Professor Schotte teaches courses in the history of science and technology, the history of medieval and early modern Europe, and the history of the book. She places a strong emphasis on primary sources—reading them closely, and examining them in person—so most classes involve visits to libraries on- and off-campus.
Current Courses
HIST4230 6.0 Technologies of Communication: A History of Reading from the Codex to the Kindle (Year 2022-23)
This research seminar explores the history of books and their readers from antiquity to the present. Class is held in York’s Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections, and includes trips to other area libraries. By studying books as material objects and communication technologies, we will investigate questions of intellectual property, literacy, author and audience, and “the future of the book.” [This class is fully enrolled for AY22-23.]
More information here.
HIST3234 3.0 Gender in Early Modern Europe (upcoming: Summer 2023)
Explores gender ideologies and their lived social and cultural meanings for women — and men — during modern Europe’s foundational centuries, 1500-1800. Examines intersections between evolving cultural norms, familial roles, and women’s varied activities in spaces outside the domestic household. Also considers gender in relation to major developments of the era — statebuilding, capitalism, overseas expansion, religion and the literacy revolution.
Other courses
HIST 2820 3.0 How to Think about Technology: Hacking the History of Machines (upcoming)
This course asks how we should think about technology. Focusing on one of the most complex and powerful categories for organizing our world, it explores how our relationship with technology has always been about more than material objects: it has been a way to define, dismantle, and reshape our relationships to nature, knowledge, society, the past and the future. NOTE: This course fulfills 3.00 credits of the BEng Complementary Studies requirement for Lassonde students.
More information here.
HIST2220 6.0 Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Fall-Winter 2019-20)
Image: Irish College in Paris, wdl.org
This course surveys the history of Europe from the 11th to the 17th century. In lectures, we will work our way from monasticism to Martin Luther, from the Crusades to Cortés, from the beginnings of the universities to the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution, and from medieval lordship to absolute monarchies. Students will visit the Clara Thomas Archives for a hands-on workshop devoted to medieval manuscripts and early printing.
HIST2250 3.0 Revolutions in the Stars: Science in the Age of Galileo (last taught: Fall 2021)
This course surveys the major developments of the ‘Scientific Revolution’ (c.1500-1700), when technical, theoretical and geographical discoveries gave rise to new understandings of the natural world. Celebrated astronomer, engineer, inventor and author Galileo serves as a focal point, bridging the worlds of famous theoreticians (Copernicus, Vesalius, and Newton) and of anonymous artisans and midwives.
HIST3240 6.0 Renaissance and Reformation: Brand New or New Again? (last taught: 2021-22)
How did inadequate education, greed, power struggles and rapid change produce Renaissance high culture? Was it a return to classical education, culture and institutions? A religious renewal? Or new social, political and economic patterns shaping the modern world?
GRADUATE TEACHING
HIST5701 6.0 Modern Cultural History (2022-23)
HIST5820 3.0 Doing History with Computers (Winter 2024)