Medieval Europe (500-1500)

A thousand-year sweep from Rome's collapse to the Renaissance, this course asks how "the Middle Ages" was actually built — politically by barbarian kingdoms and feudal monarchies, religiously by a reforming Church, and economically by the societies that survived plague, invasion, and crusade. You'll write two reports, give a presentation, and sit a final, which means most of your time goes into reading and arguing about primary sources rather than memorizing dynasties. It pairs naturally with earlier antiquity courses and gives you the historiographical vocabulary — antiquity, modernity, feudalism — that later European and early-modern history classes assume you already own.