The
era of the Renaissance and Reformation (c. 1350-1550) has long
occupied a prominent place in the traditional historical curriculum,
and yet it has also become the inspiration for some of the most
innovative modern scholarship. For good reason: It witnessed
the rise of cities and commerce, the introduction of printing
and firearms, the growth of the state and bureaucracy, the "rebirth"
of the visual arts and classical scholarship, the creation of
vernacular literatures, bitter and often bloody struggles over
religion, the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, and the
European colonization of other areas of the globe. Central to
many of these developments was the struggle to acquire and control
knowledge, generally contained in texts—increasingly, printed
ones. How did ideas originate? How were they preserved, transformed,
disseminated, and appropriated? We will thus pay particular
attention to the role of communication and the "history of the
book" in shaping the origins of the modern world. The course
serves as an introduction both to the early modern era and to
the discipline of history itself. Our attention will be divided
equally between primary sources and a select body of secondary
literature. The former include canonical texts by authors such
as Machiavelli, Luther, and Calvin, as well as documents on
daily life and the experience of the common people.
A
core course for students in the social sciences, humanities,
and cultural studies.
Methods,
Content, and Skills:
Although
this course will introduce you to the Renaissance and Reformation,
it is not an introduction in the sense of a "mere" survey or
a watered-down version of the "real thing." One hundred-level
courses at Hampshire College differ from those elsewhere in
a number of regards. In history, they are usually built around
a self-contained topic rather than a sweep of many centuries,
as such. By studying that topic in some depth and at the same
time branching out from it to address larger questions concerning
the field and the discipline—in this case, European history,
and the historical enterprise as a whole—we hope to teach
you a body of knowledge and a general approach to knowledge.
We will look not only at history, but also at historiography.
That
is, we will consider not only what happened, but what historians
choose to write about and why. We will examine how interpretations
are formulated and then attacked, defended, and transformed
in scholarly debate. In the first place, then, these courses
introduce you to a distinctive mode of enquiry. In the second
place, they are designed to help you develop both particular
and transferable skills in the areas of reading, analytical
reasoning, and writing. You will probably read fewer pages,
and write more (but shorter) papers than in a two hundred-level
course. You will work hard, but the emphasis is on careful and
steady progress. Reading and writing assignments build on one
another in such a way that successful work in the class will
put you in a position to complete Division I and move on to
more advanced courses.
Special
Traits and Techniques
The
present course also displays some distinctive features of its
own.
(1)
Although you will be reading books that you either purchase
or borrow from the library, all other assigned readings will
be in electronic form. A "one-stop" web-based course resource
center will provide you with 24-hour, 7-day-a-week access to
reading and writing assignments, supplementary assigned texts,
a forum for class discussion, further course guidance, and selected
research tools and sources. This is an experiment about which
we are quite excited. Initially, it was part of a larger effort
on the part of nine northeastern colleges (supported by the
Mellon Foundation) to introduce new technologies into the classroom
in the most thoughtful and effective manner possible. That experiment
in turn inspired the College to develop its own course software
(see the link to the course tutoral website,
in the left navigation bar), which will eventually be used across
the board.
(2)
In addition, however, the technological experiment seems particularly
suited to the needs of this course. The people that you will
be studying experienced a radical change in the means of communication:
namely, the introduction of printing. You happen to be living
in the age of another one, wrought this time by digital media
and the internet. Although commentators and journalists are
fond of making grand pronouncements about the rise of the computer
and death of the book, few know enough about either to say anything
worthwhile. On the positive side, though, the coming of the
information age has prompted a new interest in the book and
the ways that technologies shape our lives.
(3)
In order to give you a better sense of the foreignness of the
past, the course also includes workshops with a very unusual
hands-on component. On the one hand, you will learn and practice
traditional craft techniques: papermaking, setting type, creating
images through relief printing, and binding. The result will
be a book of your very own design.
On the other, you will work in teams to build modest web pages
devoted to the history of the book and printing.
Course
assignments will allow you to express similar ideas in several
media: The themes of your traditional research papers and book-art
projects alike will be related, while your collective web pages
will both survey larger phenomena from the history of the book
and include (in abbreviated fashion) some results from your
individual research.
You
will thus be in the enviable position of being able to study
one media revolution by means of another. Perhaps you can in
that way make history in several senses of the word.
(Further
details will be provided in class, and specialized assistance
will be available throughout the semester.)
top
course
requirements
• regular attendance and participation in discussion;
• one or more brief oral presentations (individual or group)
• regular reading responses for a web-based forum;
• writing assignments: several short essays based on the
assigned readings as well as a modest research paper;
• studio project involving pre-modern book-making techniques
• group project leading to design of resource and research
web page
Further
Activities: We will view several films and perhaps take
one local field trip.
reading
list 
The
following books are available for purchase in the College Bookstore
and on reserve*:
• Diana Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual, 3rd
ed.(Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1999) [* exception:
this title is not on reserve]
• Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages,
A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and
the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Mineola,
NY: Dover Publications, 1999)
• Donald J. Wilcox, In Search of God and Self:
Renaissance and Reformation Thought (Prospect Heights, IL:
Waveland Press, 1987)
• Kenneth R. Bartlett, ed., The Civilization
of the Italian Renaissance: A Sourcebook, Sources in Modern
History (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1992)
• Niccolò Machiavelli, ed. and trans. Peter
Bondanella and Mark Musa, The Portable Machiavelli (NY:
Penguin Books, 1979)
• Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed., The Protestant Reformation,
The Documentary History of Western Civilization, ed. Eugene
C. Black and Leonard W. Levy (NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1968)
• Anthony T. Grafton (with April Shelford and Nancy
Siraisi), New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition
and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1995)
• Johannes Reuchlin, Recommendation Whether to
Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books : A Classic Treatise
Against Anti-Semitism, ed. and tr. Peter Wortsman, with
an introduction by Elisheva Carlebach, Studies in Judaism and
Christianity, ed. Helga Croner (NY and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press
Stimulus Books, 2000)
