About this Site
Overview
This site exists primarily for teaching a college course on the Crusades. The entire site is open to the public except for the discussion areas. If you have questions concerning the subject of the Crusades itself, consult my Comments and Questions page. If you are interested in taking the course, consult the Registration page.
How the online class works
This course rests upon three bases: a physical book, the Web site, and discussion. It is a very traditional college course in its principles and subject matter; only the format is new.
We still need a textbook. More and more primary sources are becoming available on the Net, thanks to some very dedicated scholars, but we still need the secondary literature to provide context and interpretation for students. The on-line lectures do some of this, but I use the textbook to provide another point of view and to cover certain important topics that my lectures do not.
The Web site takes the place of my live lectures. They are both more and less than my live lectures, in the same way a literary work is both more and less than a stage performance. I have lectures on the major crusades, plus a miscelleny of other topics. The Web site also provides the syllabus and other administrative structure, without which we have an informative site but not a college course.
In a very real sense, the discussionis the class. This is where the students in a given semester ask their questions and talk over what they are reading. The students are not in the books; the students are not in the Web pages; the students are in the discussion areas. And without the students, of course, we have no course.
The first two of these are open to the public. The books are readily available through bookstores, and the Web pages are open to be read by anyone. But the discussion areas are restricted to enrolled students. This is more than just because enrolled students have paid. It is because a class is a community of learners and a community needs lines of demarcation, or else we don't have a class, we have a newsgroup. The discussion areas are where everyone is a peer--those currently studying this particular topic with this particular teacher. The discussion area can be visited by anyone, but I ask that if you have comments to make, that you make them off-line, to me.
This is a one-semester college course on the Crusades. We will restrict our study to the period during which the Latins had a physical presence in the Holy Land; namely, from 1095 until 1291. There were crusades preached and even undertaken well past 1291, but there will be plenty for us to cover during these two centuries and adding two more would greatly complicate matters.
We will examine each of the seven major crusades, but we will look also at some secondary crusades plus a few crusades that were directed at fellow Christians. Our point of view will be heavily Western, due largely to the fact that I'm not qualified to teach from a Muslim or a Byzantine perspective. Students will be encouraged to cast their research nets more widely--to look at events in Europe, for example, or to explore those Muslim and Byzantine perspectives I so conspicuously overlook.
In addition to the required course materials, I have put on-line some resources consciously designed for the general public. These include a virtual pilgrimage and a presentation tracing the route and major events of the First Crusade (not yet ready).