Summer 2008

SOCS 641
Jews under Christian and Muslim Rule

Teter,Magda

06/23/2008 - 08/01/2008
Tuesday & Thursday 05:30 PM - 08:30 PM

Public Affairs Center 421

This course will focus on mutual attitudes and interaction between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the premodern period. We will examine how each religious tradition constructed "the Other," trying to find answers to the following questions: What was the Jews' attitude toward non-Jews? How did Jews fare in Christian and Muslim traditions? We will also discuss the relationship between religious ideals present in sacred texts and prescriptive literature of each tradition and historical reality of everyday life: Were all the laws applied to daily intercourse?

We will read considerable sections of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, the Qur'an, the Talmud, the Church fathers, and later works, including rabbinic response, polemical works, and legal documents.

Responses to readings will be expected as well as a research paper.

This course will not meet on Thursday, July 3rd, and a make-up meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 5th.

A syllabus for this course is available at:
Course Syllabus


Magda Teter (M.A., Warsaw University; M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University) is associate professor of history and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. As a scholar of Jewish history and of early modern religious and cultural history, she specializes in Jewish-Christian relations. Her book, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post Reformation Era, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), challenges the perception that the Catholic Church triumphed in Poland and demonstrates the superficiality of the re-Catholicization of the ruling elites, whose economic interests trumped their religious loyalties. She is currently working on a book that seeks to further the understanding of social dynamics of religious violence and coexistence between Jews and Christians in early modern Poland. Click here for more information about Magda Teter.

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION

Consent of Instructor Required: No

Format: Seminar

Level: GLSP Credits: 3 Enrollment Limit: 18

Texts to purchase for this course:
A.J. Arberry, THE KORAN INTERPRETED: A TRANSLATION (Touchstone), Paperback

Harold Attridge, THE HARPERCOLLINS STUDY BIBLE (HarperOne), Hardcover

Robert Chazan, CHURCH, STATE, AND JEW IN THE MIDDLE AGES (Behrman House), Paperback

Shlomo Eidelberg, THE JEWS AND THE CRUSADERS (Ktav Publishing House), Paperback

Jacob Katz, EXCLUSIVENESS AND TOLERANCE (Behrman House), Paperback

Mary Rampolla, A POCKET GUIDE TO WRITING IN HISTORY (Bedford/St. Martin's), Paperback

Norman Stillman, JEWS OF ARAB LANDS (Jewish Publications Society), Paperback

Isadore Twersky, MAIMONIDES READER (Behrman House), Paperback

READING MATERIALS ARE AVAILABLE AT BROAD STREET BOOKS, 45 BROAD STREET, MIDDLETOWN, 860-685-7323 Order your books online

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