Classes

REL 160: Christian Lives: Faith and Practice in the Christian Tradition

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2024
This course will consider patterns of faith and practice in the history of Christianity through the reading of Christian biographies, autobiographies, and hagiographies.  We will compare archetypal lives of early saints to a range of contemporary Christian experiences that highlight the different ways Christians have sought to describe and to live out their beliefs.  The course will examine in particular the interplay of two dynamic impulses in Christian history: turning within to seek the divine and facing outward in an attempt to transform the world through action.  Lives to... Read more about REL 160: Christian Lives: Faith and Practice in the Christian Tradition

HIST-LIT 10AB / MEDVLSTD 10: Introduction to the Medieval World

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2024
This course provides a journey through the cultures, peoples, objects, and ideas of the millennium commonly described as "medieval", extending from the reorganization of the Roman world in the fourth century to the transformations of the Mediterranean world order in the fifteenth. While historians often emphasize the divisions and dislocations of this era, there also were important continuities and similarities between the societies around, and on either side of, the Mediterranean Sea. The first week of the course will offer a very brisk introduction to the broad political and religious... Read more about HIST-LIT 10AB / MEDVLSTD 10: Introduction to the Medieval World

MEDVLSTD 109: Poverty, Wealth, and Religion in the Middle Ages

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2023

This seminar considers the ethical, political, and spiritual questions arising from the existence of wealth and poverty, the rich and the poor, in medieval European culture.  What was the relationship between Christian charity and economic activity in the Middle Ages?  How did the religious values of a simple, austere life inform and conflict with changes in both Church and society?  Drawing on saints’ lives, theological treatises, art and architecture, and the work of poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, the course will examine how the interaction...

Read more about MEDVLSTD 109: Poverty, Wealth, and Religion in the Middle Ages