History

This course examines aspects of the cultural history of magic with a focus on the period of the witch-hunts in early modern Europe. The course explores how conceptions of magic, witchcraft, and trolldom changed over time; how they were put to use in philosophical reflections, demonological manuals, legislative texts, and oral traditions; and how these ideas became social realities. From the 1500s, combating witchcraft with legislation and judicial prosecution became an important concern for authorities all over Europe. Witchcraft trials consequently became a nexus between law, theology, and the culture of the common people. In this course, students address the cultural and social basis of this development, and review a selection of Norwegian witchcraft trials. The course also introduces later redefinitions of magic expressed in modern occultism and Neopaganism.

The course explores how gender, both masculinity and femininity, is given various meanings in different time periods and how gender intersects with other social categories. The course is thematic and incorporates a long time span as well as various geographical regions but with an emphasis on European history. The course focuses on developing independent and analytical thinking through reading articles on various topic. Students develop a deeper understanding of the role gender has played in history, and they improve their critical thinking through examining and assessing historical arguments.

One of the oldest traditions in France has been la contestation: a word that can be translated as questioning, entering into a dispute, confronting, protesting, or simply contesting. French history has consequently borne the imprint of this long and lively history. More often than not these movements have been led by the youth, for whom protest was a means to bring about change and right what they viewed as wrong. This course journeys through a number of such movements and investigates what was being contested and why, what was being proposed in its place and why, and what was achieved as a result. The course begins with the French Revolution of 1789. In the 19th century, the course visits the barricades of 1848 and the Paris Commune, where the youth often paid with their lives for their ideals. It analyzes the texts of the thinkers and intellectuals who gave the youth the tools to question the status quo. Following these upheavals, the course continues into the 20th century, when the youth were faced with two cataclysmic wars in which their contestation became synonymous with choice, freedom, and resistance. The course then concentrates on the movement that culminated in the year 1968, when the streets of Paris and other major cities witnessed an unprecedented level of contestation, challenging the all-powerful government of General de Gaulle. Here, too, the course studies the texts that questioned authority. It ends with a glance at the beginning of the 21st century, where the youth—faced with the consequences of globalization, ecological concerns, unemployment at home, and wars beyond their borders leading to major waves of migration—continue to confront and question what they view as unfair and unjust.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Western world of the early Middle Ages underwent centuries of transformation marked by new political structures, the adoption of Christianity, and a renewed social organization. This course offers an overview of the early European Middle Ages, prior to the Gregorian Reform and the Crusades, and examines political, social, economic, and cultural aspects while introducing the historical sources that allow us to reconstruct this period.

This course examines some of the cultural consequences of the coming of Christianity to medieval Ireland, especially in the area of reading and writing. Topics include the early history of Christianity in Ireland, the earliest writings from the Celtic-speaking world, religious literature in Irish and Latin, the contribution of the Irish to Christianity and learning abroad, and the impact of Christianity and the new learning on Irish vernacular culture.

This course examines the evolution of Madrid society throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the perspective of urban history. It examines the interrelationship of urban, demographic, economic, social, political, and cultural factors and how they have shaped contemporary Madrid society.