HIST 3329

This course analyzes the Mediterranean, a location that was the focus of much political, religious, and socio-economic activity in the medieval period, and a space in which various polities, faiths, and communities interacted. The course explores the ways in which Latin Christendom, the Byzantine Empire, and Islamic polities, as well as various communities such as the Jews, interacted with each other, in, across, and around the Mediterranean. We pay attention to issues that solidified differences between and among these groups, such as holy war, but also to factors that allowed the flourishing of cross-cultural and inter-religious interactions, such as diplomacy, trade, and conversion. The course stresses that cross-cultural interactions in the Mediterranean were, and remain, complex, multifaceted, and nuanced, and cannot be reduced to a simplistic “clash of civilizations,” challenging viewpoints that we hear in contemporary discourse.