Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An interdisciplinary approach to a topic focusing on European thought and culture.

COURSE DETAILS:

  Going Small Microhistory, Micro Medieval Studies, Micro Humanities

A course for the intellectually curious, those who like to examine intriguing little things and how they connect to the wider world. Discover your inner Sherlock Holmes, that wry social observer of human experience who lurks inside each of us. Since the 1970s there has been a particular interest in looking at the past through its odd or marginal events, people, and things. Robert Darnton characterized one aspect of this as “incident analysis” while Carlo Ginzburg and his Italian school called it “microhistory.” ‘Going small’ does not directly upend macrohistory and large sweeping narratives but rather shows us that big history misses much. This course will pursue the particular and the peculiar in a different way. Ginzburg’s weird miller Menocchio, medieval weather wizards, and the case of Martin Guerre’s identity theft in an early-modern village will take us on a bumpy ride through the neglected underside of European life. In break-out sessions, the class will take up other revealing moments, people, and things (the Great Cat Massacre, Pieter Bruegel’s stoneheads, object histories, a monk on military campaign, and many other small inquiries), and try to explore the reach and value of pursuing little things in history, medieval studies, and humanities in general (in art, literature, and cultural studies).

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: