WRIT 187:  From Miracles to Mesmerism: The Cultural History of the Scientific Revolution

Current controversy about climate change is only the latest in a long history of disagreements about scientific fact in the West. Why do such disagreements happen, and how do they get resolved? To answer these questions, this course examines one of the most radical and conflict-ridden transformations in Western beliefs about the natural world: the “scientific revolution” that gave birth to modern science and medicine between 1500 and 1800. We will focus on moments of controversy that illuminate the cultural mechanics of this transformation: disagreement about the relationship between science and theology, contested new practices of experimentation, and conflicts over “animal magnetism” and the biology of gender. We will conclude by applying lessons of the course to present-day science-related issues.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Writing
Last offered: Fall 2018
Next offered: TBA

 

HIST 221 / ENG 221:  The Renaissance

Co-taught with Prof. Sarah Wall-Randell

This interdisciplinary survey of Europe between 1300 and 1600 focuses on aspects of politics, literature, philosophy, religion, economics, and the arts that have prompted scholars for the past seven hundred years to regard it as an age of cultural rebirth.  These include the revival of classical learning; new fashions in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and prose; the politics of the Italian city-states and Europe’s “new monarchies”; religious reform; literacy and printing; the emerging public theater; new modes of representing selfhood; and the contentious history of Renaissance as a concept.  Authors include Petrarch, Vasari, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Castiglione, Rabelais, Montaigne, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.  Lectures and discussions will be enriched by guest speakers and visits to Wellesley’s art and rare book collections.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies; Language and Literature
Last offered: Spring 2021 (Term 3)
Next offered: Spring 2024

 

HIST 232:  The Transformation of the Western World: Europe from 1350 to 1815

This course surveys the tumultuous transformation of medieval Europe into a powerful civilization whose norms, institutions, and technology reached across the globe. Along the way, we will use original sources, including Wellesley's museum collections, to investigate major landmarks in Europe's political, cultural, social, intellectual, and environmental history. These include the Black Death, the Renaissance, the creation of seaborne empires and the discovery of new worlds, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the coming of capitalism, a multitude of devastating wars, and changes in urban and rural landscapes  all set against the backdrop of European people's ongoing efforts to define their relationships to their own medieval and ancient forerunners and to the world's other peoples.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies
Last offered: Fall 2022
Next offered: TBA

 

HIST 233:  In Search of the Enlightenment

What was the Enlightenment?  Of all eras, it has probably the greatest parental claim to the values, politics, and sciences of the modern West.  It witnessed the triumph of Newtonian physics and the demise of miracles; devalued the authority of the Bible; legitimized democratic, nationalist, and feminist politics; dealt devastating blows to the political prerogatives of monarchs, aristocrats and the clergy; attacked torture and the death penalty; and powerfully defended religious toleration, freedom of the press, and human rights.  To understand these and other alleged accomplishments of the Enlightenment, we will study the works of the greatest luminaries to frequent the coffeehouses, salons, and secret societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Kant, Rousseau, Locke, Diderot, Herder, Beccaria, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Spinoza.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies; Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy
Last offered: Fall 2020 (Term 1)
Next offered: Spring 2023

 

HIST 234:  The Holy Roman Empire: Religion, Politics, and Culture from Luther to Napoleon

This course traces the tumultuous history of Europe's German lands in the three centuries between the Middle Ages and the modern era, long identified with the origins of twentieth-century German militarism and anti-Semitism. We will focus on what makes this fascinating period distinctive: Germany's uniquely persistent political diversity and the religious schism that gave Germany multiple national religions. Topics include the Protestant Reformation, the Great Witch Panic, the devastating Thirty Years War that destroyed 150 years of economic growth, Prussia and Frederick the Great, the Enlightenment, the Napoleonic Wars, and the demise of the extraordinarily complex political system known as the Holy Roman Empire. Sources include treaties, treatises, literature, autobiographical texts, visual art, and music, by, among others, Luther, Bach, Lessing, Mozart, and Goethe.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies
Last offered: Spring 2022
Next offered: Spring 2023

 

HIST 235:  The Birth of Economics: Adam Smith in Enlightenment Context

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the foundational text of modern economics, caused a sensation after its first publication in 1776 and continues to resonate powerfully today.  Readers across the political spectrum have used its authority to defend everything from free-trade liberalism, deregulation, and minimal taxation, to monopoly-busting and the welfare state.  This course investigates the meanings and historical significance of this extraordinary text by studying its intellectual context.  We will focus on the debates that preoccupied Smith and his fellow eighteenth-century Scottish countrymen and that gave birth to the modern social sciences: debates about modernizing Christian theology, about the origins of human society, about economic development, about the meaning of justice, and about the benefits and dangers of greed, luxury, and inequality. 

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies; Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy
Last offered: Fall 2014
Next offered: TBA (with new course number TBD)

 

HIST 235 / ARTH 235:  Epidemics in Early Modern Europe: Art, History, Life and Death

Co-taught with Prof. Jacki Musacchio

What can we learn from epidemics of the past? This course examines the art and history of the most devastating European epidemics from the Black Death of 1348 to the first smallpox vaccine in the 1790s. Topics may include the politically, economically, socially, and artistically destabilizing effects of mass sickness and death; travel bans, quarantines, and state-sponsored surveillance; the role of religious practices, images, and objects; xenophobia and its manifestations in art and society; the development of academic and popular medical practices; and changes in the appearance and function of art and material culture. Through close analysis of both art and history we will gain a better understanding of the destructive and constructive ways in which epidemics transformed their respective societies.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies; Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Last offered: Fall 2020 (Term 2)
Next offered: N/A

 

HIST 352:  Mental Health in European History

What is mental health?  This seminar examines the diversity of answers to this question across a variety of European cultures and subcultures from the end of the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century.  Our focus will be on how particular communities’ conceptions of mental health informed their ethical principles, behavioral norms, and modes of social control.  Topics include meditation, confession of sins, journal-keeping, and other spiritual practices; historical representations of mental illness as foolishness, madness, and melancholy; the demise of humoral medicine and the rise of experimental psychology and neuroscience; the emergence of asylums and social engineering; and the history of controversy over psychoanalytic, electric, pharmaceutical, and other therapeutic techniques.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies
Last offered: Fall 2022
Next offered: TBA

 

HIST 353:  Sentimental Education in Early Modern Europe

Humans have been called rational animals since antiquity, but the notion that we should also develop our non-rational capacities—senses, imaginations, memories, and emotions—is equally central to Western intellectual and cultural history. We will trace this notion through the visual and material culture of early modern Europe in some of its most fascinating manifestations: memory palaces, Jesuit meditation techniques, emblem books, cabinets of curiosities, history paintings, pictorial encyclopedias, games, and more. Each week will involve hands-on study of jewels from Wellesley's own library and museum collections, and each student will finish the semester by writing a history of an object of her choice.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies
Last offered: Spring 2015
Next offered: TBA

 

HIST 354:  King-Killers in Early Modern Britain and France

Popular fascination with kings and queens is alive and well, but European monarchs once enjoyed a mystical, superhuman prestige far beyond mere celebrity.  Why did they lose it?  To find an answer, this seminar investigates their enigmatic killers: perpetrators of cosmic cataclysm in the name of liberation from tyranny.  After examining the medieval legal foundations and ceremonial glamor of sacred kingship, we will analyze the most sensational modern cases of king-killing: Charles I in the English Civil War and Louis XVI in the French Revolution.  Our analyses will encompass political maneuverings by individuals; bitter conflicts of class, religion, and party; the subversive power of satirical literature; utopian yearnings for a more egalitarian society; and the philosophical battles that produced modern concepts of the state.

Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Historical Studies; Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy
Last offered: Spring 2018
Next offered: Spring 2024

 

Last update: May 7, 2020