Marriage in Western History

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this seminar course we will study the history of marriage in Europe, from the ancient Greek world all the way to today’s debates around same-sex marriage. Marriage is of course a fundamental institution of social life in all societies, but the ways in which it operates in the life of individuals and communities is shaped by many social, cultural, religious, political, scientific, legal, and other factors and ideas. We will aim to understand its developments in European history and to connect those developments to the broader context of each successive era. We will also consider depictions of individual marriages (and of marriage in general) in literary works, such as novels, poetry, (auto)biographies, and letters. Most of our evidence will be textual, but we will also examine some visual sources. Our textual sources will be roughly evenly divided between primary sources of all genres and types (from fiction to judicial sources, from religious tracts to biographies of specific individuals) and secondary (i.e., scholarly) modern works of interpretation and historical analysis. This course is a seminar, and thus most of our class time will be devoted to group discussions of our sources. The writing assignments will give students a chance to practice various forms of academic writing.