Term
Spring 2025
Faculty
Fatih Han
Beatrice E. Kitzinger
Registrar description

We explore art's roles in politics and religion from ca. 600-1300 CE in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The course introduces the arts of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam; great courts and migratory societies; works made for private use and public display. Through narrative arc in lecture and precepts dedicated to artistic media, textual and material primary sources, and/or key intellectual themes, we consider how art participates in forming sacred and secular power. We explore how the work of 'art' in this period carries powers of its own, and how art shaped a multi-lingual, multi-confessional, multi-cultural medieval world.