Taking the work of Pieter Bruegel as its visual focus, this seminar considers how group identification was formed, and what defined exclusion from those groups, in northern Europe of the early- to mid-16th century.  We will focus on questions integral to a renaissance conception of social belonging: local identities (urban/cultured vs. rural/natural, communal vs. national/imperial); the normative body and physical othering (gendering, the disabled, the racially other); and dwelling vs. a state of placelessness (vagrants, beggars, itinerant artists, other sorts of travelers, prisoners).  We will consider Bruegel’s paintings, prints and drawings as the testimony of an artist thinking about what it means to belong, or not, in renaissance Europe, and we will read primary texts and documents about ‘monsters’, vagrants, and soldiers; travel literature and “underworld” texts.

This class may be taken for 2 units (without research component) or for 4.