1
课程详述
COURSE SPECIFICATION
以下课程信息可能根据实际授课需要或在课程检讨之后产生变动。如对课程有任何疑问，请
联系授课教师。
The course information as follows may be subject to change, either during the session because of unforeseen
circumstances, or following review of the course at the end of the session. Queries about the course should be
directed to the course instructor.
1.
课程名称 Course Title
中世纪的欧洲和世界 Europe and the Global Middle Ages
2.
授课院系
Originating Department
社会科学中心 Center for Social Sciences
3.
课程编号
Course Code
SS141
4.
课程学分 Credit Value
2
5.
课程类别
Course Type
通识选修课程 General Education (GE) Elective Courses
6.
授课学期
Semester
秋季 Fall
7.
授课语言
Teaching Language
英文 English
8.
授课教师、所属学系、联系方
式（如属团队授课，请列明其
他授课教师）
Instructor(s), Affiliation&
Contact
（For team teaching, please list
all instructors）
Tommaso Pepe 青年会士 Junior Fellow
Society of Fellows in The Liberal Arts, SUSTech 南方科技大学人文社会科学荣誉学会
e-mail：tommasopepe.uni@gmail.com
9.
实验员/助教、所属学系、联系
方式
Tutor/TA(s), Contact
无 NA
10.
选课人数限额(可不填)
Maximum Enrolment
（Optional）
2
11.
授课方式
Delivery Method
讲授
Lectures
习题/辅导/讨论
Tutorials
实验/实习
Lab/Practical
其它(请具体注明)
Other（Pleasespecify）
总学时
Total
学时数
Credit Hours
32
32
12.
先修课程、其它学习要求
Pre-requisites or Other
Academic Requirements
无 NA
13.
后续课程、其它学习规划
Courses for which this
course is a pre-requisite
无 NA
14.
其它要求修读本课程的学系
Cross-listing Dept.
无 NA
教学大纲及教学日历 SYLLABUS
15.
教学目标 Course Objectives
Knights and monks, castles and queens, popes, emperors, heresies, invasions, migrations, theologians, jesters
and a global pandemic of plague that devastated Eurasia in the 1340s: the medieval world continues to fascinate us
with its rich and complex history. Reversing the outdated image of the “dark ages”, recent scholarship has highlighted
the surprising degree of interconnectivity of the medieval world, nurtured by an intense and far-reaching circulation of
peoples, technology, material culture, ideas, religions and non-human agents such as viruses and bacteria across
Eurasia, the Middle East, Northern Africa and, eventually, the Americas.
In this course we will re-interpret the history of medieval Europe (500 – 1500 CE) within the context of a global
Middle Ages. We will start our survey from the collapse of the Roman empire and the large-scale migrations of
Germanic populations that redefined of the political and demographic composition of Europe in the Early Middle Ages
(500-1000 CE). We will analyze the rise of Islam in the Middle East, the consolidation of the Byzantine empire and the
birth of feudal society.
The second part of the course will focus on the economic revolution of the 11th and 12th centuries, when
improvements in agriculture and trade were accompanied by perduring conflicts between religious and political power,
city and countryside, cultural traditionalism and the rise of new bourgeois mentality. The history of the crusades will
provide us with a window on the military, cultural and political interactions that continued to link – rather than dividing –
Europe and the Islamic world.
In the third part of the course we will focus on the multiple connections that relate medieval Europe to Eurasia via
the Mongol empire. Will conclude our study with a triple analysis of the “end” of the Middle Ages triggered the birth of
the Renaissance, the protestant Reformation and Columbus’ voyages to the Americas. During the course we will read
excerpts from major works by Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and the One Thousand and One
Nights and analyze the portrayal of medieval history in contemporary cinema. Taught in English.
16.
预达学习成果 Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course students will achieve the following learning outcomes:
- Acquire a comprehensive knowledge about the history of Europe in the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on its
main political, social, cultural and economic dynamics.
- Interpret and re-contextualize medieval European history in a global context, recognizing the multiple connections
that relate the history of the Europe to a broad range of cultural, social and political processes in a global, multipolar and
multicultural scenario.
- Develop a comprehensive knowledge about historiographical debates concerning the global Middle Ages.
- Discuss and analyze a variety of primary sources to develop a coherent historical argument.
- Interpret key events and characters of Medieval civilizations across the Mediterranean and Eurasia analyzing the
multifaceted ways in which various cultures, societies and mentalities developed and interacted in the premodern era.
3
17.
课程内容及教学日历 （如授课语言以英文为主，则课程内容介绍可以用英文；如团队教学或模块教学，教学日历须注明
主讲人）
Course Contents (in Parts/Chapters/Sections/Weeks. Please notify name of instructor for course section(s), if
this is a team teaching or module course.)
Weekly Schedule
Note: All readings and course materials will be available on Blackboard
Week
Topic
Readings
Week 1
Course introduction.
Who invented the Middle Ages?
Holmes, Catherine; Standen, Naomi
(2018), "Introduction: Towards a
Global Middle Ages", Past & Present,
238: 1–44, Jacques Le Goff, “Must
We divide History Into Periods?”
Part I
A Changing World:
The Early Middle Ages (500 – 1000 CE)
Week 2
Dark ages? The fall of the Roman empire and
the age of migrations (500-800 CE)
- Collapse and fragmentation of the Roman
empire
-
The Roman-Barbaric Kingdoms
-
Continuity and change: the legacy of Latin
culture
- Counterurbanization and economic decline
-
Religious institutions, monastic orders and
the political rise of the Papacy
Wickham, ch. 1, “Rome and its
western successors, 500–750”
Week 3
A religious revolution: the rise of Islam
- 622 CE: The revolution of Islam
-
The early expansion of Islam: the Umayyad
and Abbasside Caliphates
- Spain and Sicily: frontiers and encounters
around the Mediterranean
-
Doctors, philosophers and mathematicians:
the circulation of knowledge within and
beyond the Islamic world
- Baghdad, 1258: the Fall of the Abbasid
Caliphate
Wickham, ch. 2, “Crisis and
transformations in the East”
Week 4
Knights, priests and servants. The
Carolingian age and the birth of feudal
society
- The Carolingian Renaissance
- Formation and fragmentation of the
Carolingian empire
Wickham, ch. 3, “The Carolingian
experiment, 750–1000”
4
-
Feudalism and manorial economy
-
The Viking and Norman invasions
Week 5
The new Rome: the Byzantine empire
- From Constantine to Justinian: the Rome of
the East
-
Religious disputes and iconoclast tensions
- The Great Schism: the birth of the
Orthodox Church
- Disintegration and rebirth: the Latin Empire
(1204)
- The rise of the Ottomans and the fall of
Constantinople (1453)
-
Wickham, ch. 9, “1204: the failure of
alternatives”
Week 6
The Pope and the Emperor: church-state
conflicts
Religious power and temporal power in
the early and high Middle Ages
The investiture controversy
Religious culture in medieval Europe
From Boniface VIII to Avignon: the Papacy
in crisis
Pauperism, heresy and the challenge to
religious orthodoxy
Wickham, ch. 5, “The expansion of
Christian Europe, 500–1100”
Film: The Name of the Rose by Jean
Jacques Annaud
Week 7
The world in a book: The One Thousand and
One Nights, The Decameron, The Canterbury
Tales
- Analysis and contextualization of The One
Thousand and One Nights, of Giovanni
Boccaccio’s Decameron, Geoffrey
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
Excerpts form The One Thousand and
One Nights, Decameron, The
Canterbury Tales.
Films: The Decameron and Arabian
Nights by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Part II
Economic Revolutions, Religious Reforms,
and Cross-cultural Encounters:
The High Middle Ages (1000 – 1250 CE)
Week 7
Time of the church, time of the merchant:
economic transformations and spiritual
reforms in the 12-13th century
Economic transformations and the
birth of a mercantile society
Pisa, Genoa, Venice, Amalfi: Italy’s
maritime republics
The empire and the city: political
conflicts and social transformations
Stupor Mundi, “astonishment of the
world”: Frederick II and the golden age
of the Kingdom of Sicily
Religion in turmoil: spiritual reforms
and the new mendicant orders
Jacques Le Goff, “Church time and
merchant time in the Middle Ages”,
Wickham, ch. 6-7, “Reshaping western
Europe, 1000–1150”, “Reshaping western
Europe, 1000–1150”
Week 8
The Crusades: religious conflicts or colonial
Wickham, ch. 5, “The expansion of
Christian Europe, 500–1100”
5
enterprises?
- The crusades: historical, political and
religious background
- The First Crusade, the Kingdom of
Jerusalem and other crusader states
- Frankocratia – power, race and ethnicity in
the crusader states
- Saladin’s reconquest of Jerusalem (1189)
-
The fourth Crusade and the sack of
Constantinople (1204)
- The fall of Acre (1291) and the decline of
the Crusader states
Week 9
Spain, al-Andalus, and the Northern
Crusades: religious contacts beyond and
around the Mediterranean
- The Iberian peninsulas between Muslim
occupation and Christian Kingdoms
- The Reconquista and the birth of the
Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms
- Christian, Moors, Jews: intercultural and
interreligious coexistence in medieval Iberia
- The Northern Crusades
Bishko, The Spanish and Portuguese
Reconquest, 1095–1492, Christiansen,
The Northern Crusades (selected
chapters)
Week 10
Life, society and culture in the medieval
cosmos
- Jews, women and clerici vagantes: class,
gender and ethnicity in the medieval societies
- Theology, philosophy and the natural sciences
- The visual arts from the Romanic to the Gothic
style
Wickham, ch. 10, “Defining society:
gender and community in late medieval
Europe”
Week 11
Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise.
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri and
the cultural imaginaries of medieval Europe
-
Analysis and contextualization of Dante
Alighieri’s Divine Comedy
Excerpts form the Divine Comedy.
Films: L’inferno, by Francesco Bartolini
Part III
The Autumn of the Middle Ages and the Origins of Modernity
(1250 – 1500 CE)
Week 12
The “autumn” of the Middle Ages: money,
war and death
-
Political transformations and nation-building
processes: France, England, Spain
- The Magna Charta Libertatum: the first
European constitution, and the Kingdom of
England from the Plantagenet dynasty to
the War of the Roses
- Feudalism in crisis? The One Hundred
Years War
-
1348: The Black Death
Wickham, ch. 11-12, “Money, War and
Death, 1350-1500”, “Rethinking Politics,
1350-1500”
6
Week 13
Europe, the Mongol Empire and Eurasia in
the 13th Century
The encounter between the Mongol empire
and European Christendom in the early 13
th
century
Cultural, religious and economic
connections between Europe, Asia and the
Middle east
European travelers, missionaries and
merchants to Asia
Analysis and contextualization of Marco
Polo’s Travels / Le Divisament dou Monde
Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the
West (selected chapters), Marco Polo,
The Travels / Le Divisament dou Monde
(selected chapters)
Week 14
The end of the Middle Ages/1
The Renaissance
-
Transition and continuity: Middle Ages,
renaissance, early modernity
- The revolution of the arts: the birth of
perspective
-
The revolution of the mind: humanism and
the republic of letters
- The revolution of politics: Niccolò
Machiavelli and the birth of the modern
state
-
De Lamar, Renaissance Europe (selected
chapters), Niccolò Macchiavelli, The
Prince, excerpts
Week 15
The end of the Middle Ages/2
The Protestant Reformation
Corruption and power: the Papal curia in the
14-15th centuries
Johannes Gutenberg and the printing
revolution
Martin Luther and the Ninety-five Theses:
the onset of the Reformation
The Reformation branches out: Zwingli and
Calvin
Reformation and Counter-reformation: the
end of Europe’s religious unity
Cameron, The European Reformation,
(selected chapters)
Week 16
The end of the Middle Ages/3: The discovery
of the Americas and the birth of modernity
- The onset of the age of discoveries:
Spanish and Portuguese explorers in the
early 15
th
century
- Columbus and the discovery of the
Americas
-
The destruction of the Pre-Columbian
civilizations and the origins of Europe’s
colonial expansion
- At the origins of globalization? Colonialism,
capitalism, hegemony
- Towards a Eurocentric modernity? Final
discussion
Wickham, “Conclusions”, Todorov, The
Conquest of America: The Question of
the Other (selected chapters),
18.
教材及其它参考资料 Textbook and Supplementary Readings
7
All course materials will be available on Blackboard.
课程评估 ASSESSMENT
19.
评估形式
Type of
Assessment
评估时间
Time
占考试总成绩百分比
% of final
score
违纪处罚
Penalty
备注
Notes
出勤 Attendance
10%
The course allows two or three
unexcused absences
课堂表现
Class
Performance
10%
Participation in class discussion
小测验
Quiz
课程项目 Projects
平时作业
Assignments
期中考试
Mid-Term Test
Due on Week 7, 12
30%
Two short mid-term papers (500-600
words) concerning topics discussed
in the three course units.
期末考试
Final Exam
40%
At the end of the course, students
are invited to write a research-based
argumentative essay or to develop a
research project in digital format (an
articulated video-essay or digital
project). Students are free to
approach the materials covered
during the course from any
disciplinary or critical perspective.
The paper should be double-spaced
with a length of approximately fifteen
pages (2,000 words). Digital
projects, to be discussed with the
instructor on a case-by-case basis,
should contain a textual component
of no-less than 1,000 words
期末报告
Final
Presentation
Week 15
10%
One final presentation (5-10
minutes) in which students can
present the topic of their final
research paper/project
其它（可根据需要
改写以上评估方
式）
Others (The
above may be
modified as
necessary)
20.
记分方式 GRADING SYSTEM
A. 十三级等级制 Letter Grading
B. 二级记分制（通过/不通过） Pass/Fail Grading
8
课程审批 REVIEW AND APPROVAL
21.
本课程设置已经过以下责任人/委员会审议通过
This Course has been approved by the following person or committee of authority
2022-04-02
