UNL Portfolio:
Proposed Courses
First-Year Course:
The Global Middle Ages:
The Medieval World Beyond Europe
This course will introduce students to the study of the medieval world beyond Europe, painting a picture of an interconnected and vibrant global community. Using the European Middle Ages as a timeframe, students will learn about societies and cultures in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The course examine these spaces by looking at two primary issues in each: the role of the environment in regional history; and the movement of goods, people and ideas within and between regions. The course will highlight the connectedness of the medieval globe, but will also encourage students to question the periodizations we use. Though the course takes the Middle Ages as a presumptive timeframe, coursework and readings will encourage students to reconsider the usefulness of that designation beyond the bounds of Europe. Students should complete the course with a deeper appreciation for the ways the European peoples were a part of the global community, but also how they were peripheral to it.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Identify key differences between medieval cultures in the major geographic regions
- Compare the connections between regions of medieval world
- Explain the movement of people, goods and ideas in the period
- Describe the difficulties of using “medieval” as a global framework
- Analyze the changing relationships between medieval people and their environments
Junior/Senior Level Seminar:
Crescent and Cross: Perspectives on the Crusades
This course will focus on the crusades from the perspectives of both European crusaders and their Islamic contemporaries. The course will be designed with an obvious Western / Eastern format, alternating readings each week between Christian and Islamic sources. Students will read a combination of primary and secondary literature covering the crusades. The readings and the classroom activities will be aimed at undermining the East/West dichotomy, leaving students with a more nuanced perspective of the connections between Europeans and people in the Holy Land. The course will conclude by looking at the ways that crusader imagery is currently used by white nationalists in the United States and Europe.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Identify key people and moments from the major crusades
- Compare cultural experiences people involved in the crusades
- Make historical arguments from primary source materials
- Critique the traditional Western / Eastern historiographical framework
- Identify and discuss crusader motifs in modern culture
Graduate Seminar:
The Meme-able Medieval:
Public Engagement and Medieval History
This course will focus on the intersections of medieval history and public engagement. In the first part of the course, students will examine the ways that modern Western societies use and misuse the European medieval past. Areas of focus will include medievalisms in media culture, the focus on crusading and Viking culture in White Christian Nationalism, and the reliance on a perceived medieval past to ground arguments for national identity. The second part of the course will focus on practical ways that students can engage with the public as professional medieval historians. This will include an introduction to creating small-scale, personal digital humanities projects to highlight students’ research, a section on building audiences of engagement using social media platforms, and workshops on writing and pitching popular history articles.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Analyze the roles of medievalisms in modern Western culture
- Explain the connections between cultural production and historical production
- Identify public audiences and modes of engagement
- Begin work on a DH project related to their primary research
- Pitch a column or article to a non-academic publication
Image citation: Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 157, fol 383r
