History 221 - Civilization/Renaiss in Italy

'This course focuses on the Italian peninsula and urban life in Florence, Naples, Rome, Milan, and Venice from the fourteenth through the early seventeenth centuries; it follows the little people (popolo minuto), artisans, and elites in their challenges to government, law, church, and society. It looks broadly at the economic, political, social, and cultural factors that gave rise to disturbing questions about traditional conceptions of temporal and cosmic order, about men and women's relationships to one another and the world about them, about wealth, guilt, the shortcomings of human nature, and the potential of the human spirit.'