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Winter 2002
This information effective for Winter 2002.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
Instructor: Professor Sharon Kinoshita
E-mail: sakinosh@cats.ucsc.edu
MWF 11:00–12:10 p.m.
College Eight 242
In recent weeks, the word “crusade” has been used to lend an air of historical inevitability to the current world crisis. Paradoxically, however, in the past several years a number of novelists, journalists and critics have turned to the age of crusades not just for historical explanations of but for alternatives to scenarios of conflict between Muslims and Christians, between “east” and “west.” In this course, we will ask why the age of crusades and the turn from the middle ages to the early modern has proven such an attractive setting for allegories of the twentieth century. The issues we will address include: representations of cultural contact; the links between medievalism, Orientalism, colonialism, and nationalism; and periodization and the construction of modernity. In addition to primary readings and secondary theoretical essays, students should be prepared to do readings in history in order to build a sense of historical context.
Course readings (tentative)
Tariq Ali, The Book of Saladin
Tariq Ali, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree
Evan Connell, Deus lo volt!
Gamal al-Ghitani, Zayni Barakat
Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land
Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus
Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes
Edward Said, Orientalism (recommended)
Jonathan Riley Smith, A Short History of the Crusades (recommended)
Course reader (selected essays in history and cultural studies)