The World Made New: European Reformations and the Re-Construction of Identity (CH2002Z)

Content

The period of the European ‘Reformation/s’ is a highly conflicted space in European church history. In his introduction to the topic, Peter Marshall asks “was it a force for progress, liberty, and modernity, or for conflict, division, and repression? Is it history’s premier example of religion’s ability to inspire selfless idealism and beneficent social change, or a cautionary tale of fanaticism and intolerance in the name of faith?”

This unit will explore the myths and conflicted narratives of the Church in early modern Europe as it splintered and re-formed into denominational and national identities. The unit will investigate the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the context of the philosophical, political, social, and economic changes. It will explore religious fracturing in the context of the way in which political and social structures shifted, economic change accelerated, and the concept of the world itself was ‘made new’ through the rise of national and confessional identities. This unit will therefore give students a richer and deeper understanding of the many ‘reformations’ which shaped the post-Reformation world and set the scene for the revolutions of the next three centuries.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

This unit requires two undergraduate foundational units in Church History to have been completed.

Pedagogy

Direct instruction and self-directed learning approach (flipped learning) to learning discipline-specific skills (demonstrating an understanding of concepts in history, reading primary and secondary historical documents, writing an argumentative essay, preparing, and delivering an oral presentation, and classroom dialogues) through lectures, tutorials with targeted learning activities, and formative and summative assessment tasks.

Indicative Bibliography

• Johnson, Carina L, David Martin Luebke, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, and Jesse Spohnholz, eds. Archeologies of Confession: Writing the German Reformation, 1517-2017. Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association, Volume 16. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017.
• Lindberg, Carter. The European Reformations. Second ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
• Marshall, Peter. Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.
• Marshall, Peter. The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Ryrie, Alec. Palgrave Advances in the European Reformations. Palgrave Advances. Basingstoke England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
• Wilson, Peter H. The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.

Assessment