HIST 509 - Early Modern Europe: 1600- 1789 | 2024-2025

An examination of developments and events from 1600 to 1800 including religious wars, the witch craze, growth of absolutism and political rights, enlightened despots, movements within the church and the culture of the enlightenment. In addition, wealth and poverty, social hierarchies, popular customs and culture, marriage, the family, and gender are examined.

HIST 508 - Reformation Europe | 2024-2025

Examines the nature of religious reform in the sixteenth century. Religious ideas are the starting point for an examination of economic conditions, the existing social structure, the family, and the state. Examines how ideas were communicated to and received by the common people. It also examines displays of intolerance and tolerance, coercion and power, and relations between government and society and between women and men

HIST 506 - War, Peace, and Society | 2024-2025

Surveys the changing nature of and approaches to war and its effect on society from the Middle Ages to the present including an examination of various visions and proposals for peace. Includes an assessment of relatively recent armed conflict in Africa, Central Europe, and the Middle East, exploring the causes of contemporary conflict and some of its distinctive characteristics. Also evaluates the effectiveness of various strategies for preventing, abating, and terminating current forms of conflict. Some of the questions discussed are: Why do states go to war?

HIST 504 - Late Medieval Europe | 2024-2025

An inquiry into a period of Europe's past in which beliefs, attitudes and institutions, moulded in the previous centuries, were consolidated into shapes that mark modern European (and North American) culture. The outlines of the modern state and of the modern family are examined. It is also an examination of late medieval civilization for indications of decline and rebirth. The course looks for signs of struggle between forces of tradition and of innovation, and between idealism and material or corporeal realities.

HIST 503 - Engendered History | 2024-2025

Examines specific topics in the history of gender throughout the period known loosely as the modern world and is designed to clarify the process through which ideas of gender evolved and the ways in which masculinity and femininity have been constructed and experienced in a global context. Also examines group interactions across lines of race, class, ethnicity, region, and religion and the influence of groups striving to assert their own identities on ideas of gender.