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Department of Humanities
HST301 Europe in Late Antiquity 410-1066
[3 – 0]
This course is a survey of European history from
the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Norman
Conquest of Britain. Topics to be covered include
conditions in Europe throughout Late Antiquity
and the Early Middle Ages; the nature and
spread of the Germanic tribes—Goths, Vandals,
Franks, Huns, and others—and a critical look at
labels like “Barbarians” and “Dark Ages;” the
rise of Western monasticism; the Iconoclastic
Controversy and early Christological disputes;
the Merovingians and Carolingians; Clovis
and Charlemagne; the eastern and western
empires; the clashing authorities of popes and
kings; and the ecclesiastical schism of 1054.
Primary works to guide the discussion include
the writings of Tacitus, St. Augustine’s City of
God, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, the
writings of John Scotus Eriugena, St. Gregory
of Tours’ History of the Franks, the Rule of St.
Benedict, the mystical writings of Dionysius the
Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), Pope Gregory
the Great’s Pastoral Care, Venerable Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History, and more.
HST302 Medieval Europe 1066-1453 [3 – 0]
This course is a study of medieval European
history from the Norman Conquest of Britain
to the fall of Constantinople at the hands of
Mohammad the Conqueror. Major topics
include the Crusades, the founding of Europe’s
great universities, the rise of scholasticism,
Gothic architecture and the great cathedrals,
the medieval guilds, the Concordat of Worms
of 1127, the Magna Carta of 1215, Marco
Polo’s Venice, the Hundred Years War, and the
Council of Florence in 1439. Philosophical
and religious figures like Abelard and Heloise,
Peter Lombard, Anselm, Bonaventure, Albertus
Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon,
Meister Eckhart, Moses Maimonides, Thomas
Becket, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham,
Nicholas of Cusa, and Thomas a Kempis, as
well as literary figures like Boccaccio, Dante,
and Chaucer will be covered through readings in
their original texts and/or through authoritative
scholarly investigations. The emergence
of the Franciscan and Dominican monastic
orders, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Petrarch, and
Gutenberg are also some of the themes that
will be stressed, as will the latest scholarship on
everyday life in medieval Europe.
HST303 Early Modern Europe 1450-1750
[3 – 0]
This course concentrates on the Italian and
Dutch Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation,
and the Catholic Counterreformation in Europe.
It covers the period from the outbreak of the
Wars of the Roses in 1455 to the beginnings of
the Industrial Revolution in the mid-eighteenth
century. It also treats the Age of Discovery that
brought Europeans to the New World starting
in 1492 and sent them to the far corners of
Africa and Asia. Renaissance humanism and its
monumental achievements in art, architecture,
and literature will be emphasized. The great
intellectual encounter among Christians,
Muslims, and Jews in Andalusia and the
termination of Arab rule there in 1492 at the
hands of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain will be
an important sub-theme, as will the start in 1481
of the Spanish Inquisition. Socio-economic
conditions in early modern Europe and the
rise of mercantilism will be investigated as well
and related to broader political and cultural
developments. The beginnings of the scientific
revolution at the hands of Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Newton, and Leibniz will
also be covered. Tudor and Stuart England,
the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and Henry VIII,
the Wars of Religion ending with the Edict of
Nantes in 1598, the Thirty Years War (1618-
1648) ending with the Treaty of Westphalia,
and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 are crucial
milestones for the cumulative narrative of this
course. Naturally, figures like Ignatius of Loyola,
Erasmus, Shakespeare, Bacon, Descartes,
Pascal, Hobbes, Locke, Milton, More, Spinoza,
Vico, and others will be an integral part of the
historical narrative.
HST304 Modern Europe 1750-1945 [3 – 0]
This course treats the period starting with the
Industrial Revolution in Britain and ending with
the culmination in 1945 of the Second World War.
Crucial events of special focus entail the American
Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution
of 1789, both approached comparatively
but also with a view to showing the intricate
historical connections between the two related
transatlantic upheavals; the Napoleonic era; the
1815 Vienna settlement; the 1848 revolutions
throughout Europe; The Crimean War of 1854;
the unifications of both Italy and Germany; Whigs
and Tories; Victorian England; the era of the New
Imperialism; the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution;
and the First and Second World Wars and the
inter-war period. Culturally, the treatment will
include discussions of the Age of Reason and the
French Encyclopedists; romanticism; socialism;
the idea of progress; nationalism; evolutionism;
anticlericalism; impressionism; existentialism;
fin-de-siecle Vienna; cubism; symbolism;
surrealism; the absurd; and the “Social Gospel”
and NeoThomist responses of the Catholic
Church beginning with Pope Leo XIII and the First
ACADEMIC CATALOG [ 2011-2012 ] SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
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