Prof. Thomas Dale will be teaching AH 415 (Honors) “Race & Cultural Encounter in Europe and The Mediterranean Basin: From Late Antiquity to the Age of Crusades” TR 9:30–10:45am. There are NO Prereqs Needed to take this course!
Course Description: Recent white supremacist rallies throughout America have misappropriated medieval or pseudo-medieval symbols and heraldry, and promoted false myths of ethically pure medieval nation states to support their own racist ideologies. This advanced topics course critiques these claims, using art, architecture, literature and material/visual culture as the lenses for exploring the complexity of attitudes towards otherness found in the cultures of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean basin between late antiquity and the fifteenth century. We will explore aspects of cultural borrowing and hybridity, as well as orientalist and colonial discourses that both embrace and degrade the other in terms that anticipate modern racism. To see this course and our other course offerings please click here.