NES 3639 - [Cultural History of the Jews of Spain]

(crosslisted) JWST 3639, MEDVL 3639, RELST 3639, SPAN 3639
(GHB) (ALC-AS, CA-AS, HST-AS) (CU-ITL)

Fall. Not offered: 2022-2023. Next offered: 2023-2024. 4 credits. Student option grading.

R. Brann.

This course is intended to provide a survey of the cultural history of the Jews in Spain from the late Visigothic period until the converso crisis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the expulsion. It will focus on the interaction of Jewish with Muslim and Christian cultures and the stable yet evolving sense of a Sephardic identity. The course will establish historical and literary-critical frames for reading primary sources in translation, including secular and synagogal poetry, philosophy and kabbalah, biblical hermeneutics, historiography and polemics.