MEDVLSTD 250 – At Cross Purposes: The Crusades in Material Culture

MEDVLSTD 250 – At Cross Purposes: The Crusades in Material Culture

Semester: Spring
Offered: 2025
Instructor: Evridiki Georganteli
Meeting Time: T, Th 10:30 – 11:45am

Crusading expeditions in the Holy Land, Spain, and Eastern Europe from 1096 until the end of the Middle Ages shaped the political, socio-economic, and cultural map of Europe and the Middle East. This course explores the multifaceted encounters between crusaders, Byzantines, Jews, Armenians, and Muslims through the material traces they left behind: architecture, Byzantine objects dispersed across Western Europe, coins, sculptures, frescoes, and manuscripts from the East and the West. Weekly seminars at the Harvard Art Museums, the Harvard Fine Arts Library, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will offer us the chance to study close-up works of art as precious tangible links to the history and legacy of the Crusades

For more details please visit the Harvard Course Catalog.