New Course in European History
Spring 2013
For over 1000 years, Christianity was not just Europe’s principal religion, but indeed--despite the deeply troubled and often violent relations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims--the fundamental organizing force of political, social, cultural, and intellectual life on the vast majority of the European continent. Between the 16th and the 18th centuries, however, European Christendom found itself fragmented by the Reformation, challenged by the Scientific Revolution, and ridiculed by the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Since 1789, in the wake of those challenges, the place of religion in modern European life has undergone a fundamental redefinition. The transformation of empire and the spread of republicanism, liberalism, and Marxism have combined both to put organized religion on the defensive and to insure its continued prominence in European public life.
This course will be organized both chronologically and thematically. Given the breadth of the subject matter, an exhaustive account of the history of all of the major religious faiths of late-modern Europe will not be possible in one semester, so the course will focus on relations between faiths as well as challenges common to all, from the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries through genocide and totalitarianism in the 20th century. The course will pay particular attention to the re-invention of the Roman Catholic Church since 1789.
This is a course in history rather than sociology or theology, but elements of those disciplines will be crucial for our inquiry. Two core ideas will guide us: the long-accepted (and now widely discredited) “secularization” thesis, namely that religious belief and practice has been steadily eliminated from European public life in the modern era; and the “social question,” namely the success or failure of organized religion in responding to the deepening poverty and destruction of social norms among the poorest of the poor.
This is a lecture course that will meet twice a week in addition to a weekly discussion section. Expect a reading load of approximately 90 pages per week. Required assignments (in addition to reading and participation) will include a take-home midterm, an in-class final, two 2-page papers on the readings, and a map quiz.
