The Historian as Cultural Broker: The Making and Remaking of History in the First Millennium

The course examines the fundamental changes after the end of the Roman empire in the writing of history. We will begin with Roman historians writing about barbarians, and continue to explore how in later centuries 'barbarian' and Christian men of the pen reinterpreted and continued these histories as cultural brokers, blending older Roman history with biblical narratives or stories and myths taken from their own imagined "primordial" pasts. In doing so we will observe that these histories not only reflect the fundamental changes from the late Roman empire to its medieval successor cultures, but also how they shaped these changes.