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This course explores the European Enlightenment: the eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural movement that gave rise to some of the ideas that informed the American and French political revolutions at the end of the century. These included ideas of human equality and human rights, and the foundation of knowledge and authority in reason and experience rather than in religion and tradition. At the same time, Enlightenment writers also habitually ranked human beings by sex, race, and class and drew upon the European conquest and plunder of the rest of the world to frame their theories. Because of its importance and its profound contradictions, the Enlightenment has recently been the focus of much controversy. In the course, we will discuss all of this ¿ the ideas, the contradictions, and the controversy.

(Graduates, enroll in 334P. Undergraduates, enroll in 234P.) 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?