Università Roma Tre

Europe before the modern era produced one of the most dynamic, transformative, and violent epochs in world history. The study of early-modern Europe also has generated some of the most exciting and important scholarship in the discipline of History: key approaches and methodologies – often borrowed from other disciplines – have evolved and been adapted to historical research, in turn influencing many fields beyond Historical Studies.
Taking as its focus the early modern period in Europe (1450–1750), this course is structured around one of the field’s most important areas of research in recent decades, cultural history. Applied in its broadest sense, it will provide not only the lens through which we view the period itself, but also our starting point for a critical analysis of its historiography, with a particular focus on classic studies from the Anglophone world that formed the foundations of the field. Our study will be grouped around three key themes that lend themselves best to a cultural-historical analysis: the so-called Renaissance, Reformations, and Age of Discovery. Case studies, primary documents, site visits in Rome, and critical readings of select secondary studies will help us explore the cultural history of the early-modern past, as well as problematize it through assessing the interpretations that have been the most influential in shaping the discipline.
The course will be relevant, not just to those students who are undertaking studies in the pre-modern period, but also to those who wish to broaden their understanding of key historical approaches and methodologies that underpin historical research in any field, especially from the Anglophone world.
The course will be conducted over ten weeks of classes (23/2/16-11/5/16); for the first six weeks of classes, there will be four contact hours: one two-hour lecture (Tuesday) and one two-hour seminar (Wednesday); in the first session, a survey of the week’s theme will be provided in a lecture format, and in the second session, weekly set readings will be analysed and discussed in an interactive group seminar format. (There will be no classes scheduled from 28/3 to 8/4). For the final four weeks of the course, we shall meet for three hours on Wednesdays only (three field trips in Rome, and the final week will be in the usual classroom at Roma Tre).

Please note that weekly readings will be provided electronically through the Roma Tre Online Teaching & Learning Site for this Course, along with other relevant materials.
Peter Burke, Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Italy: A Sociological Approach, Rev. Ed. (London: Fontana, 1974)
Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)
John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985)
Carlo Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems and Clues (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)
Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1: Regarding Method, by (West Nyack, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: the Wonder of the New World (New York: Clarendon Press, 1991)