Proposed is a discussion of contemporary approaches to periodization in European history and how it impacts or should impact the Western Civilization/European survey course. Roundtable contributors are four specialists who work in late antique/early medieval history, Renaissance History and Studies, Early Modern European and Global History, and Modern European history.

The traditional tri-partite periodization scheme of European history consists of Antiquity, the Middle Age, and the Modern Age. Renaissance, Reformation, and Industrialization were viewed in different variations of the traditional scheme as crucial turning points that ushered in the Modern Age. This model has been challenged from a number of fronts. Within European history, some historians of the French Annales school (e.g. Jacques Le Goff and Philippe Ariès) proposed a long duration from the twelfth to seventeenth centuries C.E. for some key developments, which bridged a number of divides between the tri-partite periods. Modern Renaissance and Reformation scholars have questioned the chronology, model of change, and even their role in the transitions to modernity. Reassessments of the transitions of Late Antiquity (informed by the work of Peter Brown), the “Late Medieval and Early Modern period” (referring to c. 1400-1600 C.E., according to Heiko Oberman, Thomas Brady, and James Tracy), and the Early Modern to Modern transition (referred to in German scholarship as the Sattelzeit) have all raised fundamental questions about periodization. From outside European history, debates over the timing and reasons for Europe’s later ascendancy over global trade and politics, the impact of the Columbian Exchange, and Europe’s encounters with Islam and Asian societies have further challenged the periodization schemes of European history.

Many, perhaps even most, historians of Europe today do not concern themselves, or are engaged, with issues of periodization. However, issues of periodization or chronology are not just an abstract feature associated with the philosophy of history. They shape historians’ scholarship and teaching – often unreflectively and implicitly. Especially in teaching the Western Civilization or European survey, periodization is centrally tied to the narrative and thus objectives of the course.

The Roundtable will explore various approaches and challenges to the traditional and revised periodic schemes raised by reassessments within European history and through engagement by European historians with global history. The two central questions to be discussed at the roundtable are: How do new trends in historical scholarship influence how we conceptualize the periodization of European history today? How do they impact the teaching of the Western Civilization or European survey course?