Honors College History: The Modern World
This course will consider Europe from the Renaissance to the eve of the French Revolution. In this period, Europe explored new worlds: new worlds of religion, art, science, and politics, as well as the “New World” of the Americas. We will examine the wrenching effect these explorations had on Europe and on the world, paying particular attention to the Italian Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, European expansion, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the crisis of the Old Regime.
To understand some of these changes, we will read the writings of some of the important figures of the period, including Machiavelli, Galileo, Locke, and Montesquieu. Alongside the momentous, though, we will also consider the mundane: changes in daily lives of ordinary people. (Imagine, for instance, the revolutionary effect of the potato-an American import-on the diets of ordinary people; or picture Italy without tomatoes…) We will study the interaction between “high culture” and “low culture,” and examine ways in which ordinary men and women shaped and responded to the emerging modern world.
Department: R.D. Clark Honors College
University: University of Oregon
Years offered: 2002-2003