Advanced Topics
- Crisis and Transformation c. 1300–1500
- Advanced Comparative Themes
- Scholarly Craft Ongoing Reference
Choose one from these tracks:
-
Crisis and Transformation (c. 1300–1500)
Focuses on the major upheavals and changes that closed the medieval period. Recommended for most learners as a natural continuation of the core. -
Advanced Comparative Themes
This is divided into three separate sub-tracks. Choose one (or more) depending on what excites you most: - Intellectual & Religious Traditions: for people interested in ideas, philosophy, theology, and the history of knowledge
- Social & Cultural Worlds: for those curious about everyday life, gender, peasants, cities, and non-elite people
- Material, Environmental & Archaeological History: for readers drawn to technology, landscapes, climate, and physical evidence
Scholarly Craft (Ongoing Reference): Use these two short works whenever you need help reading, writing, or understanding how historians produce their work. Dip into them at any time during or after the core.
Crisis and Transformation (c. 1300–1500)
| Subject | Resource |
|---|---|
| Climate & Plague | Bruce Campbell, The Great Transition (Cambridge) |
| Late Medieval States | Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State |
| Yuan–Ming Transition | Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire |
| Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal Roots | Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History |
| End(s) of the Middle Ages | Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Europe |
Advanced Comparative Themes
Intellectual & Religious Traditions
| Subject | Resource |
|---|---|
| Scholasticism & Kalam | Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages (Cambridge) |
| Medieval Philosophy (Global) | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Medieval Sections |
| Science & Medicine | David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science |
Social & Cultural Worlds
| Subject | Resource |
|---|---|
| Peasants & Non-Elites | Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages |
| Gender & Family | Judith Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside |
| Urban Life | Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony |
Material, Environmental & Archaeological History
| Subject | Resource |
|---|---|
| Medieval Archaeology | Chris Wickham, Medieval Archaeology |
| Technology | Lynn White Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change |
| Landscape & Environment | Richard Hoffmann, An Environmental History of Medieval Europe |