First-Year Interdisc. Sem: There & Back Again: Travelers/Traveling through Middle Ages & Beyond

Catalog description

The image of the pre-modern world as dark, backward, and stagnant has for too long held sway over our modern popular conceptions of the era. In this course, we will investigate the ways in which movement and migration have always been central to the experience of being human. We will begin by exploring metaphors of movement that pre-modern writers employed in thinking about the natural world and the place of human beings within it. In the second half of the course, we will study encounters between Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. We will delve into the questions, the conflicts, and the painful changes that travels and encounters fomented. And throughout, we will ask how we can better understand the historic dimensions of the identities, structures of power, and ideologies of authority that govern our world today.