HIST 229 - Topics in European History

FDR: HU
Credits: 3 credit in fall or winter; 4 in spring)
A course offered from time to time depending on student interest and staff availability, on a selected topic or problem in European history. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2015 topics:

HIST 229-01: Objects of Desire: The Origins of Consumer Culture (3). This course explores how global products (particularly “exotic” foods and medicines) imported into Western Europe after the Age of Exploration initiated new patterns of production, consumption, and trade throughout the globe. Students examine how ownership and consumption of global objects normalized concepts such as: advertising, global commercial networks, cosmopolitism, social class, empire, consumerism, and black markets. (HU)

HIST 229-02: Blood, Sex, and Sermons: The History of the Reformations in Britain (3). The Reformation of the 16th century shattered the once unitary religious cultures of early modern England and Scotland. Although important continuities remained, the introduction of Protestantism wrought dramatic effects on society and culture in both countries, including intense conflicts over the nature of salvation, the burning of martyrs, the hunting of witches, religious migrations in and out of Britain, a reorientation of foreign policy, changes in marriage and baptismal practices, and more. In this course, we explore the lives and legacies of some of history’s most fascinating figures, from Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in England to Mary Queen of Scots and John Knox in Scotland, while also constantly questioning how ordinary English and Scottish men and women experienced the Reformation and its aftermath. (HU)

Fall 2014 topic:

HIST 229-01: Seminar: The Age of the Witch Hunts (3). This course introduces students to one of the most fascinating and disturbing events in the history of the Western world: The witch hunts in early modern Europe and North America. Between 1450 and 1750, more than 100,000 individuals, from Russia to Salem, were prosecuted for the crime of witchcraft. Most were women, and more than half were executed. In this course, we examine the political, religious, social and legal reasons behind the trials, asking why they occurred in Europe when they did, and why they finally ended. We also explore, in brief, global witch hunts that still occur today in places like Africa and India, asking how they resemble yet differ from those of the early-modern world. (HU) Brock.

HIST 229-02: The Great War in History and Literature (3). No prerequisites. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, this course analyzes different forms of personal testimony about the experience of that war, including a famous autobiography by a British officer who became an ardent pacifist, Robert Graves, an autobiographical novel by the fiercely patriotic German soldier Ernst Juenger, a collection of poems by British women who worked on the “home front,” and a useful theoretical work based on a close reading of hundreds of works by French combat veterans.  In class discussions will seek to develop standards to assess the reliability and historical authenticity of such testimony.  Students will be write three short papers on the required readings and choose another “witness” of special interest to them as the subject for a ten-page term paper.  Students with some background in twentieth-century English, German, or French literature are welcome in this course alongside all those interested in the history of the First World War. (HU) Patch