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02/04 - 05/24 | ||||||
M | T | W | Th | F | Sa | Su |
3:25 pm |
3:25 pm |
Subject: History (HIST)
CRN: 22391
Lecture
St Paul: John Roach Center 222
The Enlightenment: The "Age of Reason" in Europe and its Empires During the 18th century Europeans were increasingly confident that they had entered an age of reason, in which rationality and science would bring progress and end superstition and oppression. In this course we will examine key examples of this thinking, including the economic, religious, and political works of influential figures like Adam Smith, Voltaire, and Ben Franklin. But we will also focus on many of the questions that historians are now asking about this process: did religious faith really decline? what roles did women play in this movement? did these ideas lead to political revolutions, and if so did they cause liberty or violence? why was an "age of reason" actually so full of emotion? and why, if this was really a European process, did so much of the Enlightenment take place elsewhere, in American colonies and among Europeans discovering the rest of the globe?
4 Credits