HISTORY 850
COLLOQUIUM IN EUROPEAN HISTORY: MEDIEVAL CITIES
PROF. MARTHA CARLIN
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Spring 2004-5
Office: Holton 328, tel. (414) 229-5767
Messages: UWM History Dept., tel. (414) 229-4361
E-mail: carlin@uwm.edu
Home page: pantherfile.uwm.edu/carlin/www
Office hours: Tuesdays 11 AM – noon, and by appointment
Course description: This course will have two aims. The first is to examine the history of cities and their roles in medieval Europe: how they developed; how they were governed; the occupations and living standards of their inhabitants; their urban landscapes; and their legal, religious, and social cultures. Since this is a colloquium rather than a seminar, the emphasis will be on surveying these topics through the modern scholarly literature rather than through primary sources. The second aim of this course is to burnish research, analytical, and writing skills. Students should expect to do a lot of reading and research, and a lot of thinking and discussing, and to produce ten brief written exercises as well as a research paper.
Attendance: Your regular attendance and active class participation is essential. Students who do not attend class or contact me during the first week of classes may be dropped administratively.
Papers: There will be ten short written exercises (described below under “Topics and Readings”) and one required research paper (described at the end of this syllabus). The paper is due in class on 26 April 2005.
Exams: There will be no exams.
Grading and deadlines: Your final grade will be based equally on three elements: (i) your weekly attendance and active participation in discussions and other class activities (33.3%); (ii) your weekly written assignments (33.3%); and (iii) your research paper (33.3%). The written assignments are due in class on the dates specified in the syllabus. Late work will not be accepted, except in cases of major illness or emergency (it is essential for you to contact me immediately in such a case).
Disabilities: If you have a disability, it is important that you contact me early in the semester for any help or accommodations you may need.
Required textbook:
Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies. Life in a Medieval City. Thomas Y. Crowell, 1969; rpt New York: Harper and Row, 1981.
Other required readings:
There will also be required readings from materials placed on reserve in the UWM library, and from Internet sources. These are listed below. You will require an e-mail account and access to the Internet for this class. All registered students at UWM are assigned free UWM e-mail accounts, and have free Internet access from UWM computers.
Required readings from printed sources (all available on reserve):
[* asterisked books contain useful city maps and comprehensive printed bibliographies on urban history]:
Barron, Caroline M. London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200-1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 1-5, 45-63, 237-66.
DA680 .B36 2004
Barron, Caroline M., and Anne F. Sutton, eds. Medieval London Widows, 1300-1500. London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1994, pp. xiii-xxxiv.
HQ1058.5 G7 M43 1994
Bocchi, Francesca. “Regulation of the Urban Environment by the Italian Communes from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 77 (1990), 63-78.
Z921 .M18B
Bowsky, William M. “The Impact of the Black Death upon Sienese Government and Society.” Speculum, 39 (1964), 1-34.
PN018, v.39 [Available electronically from JSTOR]
Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. Vol I. The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible. Trans. and revised by Siân Reynolds. Orig. pub. 1979; English-language edn. New York: Harper and Row, Perennial Library, 1981, pp. 104-5, 136-7, 190-4, 277-80, 283-5, 298-9, 306-7, 491-7.
HC45 B6973x 1981 v.1
Britnell, Richard. “The Black Death in English Towns.” Urban History, vol. 21, part 2 (October 1994), 195-210.
[my copy]
Campbell, Bruce M. S., James A. Galloway, Derek Keene, and Margaret Murphy. A Medieval Capital and Its Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and Distribution in the London Region c. 1300. The Queen’s University of Belfast and the Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London: Historical Geography Research Series, No. 30, 1993, pp. 1-8, 171-83.
HD9041 .8 .L66x M43 1993
Corfield, Penelope J., and Derek Keene, eds. Work in Towns 850-1850. Leicester, London, and New York: Leicester University Press, 1990, pp. 1-16, 57-73.
HD4841 .W67 1990
Dyer, Christopher. Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200-1520. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 188-210.
HD7024 D94 1989
Emery, Richard W. “The Black Death of 1348 in Perpignan.” Speculum, 42 (1967), 611-623.
PN661 .S6, v.42
Fehring, Günter P. The Archaeology of Medieval Germany: An Introduction. Trans. Ross Samson. London and New York: Routledge, 1991, pp. 198-207.
D125 F4413 1991
Hohenberg, Paul M., and Lynn Hollen Lees. The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1950. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 22-34.
HT131 H58 1985
Holt, Richard, and Gervase Rosser, eds. The English Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200-1540. London and New York: Longman, 1990, pp. 97-119, 238-64.
HT115 .E54 1990
Matter, E. Ann, and John Coakley, eds. Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, pp. 105-19.
BV639 W7 C69 1994
Miskimin, Harry A., David Herlihy, and A. L. Udovitch, eds. The Medieval City. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977, pp. 95-111, 209-27, 293-311.
HT115 .M38
*Nicholas, David. “Child and Adolescent Labour in the Late Medieval City: A Flemish Model in Regional Perspective,” English Historical Review, 110 (1995), 1103-31.
DA20 .E58, v.110
*__________. The Growth of the Medieval City, From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century. London and New York: Longman, 1997, pp. xiv-xvii, 3-6, 18-56, 72-4, 81-4, 129-56, 220-8.
HT115 .N53 1997
__________. The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500. London and New York: Longman, 1997, pp. 50-8, 203-7, 218-22, 266-73, 302-8, 322-40.
HT115 .N55 1997
Palliser, David M., ed. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume I, 600-1540. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 153-86, 291-312.
HT133 .C25 2000
Rörig, Fritz. The Medieval Town. Trans. Don Bryant. Orig. pub. (as Die europäische Stadt) 1932; rev. English-language edn 1955, 4th edn, 1964; rpt London: B. R. Batsford, 1967), pp. 111-21.
HT115 R613 1967B
Rosser, Gervase. “Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 430-46.
DA10 .J6, v.33
Russell, Josiah Cox. Medieval Regions and Their Cities. Studies in Historical Geography. Newton Abbot, Devon: David and Charles, 1972, pp. 20-3, 30-4, 77-90, 112-21.
HT115 R86
Schofield, John. Medieval London Houses. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994, pp. 27-41, 113-33.
[my copy]
Thomson, John A. F., ed. Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century. Gloucester, UK, and Wolfboro, New Hampshire: Alan Sutton, 1988, pp. 107-47.
HT115 .T68 1988
Verhulst, Adriaan. “The Origins of Towns in the Low Countries and the Pirenne Thesis.” Past and Present, 122 (1989), 3-35.
D1 .P3, v.122 [Available electronically from JSTOR]
Useful reference sources in the Golda Meir Library:
The annual International Medieval Bibliography. Leeds: University of Leeds Press, 1967-present.
Z6203 .I66x
The Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer, 13 vols. New York: Scribner’s, 1982-89. (In the Reference Room of the Library. Volume 13 is the Index volume.)
D114 D5 1982
Useful online bibliographies and other research tools:
My own home page. Includes hot links to a variety of research aids and documentation guides.
http://pantherfile.uwm.edu/carlin/www
Online bibliography of urban history, from the University of Guelph, Canada, 1997. Includes a large section on Medieval Cities.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/history/urban/citybib.html
S. A. Scott’s online reading list for a course on the Medieval City, University of Leicester, 1998.
http://www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/sas11/AR338/biblio.html
Medieval English Towns. A collection of online sources, mostly primary sources, but including some secondary and graphical or photographic sources.
http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/towns.html#menu
25 Jan. Introduction to course; what is a city?
WEEK TWO
1 Feb. The origins of towns
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings. For each reading except the book by Gies and Gies, give a full bibliographical description (see handout for format), followed by a précis of the main arguments and evidence. Do not simply summarize factual information. Head your paper with the week number and topic (e.g., “Week 2: The Origins of Towns”). Your paper must be double-spaced, and may not exceed two pages in length.
Readings:
Gies and Gies, “Prologue,” pp. 1-22.
Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, pp. xiv-xvii (Preface), 3-6, 18-56, 72-74, 81-84
David Palliser, “On the Earlier Origins of English Towns,” British Archaeology, no. 24 (May 1997), available online at:
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba24/ba24feat.html#palliser
WEEK THREE
8 Feb. Topography
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings (as in Week 2)
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chap. 1 (“Troyes: 1250”), pp. 23-33.
Braudel, pp.491-497
Hohenberg and Lees, pp. 22-34
Fehring, pp. 198-207
D. M. Palliser, T. R. Slater and E. Patricia Dennison, “The Topography of towns 600-1300,” in Palliser, ed., The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume I, 600-1540, chap. 8, pp. 153-86.
Derek Keene, “Suburban Growth,” in Holt and Rosser, eds., pp. 97-119.
WEEK FOUR
15 Feb. Urban government
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings (as in Week 2)
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chap. 15 (“Town government”), pp. 199-210.
Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, pp. 141-56
S. H. Rigby and Elizabeth Ewan, “Government, Power and Authority 1300-1540,” in Palliser, ed., Cambridge Urban History of Britain, pp. 291-312.
Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, Introduction, pp. 1-5
WEEK FIVE
22 Feb. Economy
Written exercise due: Preliminary bibliography for research paper. Choose a topic for your research paper, and list ten major sources that you will use for it. For each source, provide a full bibliographical description (see handout for format) and a brief description of its relevance to your topic. Do not exceed two double-spaced pages in all.
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chaps. 7 (“Big Business”) and 11 (“The Champagne Fair”), pp. 98-108, 211-223
Adriaan Verhulst, “The Origins of Towns in the Low Countries and the Pirenne Thesis,” pp. 3-35 (read only section I, pp. 3-13)
Derek Keene, “Continuity and Development in Urban Trades: Problems of Concepts and the Evidence,” in Corfield and Keene, eds., pp. 1-16.
Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, chap. 3 (“The Economic Infrastructure”), pp. 45-63
WEEK SIX
1 March Town and countryside
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings (as in Week 2)
Readings:
Campbell, Galloway, Keene and Murphy, pp. 1-8, 171-183
Maryanne Kowaleski, “Town and Country in Late Medieval England: The Hide and Leather Trade,” in Corfield and Keene, eds., pp. 57-73.
Richard C. Hoffman, “Wroclaw Citizens as Rural Landowners,” in Miskimin, Herlihy, and Udovitch, eds., pp. 293-311.
WEEK SEVEN
8 March Demography
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings (as in Week 2)
Readings:
Rörig, chap. 6 (“The urban population”), pp. 111-121.
Nicholas, Later Medieval City, pp. 50-58
Harry A. Miskimin, “The Legacies of London,” in Miskimin, Herlihy, and Udovitch, eds., pp. 209-227.
Russell, pp. 20-23, 30-34, 77-90, 112-121
WEEK EIGHT
15 March Attend evening lecture by John Schofield on the archaeology of medieval London (time and details to
be announced)
Readings: Schofield, pp. 27-41
WEEK NINE
26 March The church and religion
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings (as in Week 2)
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chaps. 9 (“The Church”) and 10 (“The Cathedral”), pp. 120-153
Norman P. Tanner, “The Reformation and Regionalism: Further Reflections on the Church in Late Medieval Norwich,” in Thomson, ed, pp. 129-147
Karen Scott, “Urban Spaces, Women’s Networks, and the Lay Apostolate in the Siena of Catherine Benincasa,” in Matter and Coakley, eds., pp. 105-119
WEEK TEN
5 April Work and guilds
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings (as in Week 2)
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chap. 6 (“Small Business”), pp. 76-97
Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, pp. 129-40, 220-28
Nicholas, Later Medieval City, pp. 203-7 (occupational guilds), 218-22 (victuallers, wool and clothworkers), 266-73 (female labor)
Nicholas, “Child and Adolescent Labour in the Late Medieval City”
WEEK ELEVEN
12 April Standards of living
Written exercise due: Footnotes. Details to be announced.
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chap. 2 (“A Burgher’s Home”), pp. 34-45
Braudel, pp. 104-5, 136-7, 190-4, 277-80, 283-5, 298-9, 306-7
Nicholas, Later Medieval City, pp. 322-29 (domestic architecture)
Schofield, pp. 113-33
Dyer, chap. 7 (“Urban Standards of Living”), pp. 188-210
WEEK TWELVE
19 April The urban environment and public health
Written exercise due: Précis of assigned readings (as in Week 2)
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chap. 8 (“The Doctor”), pp. 109-19
Nicholas, Later Medieval City, pp. 330-40 (urban amenities)
Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, chap. 10 (“The Urban Environment”), pp. 237-66.
Francesca Bocchi, “Regulation of the Urban Environment by the Italian Communes from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century”
WEEK THIRTEEN [Research paper due in class]
26 April Childhood, family, and gender
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chaps. 4 (“Childbirth and Children”) and 11 (“School and Scholars”), pp. 58-67, 154-65
Diane Owen Hughes, “Kinsmen and Neighbors in Medieval Genoa,” in Miskimin, Herlihy, and Udovitch, eds., pp. 95-111
P. J. P. Goldberg, “Women in Fifteenth-Century Town Life,” in Thomson, ed., pp. 107-28
Barron, “Introduction: The Widow’s World in Later Medieval London,” in Barron and Sutton, eds., pp. xiii-xxxiv
WEEK FOURTEEN
3 May Crisis and disorder
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chap. 14 (“Disasters”), pp. 190-8
Richard W. Emery, “The Black Death of 1348 in Perpignan,” pp. 611-623
William M. Bowsky, “The Impact of the Black Death upon Sienese Government and Society,” pp. 1-34
Richard Britnell, “The Black Death in English towns,” pp. 195-210
Nicholas, Later Medieval City, pp. 302-8 (disorder and violence)
WEEK FIFTEEN
10 May Recreation and civic ceremony; the legacy of medieval cities
Readings:
Gies and Gies, chaps. 12 (“Books and Authors”) and 13 (“The New Theater”), pp. 166-189; “After 1250,” pp. 224-229.
Charles Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen: the Communal Year at Coventry, 1450-1550,” in Holt and Rosser, eds., pp. 238-264
Gervase Rosser, “Going to the Fraternity Feast,” pp. 430- 46
Research Paper (due in class 26 April 2005)
Choose one of the weekly topics in this syllabus, and discuss it in relation to one medieval European city of your choice. The exact scope of your paper is up to you: you can produce a general survey over a broad period of time (e.g., “Childhood, Family, and Gender in Florence, 1000-1500”), or a narrower but deeper study (e.g., “The Black Death in Paris”). Since this is a colloquium rather than a seminar, the emphasis is on secondary literature rather than primary sources, and thus your paper should be based primarily on modern scholarly studies. However, you should also consult and discuss relevant published primary sources as needed.
Your paper must be 18-20 double-spaced, typescript pages long (about 5,000 words maximum), exclusive of notes, bibliography, and appendices. It must include as an appendix at least one detailed, scale map of your city in the medieval period, and another map showing the location of your city within its broader region or country.
Your paper should be based on at least ten scholarly sources, and must be fully documented with both Notes (either footnotes or endnotes) and Bibliography, using Chicago-style documentation. (Parenthetical citations are not acceptable.) Be sure to include documentation for all appendices, illustrations, and other accompanying material. For guidelines on how to document your paper, see the class handout, or consult any of the online documentation and style guides listed on my homepage at:
<http://pantherfile.uwm.edu/carlin/www/#DOCUMENTATION%20GUIDES>.