This course offers a survey of medieval sources, their problems, and the methodologies adopted by historians to recover and understand pre-modern mentalities. It will serve to familiarize students with medieval culture, its peculiar forms of evidence (manuscripts!), and their modern interpretations. Emphasis is placed not on the mastery of facts, but on proficiency at asking productive questions about the past and the present – that is, on critical thinking and its relationship with and application to history as an ongoing process of inquiry, interpretation, and argument.
