Lecturing with Chapter 11

This week's lectures had remarkably little to do with the content of Chapter 11. On Tuesday, I relaxed while my excellent Teaching Assistant gave a great lecture on the crusades (what they were; what happened; with what consequences). On Thursday, my lecture attempted to artfully mingle three discrete tasks: (a) preparing the students for our transition to "late medieval" and the intersections with modernity raised thereby, (b) "renaissance," humanism and the "othering" of an intervening dark age, and (c) background on Christine de Pizan, whose Treasure of the City of Ladies is this week's assignment for discussion groups.