drew¿were shaped by social, religious, and political institutions and structures.
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 235L: Alien Imaginations: Extraterrestrial Speculations in Modern European History
(
History 235L is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units;
History 335L is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) This course will examine the historical basis and evolution of modern European beliefs concerning the existence and nature of alien life throughout the universe, and the ways in which these imagined alien beings have historically reflected an interplay of social, religious, political, and scientific assumptions, hopes, fears, and preoccupations. We will explore the relationship between belief in extraterrestrial life and historical themes and episodes in European history including the debate over heliocentrism, deism and freethought, theories of life and of human nature, changing concepts of national identity, and the intertwined histories of immigration, colonialism, race, and gender. We will particularly examine how and why concepts of the alien took a dark and sinister turn across the late nineteenth- and early-to-mid-twentieth centuries.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 236F: French Kiss: The History of Love and the French Novel (FRENCH 159, FRENCH 256)
The history of the French novel is also the history of love. How did individuals experience love throughout history? How do novels reflect this evolution of love through the ages? And, most significantly, how have French novels shaped our own understanding of and expectations for romantic love today? The course will explore many forms of love from the Ancien R¿gime to the 20th century. Sentiment and seduction, passion and desire, the conflict between love and society: students will examine these themes from a historical perspective, in tandem with the evolution of the genre of the novel (the novella, the sentimental novel, the epistolary novel, the 19th-century novel, and the autobiographical novel). Some texts will be paired with contemporary films to probe the enduring relevance of love "¿ la fran¿aise" in the media today. Readings include texts by Lafayette, Pr¿vost, Laclos, Dumas fils, Flaubert, Colette, Yourcenar, and Duras. This is an introductory course to French Studies, with a focus on cultural history, literary history, interpretation of narrative, thematic analysis, and close reading. Undergraduate students should enroll for
FRENCH159, while graduate students may enroll for
FRENCH256. Readings and discussion in English.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Edmondson, C. (PI)
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