Globalism before Globalization: The Interconnected World of the Early Middle Ages

Long before the internet or digital technology, the world was a globally interconnected place. This class looks at a period usually considered an age of localism, ca. 400–1000 CE, and considers the contacts and cultural exchanges between societies usually studied in isolation, across Afro-Eurasia, Oceania, and the Americas. Class sessions interweave student analysis of primary sources in translation and assessment of modern scholarship. Themes include art and visual culture, world literature, religion, ritual, courtly society, political and social formation, cultural hybridity, trade, disease, voyages of exploration, race-making, and early medieval understandings of human connectedness on a global scale. P