AESTHETICS IN ISLAM AND JUDAISM (HSHR-2780)
(02/04/2019-05/24/2019)
Course Memo
This course is co-taught by Carol Bier and Francesco Spagnolo. This course examines various approaches to the study of aesthetics in Islam and Judaism, and explores a variety of visual and performing arts, as well as literary texts. Considerations of aesthetics in Islam focus on diverse cultural traditions and intersectionality of the arts; questions of representation, addressing such concerns as abstraction, geometry, and meaning; and the centrality of the Qur’an through calligraphy, illumination, and monumental inscriptions. Approaches to aesthetics in Judaism focus on synagogue liturgy as a synesthetic experience encompassing time/form, space/architecture, text/literature, sound/music, and gesture/choreography, and the confluence of diverse and often conflicting aesthetic dimensions of Jewish ritual in the global diaspora, including the liturgy of Jews in Islamic lands. Particular attention will be paid to aesthetic "values" such as non-linearity, repetition, and discontinuities.