Thieves and Collectors: Medieval Objects in Modern Hands: How did objects a thousand years old make it into a museum display case, a private collection, or into the shadowy underworld of illegal markets? Who decides the value of an irreplaceable piece of history, and who decides who can own it, sell it, or gift it? This class examines case studies that follow the long lives of specific medieval manuscripts and objects from their original historical contexts to their unexpected journeys through world wars, black markets, and international court room battles. We will meet thieves, collectors, and conservators who fought for these precious objects, and we will similarly get to know the medieval intellectuals, patrons, and artisans who made these pieces and for what purposes. This class focuses primarily on rich primary sources to foreground each case study from locations as disparate as medieval Armenia, Germany, and the Jewish communities of Spain. Students will then read modern materials such as news articles, legal briefs, and works of fiction and nonfiction to follow the winding and often dramatic paths certain medieval objects took to survive against all odds to the present day. By excavating the rich medieval contexts of these objects, this seminar gives students the opportunity to not only learn about the diversity of cultures and peoples of the medieval millennium (500-1500 CE), but to also engage with the ongoing struggle to reckon with the ethics and quandaries of historical patrimony. 

From Marrakesh to Madrid: Spain and North Africa, 700-1600: At its narrowest point, the Strait of Gibraltar separates the Iberian Peninsula from North Africa by less than eight nautical miles, and it follows that the histories of these two regions, its peoples, and Christianity and Islam are similarly enmeshed. This class delves into these interconnected and overlapping worlds across the medieval period from the Muslim conquests of Iberia to the early modern period, when King Philip III formally expelled those descended from Muslims from Spain. Within this long chronology, cosmopolitan societies flourished, empires rose and fell, identity was negotiated in text and art, and scientific advances were made. We will analyze rich and varied source materials to explore themes such as borderlands, social networks, diplomacy, gender, interfaith relations, and empire. We will meet heavily mythologized figures such as the Cid, Ibn Tūmart, and the Catholic Monarchs, and we will visit the halls of the Alhambra, the streets of Valencia, and the bustling city of Fez. While many travel guides to Spain focus on outdated concepts like Reconquest/Reconquista or interreligious coexistence/convivencia, or even blatantly erase the role of North Africa in Spain’s past, this class will invite students to explore a near-millennium long case study of entwined Christian-Muslim histories, and to challenge the limits of categories such as “European” and “African” in premodern culture, identity, and society.