Department of English

Using as our guides the works of Miguel de Cervantes, Michel de Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Baldassare Castiglione, Antonio de Sosa, Elias al-Musili, and many others, this seminar will analyze the social mutations, religious confrontations, political conflicts, cultural productions and circulation of books, ideas and goods that characterized the Mediterranean world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Based on close readings of primary and secondary sources, this seminar will focus on the study of the main transformations—political, economic, religious, cultural, and literary—in the early modern Mediterranean world. Students will also be introduced to and learn to analyze original materials from the Library’s Kislak Center, where the class will meet, including early modern editions of books we will discuss, maps, ephemera, and manuscript documents. *History Majors will have the opportunity to write a 15-page paper to fulfill the Major research requirement*