Europe and the World
- Course Code
- CLAS / ENAM / HIST / GSFS / HARC / LITS / MUSC / PHIL / PSCI / RELI 2499
- Course Type
- Research
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
The spring semester Research Course takes place after the term’s tutorials and seminars are complete, in the last month of the semester. This course is an opportunity to explore western European encounters with the rest of the world: historical and imaginative, understandings and misunderstandings. You will identify a text or image, object or building that you wish to explore (or a small group: for instance a selection of poems by a given author). These sources must have been produced between the classical era and c. 1800. You will formulate a question and write a 6,000 word essay. Lectures and field trips will help to get you thinking. Once you have identified the area you wish to work on, you will have weekly one-to-one meetings with an individual supervisor, who will also read and comment on your final draft. This project will help you develop the research and writing skills needed for senior theses, graduate work, and similar challenges ahead. Working with texts in translation is expected: many students work with translations from Latin and other languages. If you do wish to work in a language other than English that is welcome, but this will not automatically receive a higher grade. There is no textbook for this course, and you will not be under any obligation to purchase any volumes (although you may wish to do so). The resources of the Bodleian Library, Keble College Library, and the Feneley Library will almost always suffice.
Your research might touch on topics such as the crusades, conversion, gender, exploration, colonialism, Orientalism, or the ‘noble savage’. The concepts of ‘Europe’ and ‘western Europe’ are themselves historically contingent, and had little resonance within most of the period of study. This course also provides an opportunity to look at the construction of ‘outsiders’ within the area that would become regarded as Europe, including classical ‘barbarians’ (in Herodotus or Tacitus, for example), medieval ‘heathens’ and ‘savages’ (such as the vikings), and those who fell outside the mainstream of western Europe: Muslims, Greeks, and Jews and heretics. Note that projects which focus exclusively on elite culture in Anglophone North America might not fall within the parameters of this course.