Early Modern Europe

Catalog description

This course serves as an introduction to European history from approximately 1400-1789, using several key themes. Many dramatic transformations-religious, political, economic, social, intellectual-played a role creating the modern world. This course examines transformations central to the development of the modern and encourages seeing the familiar elements brought about by these changes. This class also strives to show the complexity of this period, including the instability and uncertainty of the changes. Many things about the Early Modern are unfamiliar to us, and in many ways it is an alien culture. Early Modern Europe has a dual nature, and the readings of this course should be a tug-of-war between the familiar and odd; it should be recognizable and strangely distant at the same time. Ultimately, this course proposes that the birth of the modern world, as we know it, was not the only path, and the Early modern period offered many possibilities. PRE, EUR