MIGRATIONS, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN (HS-3280)

This course is co-taught by Christopher Ocker and Wolfgang Schmutz. European Religions, Peoples, Nations, and Identities. What is European? In America, Europe is often thought of as a racially and culturally uniform block: racially white, politically secular, culturally Christian or post-Christian, scientifically advanced, economically privileged and domineering. This travel course based in Salzburg Austria offers a different view, afforded by the medieval and modern experiences of migration. The histories of migrations in Europe highlight the continent’s dynamic political and cultural pluralism. The course examines human movement and the cultural and social identities this produced in Europe’s dominant religion (Christianity, in its Roman Catholicism and Protestant forms), in the cultures of its past and present minorities (Jewish communities figure prominently here), in relation to the development and crises of nation states, and as a factor in European unification. We will approach migrations and identities through the study of several historical locations in Central and Eastern Europe (e.g. Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, Transylvania). The course will include site visits in Salzburg, Vienna, Berchtesgaden, Enns, and Melk. Through the study of these localities, approached through seminal moments in their histories, students will be introduced to medieval and modern European population movements; the basic social and political structures of pre-modern Europe; the role of prejudice, war, and pandemic in migration; and the histories of Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim religious identities, culture-based national identities, European racism, movements of European unity, and the recent migration crisis (2015-2019). This multi-level course will be taught at the Salzburg campus of the University of Redlands from 20 June to 1 July 2022, with some reading assignments preceding the course. The course may also be taken as a non-credit course in the School of Continuing Studies of the University of Redlands. Lectures, discussion groups, tasks and activities in break-out sessions, local and regional site visits on most days. For additional information and costs associated with the class, contact Prof. Christopher Ocker (christopher_ocker@redlands.edu). [Faculty Consent required; 15 max enrollment]