Constantinople: Constantine and Christianity
Slides:
#12-Constantinople and Christianity
Lecture:
- October 21st at 10:30 am
- Optional background reading for lecture, World History, Chapter 6, pages 253-263..
Damascus: the Islamic Empire
Slides:
#13-Damascus and the Islamic Empire
Lecture:
- October 23rd at 10:30 am
- Optional background reading for lecture, World History, Chapter 8, pages 296-327.
Assignments
- Don’t forget to post your answer to our weekly discussion question on Moodle! You have until Sunday October 27th at midnight to get it done.
Tutorials this week
Tutorials this week will focus on the topics of the Roman and Han Empires.
Readings (all available in Sources for the Frameworks of World History):
- 4.2 Confucius, “The Analects”
- 5.1 “Correspondence with Trajan by Pliny the Younger”
- 5.2 Rex Gestae Divi Augusti by Augustus Caesar
- 6. 1 Ban Zhao, Lessons for Women
Questions to think about:
- What can we learn about men’s and women’s lives in the ancient world from these documents? Do they represent the reality of men’s and women’s lives or do they only reflect how people thought certain groups of men and women should live?
- Confucianism was the dominant philosophy used by the Han empire to rule. What kinds of values does it promote to govern society? We can also learn a lot about running an empire from Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan and Augustus Caesar’s funerary inscriptions (Res Gestae Divi Augustus). What are some of the challenges the Roman empire faced during the time of these rulers?