HIST131C CM - Crusading Mentalities

This seminar explores the causes, meanings, meaningfulness and commemoration of new religious identities shaped by war: from the reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula, to the new heretics in Central Europe and clashes between Latin and Orthodox Christians in Constantinople; and from contentious labels of heretic, Jew, infidel and pagan, to new institutional mechanisms for defining cultural difference around the Mediterranean. The course objective is to understand how a series of events in medieval history that shaped medieval culture led to the invention of a violent paradigm of Islamic-Christian relations intended to mask internal social and religious divisions, and continues to shape the rhetoric of cultural encounter that divides our world today.

Offered: Occasionally

Credit: 1

Course Number: HIST131C CM