Europe in the Age of Discovery

Undergraduate

This course introduces students to an age of discovery during which Europeans encountered worlds, real and imagined, far beyond the realm of the familiar. Between the latter half of the 14th century through the late 18th century European society, economics, politics, ideas, and culture were altered in ways that increasingly took on aspects of modernity. From the aftermath of a pandemic crisis through a period punctuated by religious reformations, civil wars, and revolutionary regicides, Europeans steadily adopted more modern attitudes to property, authority, community, work, family, the body, nature, and supernatural forces.