HONR 1220 - The Politics of Medieval Communities

4 credit hours
This course investigates the medieval Mediterranean world, a multicultural and dynamic space at the intersection of three continents and the site of intensely productive and conflictive interactions. New states replaced the older Roman and Persian empires that had ruled over much of northern Africa, western Asia, and Europe, and some of these became imperial themselves. In these areas political and religious communities and institutions emerged, changed, and sometimes disappeared over a period of a thousand years (roughly 500 to 1500 CE). We will see how debates about religious identity, economic systems, representation in decision-making, gender, and power, among other social questions, played out in a variety of settings. From the end of Roman antiquity to the beginning of truly global interconnection in the early Renaissance, groups defined and organized membership in the community in many different ways, and this course focuses on the way these ideas and practices shape emerging notions of politics, society and rights in the modern world.