As a critical introduction to cultural contexts and ideological tensions of the early modern world, this course examines significant focal points of the era from interdisciplinary perspectives that draw together and intersect literature, the arts, philosophy, and politics - and the discourses that have come to be associated with these areas of inquiry. Among the course's central topics are the recovery and dissemination of classical learning, the advent of printing, the roots of religious strife, encounters in and beyond the Americas, the emergence of experimental science, and the development of the secular state.