A study of Montaigne as a multifaceted historical and cultural figure, as a mirror to sixteenth-century history, as product and observer of the religious divisions, political transformations, and cultural evolutions in an age marked by religious war, the growth of the state, the advent of the printed book, and the dissemination of the humanist project across western Europe. The course examines Montaigne’s essays, travel journals, and important scholarly works on Montaigne, in the context of contemporary gender relations, colonial empire, religious belief, and early modern Europe’s complex relationship with Greco-Roman Antiquity.