Here are comments from students who took my course in Spring of 2018:
Andy Powell:
I did very much so enjoy your class and you as a professor. I took your class again because I enjoyed your style of teaching in the honors colloquium I took with you previously. The texts we discussed in this class all seem applicable to our daily lives in modern times, as long as we have a guide to parse through some of the difficult parts. You did a great job on that.
Tophat was very useful and made it so the class felt relaxed, but also ensured participation from everyone. Some of the discussions that came out of it felt very meaningful.
Thank you again for the class and enjoy your travels this summer!
Troy Andrew Ivan:
History 278, Medieval Answers to Modern Problems, looks at the problem of happiness in medieval European and modern societies. The course is built around translations of medieval texts that address issues we still face in modern times: Infidelity, betrayal, love, family, the importance of clear communication between people, and more. The course challenges you to think about the search for happiness in the often callous uncaring world that we live in, both in medieval and modern contexts, and asks you to consider what conclusions we can draw about people, both medieval and modern, from the texts which we read in History 278 and the way that they still resonate with us today. While History 278 didn’t give me a definitive answer about what happiness is or exactly how to find happiness, reading the musings of medieval philosophers both secular and religious was very interesting for me and the course gave me a new perspective which helped me to find happiness during some difficult months of my life. I highly recommend this course for anybody who is willing to read medieval philosophy and genuinely consider how it applies to their own life, and how it may have shaped or been shaped by the society in which it was written.
Sara Tucker:
Medieval Answers for Modern problems is a class that beautifully pairs historical writing and history combined with modern sociology. In this class you explore problems we may face in our current society and compare how medieval writers dealt with these same problems