Representations of the ‘Other’: Jews in Medieval
Christendom
NEH Summer Institute
06 July - 11 August, 2010
Oxford, England
Cover photo from Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art (originally published as Die Juden in der Kunst Europas. Ein Bildatlas Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996; reproduced by permission). A painting by the "Master of the Ursula Legend" (late 15th Century), depicting synagoga, with eyes covered, in an oriental turban.
Director
Irven
M. Resnick (University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga)
e-mail: Irven-Resnick@UTC.EDU
Visiting Faculty
Anthony Bale (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Jeremy Cohen (Tel Aviv University)
Daniel J.
Lasker
(Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Sara
Lipton (SUNY-Stony Brook
Robert
Stacey (University of Washington)
Description
Although in the early Middle Ages ‘otherness’ had largely been defined in terms of language, custom, law, or religion, by the fourteenth century other features emerge as the basis of group identity, creating a seemingly insurmountable obstacles to assimilation and acculturation. These new constructions of ‘otherness’ may help explain the deteriorating status of Jewish (and Muslim) communities in Europe, which led to the eventual expulsion from most lands in Christendom of those who refused baptism. Even baptism, however, could not wash away this newly established sense of difference: in Spain after 1492 Moriscos and Conversos (i.e. recent Muslim and Jewish converts to Christianity) remained under suspicion and were subject to discrimination under a series of statutes relating to purity of blood, perhaps anticipating modern racial conceptions.
This evolution of medieval European conceptions of ‘otherness’ and the various efforts of contemporary scholars to explain it will constitute the field of study for this institute. Treating the experience of Jews as paradigmatic, ‘otherness’ will be examined across a number of disciplines: history, philosophy, theology, canon law, literature, and art history.
Last Revised October 23, 2009
