Civilization in the West
Atlantic World

This course focuses on boundaries, on the different ways people in the past established a sense of identity and place by creating borders between themselves and others. In particular it examines changing views of the upper class and the underclass, insiders and outcasts, natives and strangers and tries to uncover the logic beneath these distinctions. Topics include slavery, heresy, race, gender, and conformity.

The first block deals with the ancient Mediterranean and medieval and Renaissance Europe; the second shifts emphasis with the Age of Discovery to Latin America. Both blocks use primary texts and selected historical works as the basis of the investigation.

You are expected to do the required reading, to participate actively in class discussions, and to complete a final examination. In addition, in the first block of the course, you do a set of electronic forum assignments and write one analytical essay (5-8pp) dealing with definitions of "the other" across time and space. In the second block of the course, you write a research essay of eight to ten pages on the subject of contact, confrontation, and/or accommodation between Amerindians and Europeans in sixteenth-century Latin America and a short (3 pp) analytical paper focusing on political and social groups in twentieth-century Latin America.

Class Sessions

Feudal society
Pirenne: Pt. 2, II-III
Paper proposals due