Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An exploration of the history and historiography of the Renaissance Italy. Emphasis will be given to politics, religion, culture and the economy, and to a balanced study of the Italian peninsula, including Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, the countryside and smaller urban centres.

COURSE DETAILS:

This HIST 402 will provide an overview of the early modern period in the Italian peninsula. Students will have the opportunity to assess and amend their views on this defining moment in Western history through class discussion based on relevant surviving primary sources as well as scholarly contributions, presentations, and original research paper writing.

The material and class discussions will be ordered thematically, and, as much as possible, chronologically, opening with a discussion of the socio-political, economic, and cultural conditions that favoured the emergence of Humanism in the late fourteenth century Florentine Commune. Given its substantial cultural cache as the marquee-level Renaissance society, Florence will be posited as an exemplary paradigm—Florentine Humanism in the Quattrocento is the sole focus of ITAL 391 (offered concurrently)—to be discussed during the opening weeks of the term. From there, the course will turn to Venice, Ferrara, Urbino, Genoa, Milan, Naples, and Rome. While Florence might claim cultural preeminence, these Renaissance centers competed for primacy—military and political, economic and cultural—within the peninsula. Class discussion will alternately zero in on one or more of these centres as it addresses topics such as court life, trade and engagement with the wider world, war and diplomacy, sexuality and gender relations, the role of women, art, and art patronage.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: