Welcome to the massive open online
course material culture of Islam in Europe.
This course is framed in Cost Action Project CA18129
Islamic Legacy Narratives East West,
South North of the Mediterranean between 1350 and 1750.
This action project, this COST Action project,
has aimed to provide
a transnational and interdisciplinary approach
of the relations between Christian and Islam
in late medieval and early modern Europe and the Mediterranean.
Those relationships have been characterized
The study of those relationships has been characterized
by segmentation and geographical dispersion.
And with this project, we aim to create a network
that has helped us to provide a more comprehensive
understanding of past relations between Christianity and Islam
in the European context,
mostly addressing three avenues of research three main problems
of research which were otherness, migration and borders.
This course will present some of the ideas,
some of the debates that have developed in this project,
focusing on the material, cultural and artistic practices between
the 14th century and the 18th century around the Mediterranean.
This course aims to introduce the learner
to the Islamic material legacy in Europe,
because architecture
objects, literature, paintings show how Islamic culture
was very present in pre-modern Europe.
In addition, this course aims also to show
how this Islamic presence has been historically perceived,
how art has contributed to the construction of
ideas of alterity, of figures of otherness,
different perceptions about the past.
How narratives about Islam
and Christianity have circulated around the Mediterranean
and we are going to focus on both areas the Christian
and Islamic areas of the Mediterranean.
The objectives, the main goals
learning goals
of these MOOC
are to know the Islamic legacy in Europe.
You will know you will learn more about the Islamic legacy
and the material culture of Islam in Europe.
You will learn how to analyze the narratives developed around
this legacy
in different areas, both Islamic and Christian of the Mediterranean.
You will know more about the historical mobility of objects,
people, ideas, and knowledge around the Mediterranean, and
you will
understand better the processes of artistic
and cultural exchange in the pre-modern Mediterranean.
And also, hopefully you will learn to analyze historiographically.
The discourses of otherness associated
with this artistic and cultural heritage.
The MOOC
is divided in six sessions.
This first session
devoted to the introduction, where we will present you
some main historiographical problems and introductive videos
and five other session sessions devoted to different themes.
Session two is devoted to Islamic heritage and identity construction.
Session three will
deepen into the ideas of faith and conversion around the Mediterranean.
Session four will show more about festivities
and the idea of alterity that are shown in these festivities
in both Islamic and Christian areas.
System five is devoted to commerce and exchange as spaces of encounter
of confrontation.
Sessions six is devoted to memory, oblivion and heritage.
All these sessions are coordinated by different
specialist, different professors from different institutions.
And each session will have also different videos
from various specialist, not only the coordinators
that will show you different ideas, different debates, different
examples, different illustrations of the problems that we are debating.
Each session has three main
subjects, three main themes with long videos around
10 minutes that will present you with the general problem.
And then they will have one or more short videos
from different specialties deepening, illustrating or opening
the discussion of the main problems
presented in these first videos.
You will have also some extra material like other videos,
documentaries, bibliography, articles, blogs
that will help you to learn more about your areas of interest.
And then one small quiz that serves
to evaluation purposes in order to finish the MOOC
So I hope you will learn and you will enjoy this
massive open online course material culture of Islam in Europe.