Sleep: a Journey through 500 Years of Going to Bed

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

On average, we spend twenty-six years of our lives sleeping. However, how much time do we devote to thinking about sleep: its past, present, and future? While neuroscientists have long been found contemplating sleep during their waking hours, historians have only recently regarded sleep as a serious area of study. In this course, students will delve into the expanding historiography of sleep’s past, exploring how our sleeping habits – shaped by health, medicine, religion, sociability and technology – have evolved over the centuries in terms of what is necessary to get a good night’s sleep. Yet, not everyone has had—or indeed has—the luxury of choosing to have a good night’s rest. Students will develop an empathetic understanding of historical and contemporary sleep inequalities by investigating various sleeping environments, particularly regarding social class and gender. Finally, students will reflect on their own sleeping arrangements in dormitories and compare their experiences with those of students in England, for whom having “a room of one’s own” is the norm.