RS 423 GQR - The Reformations of 1450-1650

Minimum Credit(s) Awarded: 4
Maximum Credit(s) Awarded: 4

Friends, Families and Faith in Early Modern Europe. The study of the religious Reformations that rocked Europe from about 1450-1650 is an essential element in the discovery of who we are and how we got this wayand the “we” is indeed global, for Europe’s colonies and trading partners were likewise moved. Beyond fracturing religious identities, this era also gave us ideas about freedom and equality whose limits remain yet undiscovered. It contributed to the rise of capitalism, the rationalism of complex Western societies, and the stirrings of modern science. Here were lit the great fires of social activism, revolution, democracy and secularization, even as the intimate flames of affective relationships began to assume their modern forms. This class, then, is equally concerned with both the reforming events and their consequences, including topics in the historiography of both gender and sexuality. Students will find historical study of this foundational era shocking, amusing, awe-inspiring, depressing and perhaps confusing by turn, for it is one of the best windows through which we learn that the great moments in history are, as Georg W. F. Hegel said, “a convergence of ideal principles and selfish interests, woven together in such a way that those involved often cannot tell one from the other.”

Prerequisite(s): COR 1 or COR 199