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Last updated on September 18, 2025

Khans, Crusader Kings, and Vikings

Fall 2025 Syllabus Version 1.0

Course Information

Logistics

Overview

Historical Content

Late medieval Eastern Europe was awash with kingdoms and cultures all but lost to the popular imagination: German holy warriors, Norse merchant-kings, Muslim mystics, Jewish khans, and pagan gods. The history of this time and place did not leave much in the way of an integrated body of scholarship, which makes our task both more interesting and more challenging. Our approach will be “primary sources first”: we will read a wide variety of texts (in translation) left by the Rus, the Teutonic Order, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the nomads of the steppe and pragmatically draw upon what little scholarship exists to make sense of them as we proceed. Themes that will emerge from these texts are wide-ranging, from religion (conversion to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) to political (competing strategies of empire-building) to cultural (the transregional Byzantine “cosmopolis”). Over the course of the semester, students will develop an original research paper based on assigned primary source readings integrated into the body of scholarship we assembled together.

Approach

Baltic crusades? Italian city-states? Jewish khanates? And that’s before we even get to the slightly better-known stories of Poland-Lithuania and the Rus. Medieval Eastern Europe is not a coherent area study: it is an arena. There is no textbook or even cohesive body of scholarship that can guide us through this complexity. Thus, our approach in this Capstone seminar is going to work outward from the primary sources: we will (slowly and carefully) read a range of historical sources from a diverse set of cultural groups and attempt to answer the questions and challenges that emerge by assembling our own collective bibliography of secondary scholarship.

Grading & Assignments

Labor-based Contract Grading

This class will be subject to “contract grading”: at the beginning of the semester, you will choose a workload category corresponding to a letter grade at the end of the semester. Thus, rather than a grade exclusively evaluating the quality of a uniform set of assignments, your grade will be primarily based on labor input. Within each grade category, pluses and minuses are subject to instructor discretion based on quality and effort.

You are all history majors and I take it for granted that, having gotten this far, you are motivated and fully capable of producing quality historical scholarship. There is no shame in selecting a lower workload for the semester: we all have competing priorities.

For general information about my grading “philosophy,” see https://courses.bactriana.org/policies/grading.html

The Research Project

The centerpiece of a Capstone seminar is an independent research project. The starting point for each project will be the common primary source reading for one of the thematic units in the course. Think of this pre-selected reading as a “thread” you will pull on to unravel a much larger tapestry of related sources and secondary scholarship that will substantiate your research project. As you read the pre-selected source closely, what questions emerge? How have historians made sense of the source in the past? What are the major debates? What other primary sources help contextualize it? How does it relate to the other thematic units in the course?

Mini-Presentations

Students will sign up for mini-presentations throughout the semester. These are meant to be low-key and low-stress: no more than 10 minutes, visuals optional. These presentations come in several different flavors:

Perusall

We will read sections of the assigned sources together using Perusall, software that allows us to comment on the texts together between classes.

Shared Zotero Library

Throughout the semester, we will be assembling a historiography for our subjectmatter together as a group. You are all responsible for contributing citations to the shared Zotero library (you can access the library, and request to join, from this link). These must be thoughtful, careful submissions:

For more information about this assignment, and how to use Zotero, see: https://courses.bactriana.org/policies/zotero

Course Schedule

Assignments and readings are all due before the class date.

Part I: The Last Pagans of Europe

Core Questions

Who were the Vikings in Eastern Europe? How did pre-Christian Slavs and Balts interact with the emerging Rus polity? What role did trade routes play in early medieval state formation?

Session 1 (August 28): Course Overview and Viking Sources

Topics:

In-Class Readings:

Part II: Byzantine Commonwealth

Core Questions

How did the conversion to Christianity transform the political and cultural landscape of the Eastern Slavs? What was the relationship between Byzantium and the emerging Rus principalities?

Session 2 (September 4): Historical Narratives of the Rus

Student Mini-Presentation: Historical narrative of the Rus (Scott)

Readings:

Session 3 (September 11): Historiography of the Rus

Student Mini-Presentation: Historiography of the Rus (Dan)

Student-Led Reading: Chronicle of Novgorod

Readings:

Session 4 (September 18): Primary Sources of the Rus

Student-Led Reading: Primary Chronicle (Jon)

Readings:

Class: - Structure / format of a research paper

Part III: Crusader Kings - Baltic Germans and the Teutonic Order

Core Questions

How did the Northern Crusades reshape the Baltic region? What was the nature of German colonization and indigenous resistance? How did the Teutonic Order function as both religious and military organization?

Session 5 (September 25): The Teutonic Order’s Historical Narrative

Student Mini-Presentation: Historical narrative of the Teutonic Order

Readings:

Session 6 (October 2): Baltic German Primary Sources

Student Mini-Presentation: Primary sources of the Baltic Germans

Student-Led Reading: The Chronicle of Prussia

Readings:

*October 9: No class

Part IV: Black Sea - Medieval Italian Colonies

Core Questions

How did Italian maritime republics establish and maintain trading colonies in the Black Sea? What was daily life like in these multicultural commercial centers? How did these colonies interact with local populations and steppe nomads?

Session 7 (October 16): Black Sea Historical Narratives

Student Mini-Presentation: Historical narrative of the Black Sea colonies

Readings:

Session 8 (October 23): Black Sea Primary Sources

Student Mini-Presentation: Primary sources on the Black Sea

Readings:

Part V: The Steppe Frontier - Jewish Khaganate and the Golden Horde

Core Questions

What was the extent and nature of the Khazar Khaganate? How did the Golden Horde govern its vast territories? What role did religious diversity play in these steppe empires?

Session 9 (October 30): The Khazar Khaganate

Student Mini-Presentation: The Khazar Khaganate and Jewish conversion

Readings:

Session 10 (November 6): The Golden Horde

Student Mini-Presentation: Mongol administration and culture

Readings:

Part VI: Early Modern Hegemony - The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Core Questions

How did the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth become the largest state in Europe? What was the nature of religious and ethnic diversity within the Commonwealth? How did the Cossack uprising change the balance of power in Eastern Europe?

Session 11 (November 13): Ruthenians and Religious Reform

Student Mini-Presentation: Religious and cultural tensions in the Commonwealth

Readings:

Session 12 (November 20): Cossack Uprising and Commonwealth Crisis

Student Mini-Presentation: The Cossack wars and their aftermath

Readings:

Session 13 (December 4): Research Project Workshop

Topics: