History: Love and Death in Europe

Topics examining European history. Representative topics: Capetian France; World War I in Europe; Twentieth-century Europe. May be repeated for credit with different content. Topics vary by offering; periodic offering at intervals that may exceed four years. Prerequisite: Three hours of History.

Prereq: 3 hours History PACE students with permission and override

This course will concern itself with the lives of ordinary people: not kings, popes, generals, presidents; not Hegel, Einstein, Hitler. Instead, it will focus on the vast majority of Europeans, on lives mostly obscured and often overlooked. We will read and talk about birth, marriage, death, infanticide love, sex, poverty, hygiene, pretending to be other people in the 16th century, life under communism in the 20th, and other fascinating aspects of existence over the past 500 years. The class will operate primarily as an ongoing discussion. The students will have something of moderate length to read for most days, and the class will talk about those readings and those topics. A number of short papers will be assigned across the semester.