Syllabus
Week 1 - Islam and the West?
Week 2 - Islam and the West - History of Interactions
Week 3 - History of the Western Perceptions of Islam
Week 4 - Western Perceptions of Islam on the Example of Petrus Alfonsi
Week 5 - Augustine and Religious Otherness
Week 6 - Thomas Aquinas and Islam
Week 7 - Dante and Marsilius /or/ Persecution and Philosophy - TBD
Week 8 - 1453
Week 9 - Machiavelli
Week 10 - Luther, Reformation, and Islam
Week 11 - Alliances with the Infidel
Week 12 - Islam as a Natural Religion
Week 13 - TBD (topic will be picked by the students)
Annotation
The question of relation between state and religion is, has been, and will be essential to Western political thought.
In this seminar, we will look at various Medieval Western Christian political thinkers and discuss how they conceptualize religion within their works and theories, and what space they provide for religious otherness, especially with regards to Islam. This goal presupposes first discussing the more general Western perceptions of
Islam and Muslims during the Long Middle Ages.