The class meets twice a week for 1.5 hour per session.
The "Renaissance" as a phenomenon in European history is best understood as a series of social, political, and cultural responses to an intellectual trend which began in Italy in the fourteenth century. This intellectual tendency, known as humanism, or the studia humanitatis, was at the heart of developments in literature, the arts, the sciences, religion, and government for almost three hundred years. In this class, we will highlight the history of humanism, but we will also study religious reformations, high politics, the agrarian world, and European conquest and expansion abroad in the period.
Attendance and class participation is mandatory. There will be a cumulative final exam at the end of the semester. In addition, students will take a map quiz, write six two-page papers, and one eight to ten-page paper due in Class #25. I will hand out instructions for these assignments later in the term. Each assignment will be weighted as follows in the calculation of the final grade, although these calculations will also take into account improved performance during the course of the semester:
- Class Participation: 30 points
- Two-Page Papers: 10 points each (six papers total)
- Map Quiz: 10 points
- Long Paper: 40 points
- Final Exam: 60 points
- Total: 200 points
The following books are available for purchase at the Coop Bookstore; they should also be on reserve in the Hayden Library. There is also a Course Reader (CR). If you want more background reading on this period in European history, consult Lynn Hunt, et al. The Challenge of the West. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1995.
Rice, Jr., Eugene F., and Anthony Grafton. The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.
Ross, James Bruce, and Mary Martin McLaughlin, eds. The Portable Renaissance Reader. New York: Penguin, 1977.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Herlihy, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Machiavelli. The Prince. New York: Norton, 1992.
Davis, Natalie Z. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Shakespeare. The Tempest. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.