Course Description
The gradual discovery of the individual in premodern Europe. The areas of religion, politics, law, art, and literature. Readings will range from Plato and Thomas Aquinas to Dante and Leonardo da Vinci.
Athena Title
PREMOD EUR COLLOQ
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in HIST 7321
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The principal objective of this course is to help prepare students to teach undergraduate courses in premodern European history, by providing them with an overview of the historical literature in this field.
Topical Outline
Introduction/orientation The World of Odysseus, by Moses Finley, 2nd ed. with introduction by Bernard Knox, New York: New York Review of Books, 1999. The Western Way of War, by Victor Davis Hanson, 2nd ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece, by Rosalind Thomas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 (Key Themes in Ancient History). Law, Sexuality and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens, by David Cohen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Primary-source presentations. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, by Moses Finley, 2nd ed. edited by Brent Shaw, Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1998. The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic, by Fergus Millar, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum, by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, by Paul Veyne, abridged edition, ed. Oswyn Murray, tr. from the French by Brian Pearce, 1990. The Demography of Roman Egypt, by Roger S. Bagnall and Bruce W. Frier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Death on the Nile: Disease and the Demography of Roman Egypt, by Walter Scheidel, Leiden: Brill, 2001 (available on library reserve), Introduction. Primary-source presentations. Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, by Ramsay MacMullen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Presentation and discussion of syllabi