Approaches to History (393-0-20)
Topic
Race in the Middle Ages
Meeting Info
Harris Hall L05: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
This discussion-based seminar will explore how a constellation of physical, cultural, and religious characteristics became encoded with racializing meanings before the 17th c. In the diverse Mediterranean, people justified violence, privilege, exclusion, and belonging by constructing notions of sameness and difference. Medieval race-thinking appears in Christian and Islamic literature, religious texts on curses, descriptions of climate and the body, blood purity statutes, human diversity in art, laws about women's chastity, and geographies of so-called ‘monstrous races.' This is a frontier field in medieval studies, and students will have the opportunity to engage with cutting-edge scholarship and debates across the semester to think about how historical methodologies can reconstruct past social, cultural, and political dynamics. The primary sources this class covers encompass Chistian and Muslim authors from Basra in the Near East to Seville in Iberia, as well as many texts, such as Marco Polo's travel writings, crusade romances, and enslavement contracts, that bring in contexts from even further afield. Some classes will also be dedicated to analyzing visual sources, such as medieval maps, statues of saints and knights, and manuscript art to complement historical inquiry. While delving into these visual and textual sources translated from Arabic, Latin, Spanish, and more, students will pursue research that investigates how the history of race and race-craft is deeply related to medieval definitions of power, morality, community, and identity.
Learning Objectives
1) Identify the bias of interdisciplinary primary and secondary sources. 2) Craft an argument based directly on primary sources. 3) Interpret the religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity of the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. 4) Defend scholarly opinion both in writing and in discussion.
Class Notes
History Major Concentration(s): European, Africa/Middle East
History Minor Concentration(s): Europe, Middle East
Class Attributes
Advanced Expression
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Enrollment Requirements
Enrollment Requirements: Only History majors and minors can currently enroll in this class.