300-400 level courses are on special topics and are more advanced. They often presuppose some basic knowledge in the field and should be more difficult courses than courses at the 1-199 levels. The department is trying to insure that some 400 level courses, although substantially more difficult, are also small in size; they thus may be suitable for graduate students.
HIST 306 Mediterranean World, 1000-1300
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
PRE-1800 | SEM
A medieval ship plying the Mediterranean was often a frail thing: as a paying customer, might find yourself helping to bail for eight days only to be dumped back on the coast where you started. In this course, we explore a period when increasingly, everyone, from every side of the Mediterranean, whatever the danger, was on the sea. Whether it is Maimonides fleeing Spain to become chief judge in Cairo, Richard the king of England conquering Cyprus but not quite getting to Jerusalem, Marco Polo seeking his fortune but telling his tales from prison in Genoa, a Parisian scholar traveling to Spain to learn the science of the Arabs, a work-a-day Arab businessman trying to get a shipment of cheese from Sicily to Alexandria, or maybe just a black rat carrying the plague, we will be looking at the reasons and ways people and things were on the sea. We will also look at what happened when cultures that mostly ignored each others' existence came into constant contact across and around the Mediterranean.
