Salon 21 - Medieval cross-cultural relations
When: Wednesday Jun 3, 2009 at 7.30 pm, Meet and Greet from 7 pm
Where: Bata Shoe Museum, 327 Bloor Street West
Tags: Salon 21
Soundstreams presents Salon 21
in order to create a "Salon" for the 21st century, a fresh and atmospheric meeting place in the heart of Toronto.
Space is limited so please register here.
A visitor to Spain today cannot ignore the evidence in its art, architecture, music, and culture of the Muslim and Jewish presence in its past. The Great Mosque of Cordoba, the beautiful synagogues in Toledo and Barcelona, the perfectly-preserved Jewish quarter of Girona, all offer visual evidence for the image of medieval Spain as the land of the three religions, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews coexisted peacefully. In a world grappling with religious conflict, the image is an attractive one. Yet, Spain is also associated with a continuous war between Christians and Muslims that ended triumphantly for the Christians with the final conquest of the Kingdom of Granada in 1492, the same year the Catholic Monarchs Fernando and Isabel ordered the expulsion of the Jews from their realms. In this lecture, we will explore briefly how these two seemingly contradictory images interact and clarify the nature of Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations in medieval Spain, a topic often beset by controversies and myths.
Alexandra Guerson's thesis focuses on Christian-Jewish relations in the decades prior to the anti-Jewish riots of 1391, a date seen by many as the end of peaceful co-existence in the Iberian kingdoms. Her dissertation research has taken her to Barcelona and Girona and has been funded by the Fonds Quebecois de Recherche sur la Societé et la Culture (FQRSC), an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). She has presented papers at the Renaissance Society of America Meeting and the International Conference on Converso and Morisco Studies in Spain and has organized a panel for the 2009 International Congress on Medieval Studies. With a keen interest in university life, Alexandra has been an active member of the Graduate History Society, the Friends of the Pontifical Library of Mediaeval Studies Executive Committee, as well as the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. With Dana Wessell, she wrote the entry "Inquisition" for the Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, published by Macmillan Press in 2005 and has an article forthcoming in Jewish History.
Alexandra is teaching a course this summer entitled The Margins of Medieval Society.
Discover new music - make new friends - share ideas - exchange information - relax - unwind - enjoy musical surprises
Salon (definition)
A salon is a gathering of curious individuals, to amuse, to please and educate through conversation and readings.
Terrific Toes Tickets - a pair of tickets for an upcoming Soundstreams concert will be awarded at each Salon 21 to the most sensational pair of shoes!
Salon 21 also invites you to see the Bata Shoe collection.
Updates via RSS
