What did it mean to be a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim in the pre-modern period? How was this experience shaped by an awareness of religious difference in a pluralistic world of the Mediterranean? What did interaction, exchange, and encounter with other religious communities and their traditions contribute to a sense of religious identity? How this did sense of religious identity develop and change over this period? These are starting points for an inquiry into the encounters of Christians, Muslims and Jews across the Medieval Mediterranean world from Iberia to the Levant through: pilgrimage, commercial trade, diplomatic exchange, crusade and conquest, social co-existence in plural societies, translation of scientific, philosophical and religious texts, missionary preaching, literary and artistic representations, and polemical treatises and disputation. The course will focus on the intellectual and religious cultures in dialogic and dialectical relationship but with attention to the economic and political conditions underpinning a shared but contested world of the Mediterranean. May be offered jointly with HIST 812.
This course is offered as a 4.5-unit seminar during the 2022-2023 year.
