This course uses reading, discussion, and student presentations to examine the ways that historians have conceptualized the Atlantic World and those who people it. It considers the very idea of the Atlantic system as a framework for historical study and the ways in which various historiographical and methodological approaches have affected the way we understand the people and events of the Atlantic basin.

This course examines in detail the background and development of Christian thought and life in the period spanning the Apostolic Fathers through to the Council of Nicaea (325). Particular attention is paid to how the early Christians understood themselves, how they interpreted their religious tradition and related it to their religious experience, and how they defined their own purposes. This course seeks to contextualize pre-Christianity in its diverse expressions.

During the twentieth century, it became clear that the majority of Christians worldwide were not Europeans or North Americans but Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians. Some observers interpret this as a major shift in the very nature of Christianity but others view it as the renewal of what is essentially a non-Western religion. Instead of representing an entirely new development, they see the twentieth century growth of Christianity as a return to the history of Christianity before 1200- 1400 AD when Europe developed as its dominant heartland.