Tuesday, September 8, 2015

So Was There a Renaissance? Final Answer ... Kinda

In creating our infographics, the class was challenged to take a side on the question - Was the Renaissance a thing? And the final answer that the class came to after presenting their findings on art, social order, family/work life, and politics was - kinda.

No argument that there was a change in art (perspective), literature (Humanism, printing press), and in some ways politics (Machiavelli, 'New Monarchs'). But for the vast majority of people living during the time period known as the Renaissance, life didn't change all that much.

Arguments for why the Renaissance wasn't a thing for the
 majority of people in Italy, and the rest of Europe. 

One group's infogrpahic made the argument that for 95% of the population, very little changed. Unless you had money to 'buy' new titles in politics or to take advantage of the arts, life didn't change - you were still worried daily about getting food to feed your family, and the Church played a dominate role in your life.

As a class we stopped short of saying the Renaissance wasn't a thing, because everybody agreed things changed, just not for the majority of the population (that is until a monk, influenced by Humanism and Theology starts writing but we haven't covered that yet).












By the way - the plan is to have students write these wrap ups on projects/discussions in the future.

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