ARTH 1132 - FWS: Seeing, Reading, and Writing the Alhambra

Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

C. Robinson.

This course is centered on Granada’s Alhambra, built, for the most part, during the middle decades of the 14th century A.D. Both the most complete surviving medieval Islamic palace and the most popular tourist destination in Spain, throughout the more-than-six centuries of its existence, the Alhambra has inspired admiration and interpretation, this latter being influenced by intellectual trends and cultural currents as varied as Romanticism, positivism, Orientalism, post-structuralism, post-colonial theory and literature for tourists it was even the setting for Washington Irvving’s famed Tales of the Alhambra. In this class students will learn to view and to write about the Alhambra through the lenses offered by these various movements and currents, as well as through the eyes of its contemporary audience, the 14th-century poets, courtiers, kings, mystics and the occasional Christian ally who frequented its beautifully ornamented halls and patios.