ClassInfo

UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement

This course is a history of the Third Estate - that is, the masses, plebs, commoners, dregs, and crowds - which comprise the bulk of Europe's early modern population. From those who toiled the land to the aspirational groups who pined for positions of political power and wealth, "the people" comprised the largest and most dynamic order of society in Western Europe from 1300 - 1800. Our course will chart the everyday experiences of ordinary men and women, taking a look at domestic and community life, in sickness and in health, in harmony and in riot, in the country and in the city. By magnifying social and cultural histories in political, intellectual, and economic context, we will critically explore worldviews of peoples past and learn how to read primary and secondary source accounts of the experiences of ordinary men and women. A second goal of this course is to appreciate the inseparability of history from historiography, including how scholarly approaches to writing the history of peasants, working people, artisans, and labourers have changed over time.

We will approach daily life in early modern Europe thematically, regionally, and chronologically, with certain spaces and times featured. In the first half of the course we will focus on daily life in the Italian city-states and German-speaking lands before shifting our attention to the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. We will devote the second half of our course to daily life in Georgian London and Enlightenment Paris. Themes covered in both parts include popular rituals and beliefs, medicine and public health, furnishings and domesticity, riots and rebellions, workers and the poor, country and city life, public opinion, and gender relations.