The Early Middle Ages

Undergraduate

This course focuses on the “Early Middle Ages” in the Mediterranean, European, and Middle Eastern worlds. This course takes us through a number of events that have long been considered great ruptures: the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West and growth of Barbarian Europe, the collapse of the Persian Empire and Rise of Islam, and the Christianization of the Roman world and dominance of Abrahamic religions in the Mediterranean and Middle East. We consider in what way these phenomena served as historical ruptures, and in what other ways we see continuities threaded across the centuries and across diverse locales. At the same time, we learn how vibrant this world was, where political configurations changed and developed, intellectuals battled with essential questions about the nature of God, and the fundaments of the modern world were laid. We consider these subjects and many more in considering both the creative and diverse medieval world, and the ways in which scholars conceptualize its different aspects. HU 0 Course cr HTBA