Media and Communication in the Middle Ages

(4 Credits)

Medieval tools of communication and methods of transportation circulated news, rumors, propaganda, and revolutionary ideas; permitted contact with the supernatural; equipped governments with bureaucratic powers of local subjugation and global interaction; and enabled people to travel far away from their homes on pilgrimages, diplomatic missions, entertainment tours (jongleurs, troubadours), commercial ventures, explorations, and conquests. With a focus on Western Europe, we will consider modes and means of communication: languages, speech and writing, gestures, fashions, rituals, images, artifacts, and maps. Assessing the breadth of medieval mobility will elucidate a pre-modern world system that extended across Eurasia, including the Mongol Empire, the Middle East, and China. Weekly readings will be presented by one student and then discussed by all. A research paper will be prepared through several intermediary shorter essays, each dealing with material relevant to the paper’s topic.