History 280B: Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe

The interactions between religion and the state in early modern Europe (c.1450-1750) have shaped modern legal-political regimes of state power and religious toleration, and have also shaped modern understandings of “religion” as a category in human society. This course therefore has two interconnected goals. As a History class, it will teach graduate students about early modern Europe and the ways Christian states and empires managed the problems generated by religious diversity, and by the competing authority of churches, in the centuries of the Reformation, colonial violence, religious wars, and the Enlightenment. As a required course for the Designated Emphasis in the Study of Religion, it will teach graduate students about the evolution of modern, scholarly interpretations of religion, the state, and secularity.