Course Description
The rise of the modern European state and its impact on society and culture from 1600 to 1789. Themes include kingship and state formation, popular revolt, aristocratic culture, Enlightenment social thought, and the collapse of the Old Regime.
Athena Title
AGE OF ABSOLUTISM
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making. In general students will be expected to: 1. read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
Introduction to the Course Religious Wars of the 1500s & Henri IV Queen Margot The Reign of Louis XIII The Thirty Years War Absolutist Aspirations: Stuart England Power & Passion: A Tale of Two Murders The Glory & Glare of the Sun King Russian Absolutism: Ivan the Dread and Peter the Great Prussian Absolutism: The “Sandbox of Europe” Austrian Absolutism: The Holy Roman Empire Patronage and the Scientific Revolution Patronage and the Scientific Revolution Mother Goose & Other Folk Tales The Early Enlightenment The Early Enlightenment Enlightenment & Early Romanticism Prussian Absolutism: Frederick the Great Continental Conflict & the Seeds of Revolution
Syllabus