HIST 1180

Last Updated

  • Schedule of Classes - April 13, 2023 2:00PM EDT
  • Course Catalog - April 12, 2023 7:14PM EDT

HIST 1180
FWS: Viking America

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2022-2023.

Five centuries before Columbus'​s fateful journey, Europeans in flimsy wooden ships were trekking westward across the Atlantic.​ This course examines the Norse discovery of America ca. 1000 AD, focusing on the so-called 'Vínland sagas.' We will study these sagas as medieval historians' attempts to write about their own past, contrasting their works with modern historians' takes on the same issues. We will also engage with Native American perspectives, with the contact zone between texts and material evidence, and with the afterlife of the Norse journeys in popular imagination. Students will write short essays reviewing and reassessing existing historiography, with the aim of refining our sense of the relationship between events and their textualisation, both now and in the past.

When Offered Fall.

Satisfies Requirement First-Year Writing Seminar.

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Syllabi: none

  •   FWS Session. 

  • 3 Credits Graded

  • 19404 HIST 1180   SEM 101

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  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    For more information about First-Year Writing Seminars, see the Knight Institute website at http://knight.as.cornell.edu/.