Sections offered FALL 2023:
#37021 |
REBECCA SPANG |
MW 4:45pm-6:00pm |
HU 108 |
CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
The 1700s in European history are sometimes called an “Age of Enlightenment” or “The Age of Reason” and a handful of well-known writers (Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant etc.) are then treated as human embodiments of the period. In this course, we will read those authors but also many others as we think about the varieties of knowledge available in (and about) the eighteenth century. Remember, this was an era before electric lighting, before wood-pulp paper, and (in most places) before mass literacy. What did writing, reading, and exchanging ideas look like in the eighteenth century and where and when did people do these things? How did writers in Europe know about other parts of the world, what did they know, and to what extent does that “knowledge” continue to shape our lives today? Do readers’ reactions to a piece of writing change with time and place?
Among the specific topics we are likely to cover (subject to change): skepticism and miracles; discipline and education; market freedoms and moral economy; science and sensibility; ideas of human nature, empire, slavery, and national regeneration.
Readings will be drawn primarily from eighteenth-century materials (primary sources) along with historians’ interpretations and analysis (secondary sources). Students should be prepared to present their own work and to comment constructively on each others’ writing and ideas. No prior study of the time or place is assumed, but all students are expected to work hard and be open to learning something new. Final grades will be based on class preparation and participation (including reading reports and discussion-board posts), 40%; “Enlightenment today” presentation (identify and present on a recent media item relevant to the course), 5%; two papers (5-6 pages), 15% each; and a final project-presentation, 25%