Topic for Fall 2022: Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta
Prerequisites: Sophomore Standing
This course will focus on two texts by famous travelers of the late medieval period, one from Europe and the other from the Middle East. Marco Polo was a traveler from Venice who wrote a “best-seller” about his trip to China. Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan traveler who began a journey to complete the Hajj in Mecca, but then kept traveling to sites all around the Mediterranean and as far away as Timbuktu (Mali) and China. This class will focus on select passages from both of these medieval accounts. This half-credit course will meet twice a week for the first six weeks of the term. By Week 7, students will devise a question that will be the basis for a longer written analysis due at the end of the term.