Reed College
Reed College

Humanities 211/212

The Birth of the Modern

Fall 2025 Syllabus

Course Goals and Learning Outcomes

Through the critical study and analysis of a selection of literary, artistic, religious, philosophical, and scientific works from a period of intense social, political, and cultural change, students will become familiar with the ways early modern Europeans constructed and confronted:

• issues of political and religious authority
• social and gender hierarchies
• conceptions of the self and its ability to comprehend the world
• the nature of artistic, literary, and musical expression
• interactions with non-European societies and civilizations

After successfully completing the course, students will demonstrate their understanding of particular texts and other sources, as well as their command of the reading, writing, and analytical skills key humanistic disciplines (i.e. art, history, literature, philosophy) use to study them. In addition, students will be able to undertake sustained critical evaluations of the period’s central cultural and historical dynamics through extended writing and research projects.

Lectures: To limit the risk of spreading COVID-19, recorded lectures, along with handouts and other supporting materials, will be posted to the “All Conferences” Moodle Page in advance of the week. You may watch them at any time prior to your first conference for the week.
Please note: Because of potential copyright issues, all lectures, handouts, images, and other supporting materials should not be circulated outside the course. You are encouraged to refer to lectures and supporting materials in conference and papers, but do not quote, cite, or circulate them outside the scope of HUM 211 without permission from the lecturer.

E-Reserves: Can be obtained through the “HUM 211 E-reserves” link in the top section of the “All Conferences” Moodle page or the links on the electronic version of the syllabus posted on the HUM 211-212 webpage. 

Books for Purchase

  • Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale, trans. Goodman (Chicago)
  • John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford)

  • Dante, The Inferno, trans. Hollander & Hollander (Doubleday)

  • Rice and A. Grafton, Foundations of Early Modern Europe (Norton)
  • Baxandall, Painting & Experience in 15th-Century Italy (Oxford)

  • Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, trans. Bull (Penguin)

  • Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, trans. Wootton (Hackett)
  • More, Utopia, trans. Adams (Cambridge)

  • Rabelais, Gargantua & Pantagruel, trans. Cohen (Penguin)†

  • Navarre, The Heptameron, trans. Chilton (Penguin)
  • Fonte, The Worth of Women, trans. Cox (Chicago)
  • Tito Cusi Yupanqui, History of How the Spaniards Arrived in Peru, trans. Julien (Hackett)
  • Montaigne, Essays, trans. Screech (Penguin)†

Note: To enable conversations in class, it is important that everyone in conference be reading the same edition of the course texts, with the same pagination. The editions listed at the end of this syllabus (and available in the bookstore) have been chosen with an eye to keeping costs low and scholarly standards high.

†Editions so marked differ in pagination from others with this title by the same publisher; if you buy a different edition, be sure to consult one of the editions on reserve in order to arrive at the correct pagination for your edition.

***The bookstore has acquired a limited number of copies of this title for students who are required to purchase books through the campus bookstore. Other students can order this book via hakettpublishing.com, Amazon, or other booksellers.

All readings not required for purchase will be placed on reserve in the Library. For your convenience all other reserve books will be on three-hour reserve.

WEEK I (September 2 - September 5)

Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale (entire)

Forum: The Medieval Mediterranean and Renaissance Humanities (Garrett, Katz, Martínez Valdivia)

WEEK II (September 8 – 12)

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (e-reserve):

  • First Part, Question 2 ("The Existence of God")
  • First Part, Question 4 ("The Perfection of God")
  • First Part Question 76 ("The Union of Body and Soul")
  • First Part, Question 103 ("The Government of Things in General")

Please note that each question has multiple parts. Be sure to read them all. Copies of this reading will also be on reserve.

Averroës, Faith and Reason in Islam: Averroes' Exposition of Religious Arguments, 16-44. (e-reserve)

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: Prologue, chapters 9-10, 15-16, 18-20, & 23. (e-reserve) 

Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, pp. 349-63  [recommended 15-54]  (e-reserve)

Lecture: Race and Space in the Middle Ages (Faletra)

WEEK III (September 15-19)

Dante, Divine Comedy: Inferno (entire)

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700, 4-34

Optional: Rice/Grafton, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1-109.

Lecture: Dante as a Moral Thinker (Faletra)

WEEK IV (September 22-26 )

Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in 15th-Century Italy, 29-93 [recommended: 1-27, 94-108].

Randolph Starn, “Seeing Culture in a Room for a Renaissance Prince,” in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 205-232. (e-reserve)

Alberti, “On Painting” Italian Art 1400-1500. (e-reserve)

Dominique Raynaud, “Why Did Geometrical Optics Not Lead to Perspective in Medieval Islam? Rationality and Good Reason in the Anthropology of Mathematics,” in Raymond Boudon: A Life in Sociology, ed. Mohamed Cherkaoui and Peter Hamilton (Oxford: Bardwell, 2009), 243-266. (e-reserve)

Lecture: The Arts of Perspective (Katz)

WEEK V (September 29 - October 3)

Castiglione, Book of the Courtier

  • Prologue: 31-36
  • Book I: 39-46, 51-98, 102-104
  • Book II: 107-133, 199-202
  • Book III: 207-231, 274-278
  • Book IV: 281-282, 288-304, 315-345.

Lecture: On Ease and Self-Fashioned Illusions (Martínez Valdivia)

WEEK VI (October 6 - 10)

Machiavelli, The Prince (entire; in Selected Political Writings)

Machiavelli, The Discourses (in Selected Political Writings)

  • Book I: Preface, Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 55
  • Book II: Chapter 2; Book III: Chapter 41

Optional: Rice/Grafton, Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 110-45.

Lecture: Civic Virtue and Princely Power (Breen)

WEEK VII (October 13 - 17)

More, Utopia (entire)

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700, 35-87.

Lecture: The Rhetoric of Common Wealth (Martínez Valdivia)

Week of October 20-24: FALL BREAK

WEEK VIII (October 27 - October 31)

Christopher Columbus "Letter from Columbus to Luis de Santangel," American Journeys Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society Digital Library and Archives, pp. 261-272. This reading is available online: www.americanjourneys.org (Document No. AJ-063). Click “Print or Download” for a pdf of the reading.

Angélica J. Afanador-Pujol, “Conquest, Reason, and Cannibalism in a Sixteenth-Century Mexican Manuscript,” The Art Bulletin, 104:2 (Summer 2022): 47-62 (e-reserve)

Lia Markey, “Stradano’s Allegorical Invention of the Americas in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 385-442. (e-reserve)

Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography & the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps, & Monsters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 1-22 [recommended], 23-46 (e-reserve)

Lecture: Crusade, Commerce, and Christianization (Breen)

WEEK IX (November 3 - November 7)

Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” Three Treatises, pp. 277-316 (e-reserve).

S. Lotzer, “Twelve Articles of the Peasantry,” in The German Peasant War of 1525 (e-reserve).

Luther, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants,” in Luther’s Works, vol 46 (e-reserve).

Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Lecture: Popular Piety and the Reformation from Below (Breen)

 

WEEK X (November 10 - 14)

Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

  • Pantagruel: Prologue and chapters 1-9, 12, 15-22
  • Gargantua: Prologue and chapters 1, 3-7, 13-16, 20-30, 32-34, 46-56

[note: Gargantua is a “prequel” to Pantagruel] If you are using the 1955 edition edited by J.M. Cohen, the pages to read are Pantagruel: Prologue & chapters 1–9, 16, & 23–34, and Gargantua, Prologue and chapters 1, 3–8, 14–17, 21–32, 34–36, & 48–58

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, pp. 59-101. (e-reserve)

Lecture: The Abyss of Learning (Faletra)

 

WEEK XI (November 17 - 21)

Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron

  • Prologue & First Day (all)
  • Second Day: Prologue, stories 15, 17-20
  • Third Day: Prologue, story 22
  • Fourth Day: Prologue, stories 33, 36-37
  • Fifth Day: Prologue, stories 42-44; 48; 50
  • Sixth Day: Prologue, stories 51 & 58-60
  • Seventh Day: Prologue, story 61

Lecture: Worldly Wit and Divine Wisdom (Breen) 

 

WEEK XII (November 24 - 26)

José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies: pp. v–xvi, 8–12, 58–66, 71–74, 161–164, 197213, 242–246, 250–258, 329–331, 333–335, 342–344, 345–368, 444–449 (e-reserve)

Titu Cusi Yupanqui, History of How the Spaniards Arrived in Peru

Carolyn Dean, “Copied Carts: Spanish Prints and Colonial Peruvian Paintings” (e-reserve; see Moodle for additional color images)


Lecture: Representing the Spaces of Conquest (Katz); Colonial Histories and Perspectives (Garrett)

 

November 27 - 28: NO CLASS (THANKSGIVING BREAK)

WEEK XIII (December 1 - December 5)

Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women

  • First Day (all)
  • Second Day: pp. 119–168

Lecture: Guest Interview: Prof. Meredith Ray

WEEK XIV (December 8 - December 10)

Michel de Montaigne, Essays

  • “On the Power of Imagination”
  • "On Cannibals"
  • "On Experience"

**No Lecture**