HIST1727 · Complex Problems and Enduring Questions
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences
This is an Enduring Question course and is open to FRESHMEN only. You must take both HIST1727 and UNAS1715. How does War and Peacespeak through its historical context and as a description of a perennial human situation? War and Peace is a great and massive novel. Its primary subject, the effect of the Napoleonic Wars on Russia, may seem distant from our contemporary concerns. Yet its fundamental questions - "How shall I live and what is worth dying for? Is war a necessary evil, or something greater, or different? How does our social-historical experience construct our identity?" - are as relevant today as ever. Approaching these and other questions from our separate disciplines, we will attend both to the historical and literary context in whichWar and Peace was written and to the ways it speaks to us today.
Course experience
Averages use the original five-point historical evaluation scale.
Organization
4.0 / 5
How well the course was organized
Challenge
4.7 / 5
How intellectually challenging students found it
Attendance
4.6 / 5
How necessary attendance was
Assignments
4.4 / 5
How helpful assignments were
Weekly effort
~5
hours per week
Estimated from the original workload response buckets. Individual sections may differ.
Instructor options
Ratings below reflect only recovered evaluations connected to this course.
Across time
Section-level results available in the recovered archive.
Spring 2025
1 sectionFall 2021
2 sections