This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

Over the roughly one thousand year timespan of the Middle Ages, warfare was an integral part of European societies and played a key role in shaping those societies. To this day, warlike images such as armored knights on horseback, imposing stone castles, or Viking longships sailing over the horizon, come to mind when we imagine the medieval period. But these enduring images are only snapshots from a long and dynamic story. From the downfall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century to the widespread adoption of gunpowder in the sixteenth century, warfare in medieval Europe underwent major changes in technology, tactics, organization and leadership. At the same time, the changing nature of war and conflict had a profound influence on European society and culture, while the burdens it could place on non-combatants became even heavier. This course will explore these aspects of medieval warfare in Europe across four distinct eras. It begins with the transition from ancient to medieval warfare in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Then, it moves on to the challenge posed by outside invaders in the ninth and tenth centuries and the new “feudal” era which followed. After that, the class moves on to the increased complexity and scale of late medieval warfare from the thirteenth century onward, before finishing with the impact of gunpowder weapons and the dawn of the “military revolution” in the sixteenth century. Instructor bio: Robert Iafolla is a historian of the politics and political culture of late medieval Europe, focusing on the Kingdom of Castile and the Iberian Peninsula. In his recently completed dissertation, Castile serves as a case study for examining how political power possessed, or wielded, by rulers, nobles and other actors was defined amid disputes in the consolidating, yet contested, monarchies of late medieval Europe. While completing his graduate studies at UCLA, he enjoyed sharing the appreciation for the Middle Ages which underlies his research with students in the classroom.

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