Becoming Medieval: Self, Other, and the World

Complex relations among the foundational categories of self, other, and the world emerged in high medieval Europe that shaped the future of the globe. In exploring the high middle ages, this course exposes constructions of the self and patterns of power that engendered xenophobia, colonizing conquests, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, environmental change, surveillance of deviants, and stark hierarchies of class, gender, and sexuality. Yet cross-dressing peasant girls who led armies, crusading knights who wore Muslim silks, Jews who advised Christian rulers, sub-Saharan Africans who enjoyed prominence at European courts, and Mongol-curious missionaries also belonged to the process of becoming medieval. As this course demonstrates, Europe in this period became intertwined with other regions, and was home to people of a diverse array of identities who lived boundary-defying lives and articulated capacious notions of self, other, and the world that resonate today.