The Age of Renaissance

Catalog description

Once seen as the age of artistic glory, the ""discovery"" of new worlds, rampant individualism, and nostalgia for the classical past, the existence of a European Renaissance is now in question. Did it exclude women? Did its ambitions for economic expansion lead to the near extinction of the peoples of the New World? How did the emphasis on reason comfortably coexist with astrology, alchemy, and the ""occult"" sciences? Did its political ideas nurture seeds of democracy or did they legitimize unrestrained exercise of power? Did the attitudes of Europeans towards Africans and others contribute to the development of modern racism?.