History

This course examines the tumultuous period of history known as the Viking Age (793 – 1066) from Vínland in the West to the Caspian Sea in the East. It traces the stories of Viking raiders and settlers in Christian Europe, the Islamic Caliphate, and the New World by interrogating a number of English-translated sources, including the Old Icelandic sagas, the writings of Latin chroniclers and Arabic geographers, and art and material culture. The course investigates what it meant to be a Viking; whether it was a lifestyle or an ethnic identity; whether Vikings were bloodthirsty marauders, well-armed businessmen, or hipsters with a snazzy sense of style, as they appear in some modern reconstructions; and how the people who spread across the islands of the North Atlantic lived in their daily lives. Finally, the course examines the enduring attraction and impact of the three centuries of chaos and expansion that emanated from Scandinavia during the Viking Age.

The so-called period of “Enlightenment” in European history provided a wide range of debates that continues to provoke critical engagements in the following centuries. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the most profound questions in Enlightenment debates, a question that is still seen by many as highly relevant to today's social and political theory, as well as moral and legal philosophy; that is, what constitutes a just society? The course covers texts constituting the “canon” in Enlightenment social and political thought, and will end with a brief reflection on how such debates might still preoccupy some of our own understandings of the nature of politics and sociability.

This course presents original feminist texts from the first and second wave of the women's movement in a historiographical perspective. The course familiarizes students with traditions of modern feminist thought that are central to feminist theory. The course explores the scientific relevance of feminist texts in terms of their critique of culture, politics, and knowledge, and introduces students to the efforts made by feminist scholars to systematize these texts in a critical tradition of its own. Notions such as canon-formation and historiography are introduced by making reference to second-wave feminism. Special emphasis is placed on the idea of which criteria of selection are adopted in order to define certain texts as "feminist classics" and to assess their relevance, especially for the so-called "third feminist wave."
 

This course offers a study of the Spanish Golden Age. Topics include: the Modern Age and the history of Spain; novels of Captain Alatriste; Habsburg Spain and the Spanish monarchy; government and institutions; society and privilege; society and marginalization; women and their image in the Golden Age; Madrid, court of the Habsburgs; Culture and art-- from the Renaissance to the Baroque; culture and society-- education; written culture-- books, reading, and writing; culture and spectacle-- the theater in the Golden Age.