By the end of the course students are:
- able to critically review literature and scholarly debates on the theme of the course, City Life in the Mediterranean;
- able to take the necessary steps for successful historical research on this theme; these steps include choice of subject and research question, source material and scholarly methods, conclusions and reports;
- able to search, select and interpret the relevant information for the subject under review as well as choose and work with the relevant research methods;
- able to present and discuss their own research, both orally and in writing;
- able to peer-review other students' written and presented research.
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Throughout history, cities have functioned as the backbone of regions, kingdoms, sultanates, caliphates and empires. Cities have been engines of innovation, melting pots of people and cultural exchange, economic hotspots and centers of social and political power play. This course examines city life in the Mediterranean in the Roman, the early Byzantine, Medieval and Islamic worlds (ca. 500 B.C. – A.D. 1500). While deliberately taking a long chronological focus, the course will demonstrate how our artificial chronological boundaries are not particularly useful when studying patterns and developments in city life. On the one hand, the course will analyze large cities such as Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Baghdad and Cairo, but on the other hand, it will also take a closer look at the important roles of medium size cities such as Ravenna, Trier, Antioch, Jerusalem and Basra. Building on a broad range of written and non-written sources, as well as on themes such as infrastructure, urban design, city government, water management, crowd control, public and private spaces, and cultural exchange, the course invites students to confront their existing views on city life with new insights gained from the primary sources and modern scholarly debates presented in this course. |
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