Learning Outcomes:
Students will develop critical thinking skills, advanced writing skills, presentation skills, and research skills. They will deepen their knowledge about late antiquity and the early Middle Ages as eras of economic change, about the effects of climate change in the period, the state of private and public health, and social inequalities. They will engage with debates in the historiography concerning the transition from slavery to serfdom, peasants and aristocracies, the impact of the church on peasant communities, and the moral economy.
Indicative Module Content:
Introducing the Peasantry
1. Setting the scene: the peasant Bodo introduces key concepts
2. An era of economic change: climate, health, and economics
A Social Class in Transition
3.From Roman to Early Medieval: the transition from slavery to serfdom
4. The moral economy
A World of Peasants
5.Carolingian Europe
6.Britain
7.Ireland
8. Brittany
9.Egypt
The Church and the Peasantry
10.Peasant religions
11.The Temple Society
12.The church and labour