The World of Catherine de'Medici: Gender, Power, and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century France.

Catalog description

This course uses Catherine de'Medici as a point of entry into an exploration of France in the latter half of the sixteenth century. There are three complementary lenses. The first is gender history. The second lens is power. What exactly was power and what did it mean to be powerful in Catherine's world? The third lens is violence. Why was France so unusually violent in this period? The course is deliberately structured so as to interweave these perspectives, as well as to introduce others, including the first French attempts at trans-Atlantic expansion, visual culture, and the insights of microhistory.