This course explores the representation of Jews in European visual and literary culture from the medieval period to the twentieth century. We will examine the evolution of an anti-Jewish iconography in Christian art and literature and the relationship of such representations to ecclesiastical exegesis and to the accusations of ritual murder, host desecration, image profanation, and usurious corruption that flourished throughout the continent primarily from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. We will also study the architecture of the Jewish ghetto, examining how Christians and Jews defined themselves and their faiths through the architectural designs, urban planning, and socioeconomic structures of the city. Finally we will investigate the impact of assimilation, acculturation, and antisemitism on European visual culture from the eighteenth to the twentieth century--exploring, for example, the work of Degas and Toulouse Lautrec, as well as the art and cultural policy of Nazi Germany.

I have selected articles and essays that approach our topic from various thematic and methodological perspectives. In addition, we will be reading several primary sources, including selections from Augustine’s City of God, Peter Abelard’s Dialogus, Bernardino of Siena’s sermons, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

**Although the course will only briefly discuss Jewish artists and the art executed for Jewish homes and synagogues, you may pursue this topic of research for your term papers. Please come and see me if you would like help deciding on a topic, or if you have any other questions.

Required Reading (available at campus bookstore)

• Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
• William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Edited by A.R. Braunmuller. New York: Penguin
  Books, 2000.

**All other readings are now on reserve at Olin Library**

Course Requirements

Class Participation-20%
Midterm (September 30)-20%
Research Proposal (due October 2) and Paper (8 pages, due December 2)-40%
Final Exam (December 18, 3:30-5:30)-20%

Week 1
Introduction: Representing Jews and Constructing Identities

Readings for August 28:

• Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002: read Preface, Introduction, and Chapter Three,“The Boundaries of Identity.”
• Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Edited by J. Rutherford. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990: pp. 222-37.

Week 2
From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism

Readings for September 2:

• Léon Poliakov, The History of Antisemitism. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Schocken Books, 1974: pp. 101-169 (chapter 6: “Background: The Fourteenth Century” and chapter 7: “The Image of the Jew”).

Readings for September 4:

• Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990: pp. 275-305 (chapter 14: “From Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism”).
• Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997: pp. 125-40 (chapter 8: “Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism”).

Week 3
The Adversus Judaeos Tradition: Ecclesiastical Anti-Judaism

Readings for September 9:

• Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002: skim Chapter Two (pp. 23-48).
• Rosemary Radford Ruether, “The Adversus Judaeos Tradition in the Church Fathers: The Exegesis of Christian Anti-Judaism,” in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: From Late Antiquity to the Reformation, ed. Jeremy Cohen. New York: New York University Press, 1991: pp. 174-92.
• Peter Abelard, Dialogus, trans. P. J. Payer, A Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew, and a Christian, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979: selections from pp. 19-71.

Readings for September 11:

• Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999: skim pp. 164-218 (chapter 4: “All Jews Are the Chief Enemies of All Christians…”).
• Diane Owen-Hughes, “Distinguishing Signs: Ear-Rings, Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City,” Past and Present 112 (1986): 3-59.
  --or--
  Stephen J. Campbell, “The Roverella, the Jews and the Image of Ecclesiastical Statehood,” in Cosmé Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450-1495. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997: pp. 99-129.

Week 4
On Physiognomy and Caricature

Readings for September 16:

• Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993: pp. 113-44 and review illustrations.
• Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999: pp. 14-29.

Readings for September 18:

• Debra Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003: 95-155 (chapter 3: “Christians Imagine Jews”).
• Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History, New York: Continuum, 1996: pp. 75-111. [review illustrations]

Week 5
Picturing Old and New Testament Typologies

Readings for September 23:

• Augustine of Hippo, City of God, Book XVIII.
• Henry Kraus, The Living Theatre of Medieval Art. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967: pp. 139-162.

Readings for September 25:

• Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: pp. 165-94.
• Achim Timmermann, “The Avenging Crucifix: Some Observations on the Iconography of the Living Cross,” Gesta 40, no. 2 (2001): 141-160.
• Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History. New York: Continuum, 1996: pp. 31-74. [review illustrations]

Week 6
Mid-Term Exam & Proposal Presentations/Bibliographies

Mid-term: September 30
Proposals and Bibliographies for research paper: October 2

Week 7
The Usurious Jew

Readings for October 7:

• Jacobus da Voragine’s The Golden Legend: read section on St. Mathias regarding Judas.
• Jacques Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages. New York: Zone Books, 1988: selections from pp. 9-84.
• Maristella Botticini, “A Tale of ‘Benevolent’ Governments: Private Credit Markets,
  Public Finance, and the Role of Jewish Lenders in Medieval and Renaissance Italy.” Journal of Economic History 60, no. 1 (March 2000): 164-89.

Readings for October 9:

• R. Po-chia Hsia, “The Usurious Jew: Economic Structure and Religious Representations in an Anti-Semitic Discourse,” and Carlo Ginzburg, “Representations of German Jewry: Images, Prejudices, Ideas—A Comment,” in In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995: pp. 161-76, pp. 209-12.
• Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999: pp. 30-53.

Week 8
Myths of Jewish Abuse I: Ritual Murder

Readings for October 14:

• Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002: read Chapter One (pp. 7-22).
• R. Po-Chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992: pp. 14-68 and review illustrations.

Readings for October 16:

• Mark J. Zucker, “Anti-Semitic Imagery in Two Fifteenth-Century Italian Engravings,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 8-9 (Summer/Fall 1989): 5-12.
• Eric M. Zafran, “The Iconography of Antisemitism: A Study of the Representation of the
  Jews in the Visual Arts of Europe, 1400-1600.” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1973: skim pp. 29-118 (chapter 2: “Ritual Murder”).
• Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History. New York: Continuum, 1996: pp. 273-91. [review illustrations]

Week 9
Myths of Jewish Abuse II: Host Desecration and Image Profanation

Readings for October 21:

• Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999: pp. 1-6, 40-69 and review illustrations.
• Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, “The Altar of Corpus Domini in Urbino: Paolo Uccello, Joos Van Ghent, Piero della Francesca.” The Art Bulletin 49 (1967): 1-24.
• Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History. New York: Continuum, 1996: pp. 264-73. [review illustrations]

Readings for October 23:

• Louis Alexander Waldman, “A Late Work by Andrea della Robbia Rediscovered: The Jews’ Tabernacle at Empoli,” Apollo 110 (September 1999), 13-20.
• Dana E. Katz, “Painting and the Politics of Persecution: Representing the Jew in Fifteenth-Century Mantua,” Art History 23, no. 4 (November 2000): 475-95.

Week 10
The Age of the Ghetto

Readings for October 28:

• Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002: read Chapter Six (pp. 138-53).
• Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities, vol. 1. Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905: read passage on the Venetian Ghetto (pp. 370-76).
• The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah, ed. Mark R. Cohen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988: selections from pp. 75-180 (“Haye Yehuda”).

Readings for October 30:

• Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, New York : W.W. Norton, 1994: read chapter 7 (“Fear of Touching: The Jewish Ghetto in Renaissance Venice”).
• Roberta Curiel and Bernard Dov Cooperman, The Venetian Ghetto, New York: Rizzoli, 1990. [review illustrations]

Week 11
“The Pound of Flesh”: Shakespeare and the Jews

Reading for November 4 and November 6:

• William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Edited by A.R. Braunmuller. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

Week 12
Jews and the Arts of the Baroque

Readings for November 11:

• Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002: read Chapter Seven (pp. 154-91).
• Natalie Zemon Davis, “Glikl bas Judah Leib: Arguing with God,” in Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995: pp. 5-62.

Readings for November 13:

• Michael Zell, “Rembrandt’s Encounter with Menasseh ben Israel,” in Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002: pp. 58-98.
• Shelley Perlove, “Awaiting the Messiah: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Late Work of Rembrandt,” Bulletin of the University of Michigan Museums of Art and Archaeology 11 (1994-96): 85-113.

Week 13
Representing Jews and Judaism in the Modern Era

Readings for November 18

• Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Translated by Andrea Grover. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002: read Chapter Eight and the Afterword (pp. 192-220).
• Vivian B. Mann and Richard I. Cohen, eds. From Court Jews to the Rothschilds: Art, Patronage, and Power 1600-1800. Munich: Prestel, 1996: read pp. 27-43 and 97-110.
• Moses Mendelssohn, “Letter to Johann Caspar Lavater,” in Frank Ephraim Talmage, Disputation and Dialogue: Readings in the Jewish-Christian Encounter. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1975: read pp. 265-272. And Moses Mendelssohn, “On Judaism and Christianity,” “On Jesus,” and “On Faith and Reason and the Abrogation of Mosaic Law,” in Moses Mendelssohn: Selections from His Writings. Edited by Eva Jospe. New York: Viking Press, 1975: read pp. 115-124.

Readings for November 20:

• Linda Nochlin, “Degas and the Dreyfus Affair: A Portrait of the Artist as an Anti-Semite,” in The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice, ed. Norman L. Kleeblatt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987: 96-116.
• Gale B. Murray, “Toulouse Lautrec’s Illustrations for Victor Joze and Georges Clemenceau and Their Relationship to French Anti-Semitism of the 1890s,” in The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity, ed. Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995: pp. 57-82.
  --or--
  Nicholas Mirzoeff, “Pissarro’s Passage: The Sensation of Caribbean Jewishness in Diaspora,” in Diaspora and Visual Culture: Representing Africans and Jews. Edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff. London: Routledge, 2000: read pp. 57-75.

Weeks 14
Art and the Holocaust

Readings for November 25:

• Viewing of JUD SÜSS, 1940 motion picture, written by Veit Harlan, Ludwig Metzger, Wolfgang Eberhard Moeller.

Readings for December 2: ***FINAL PAPERS DUE***

• David Culbert, “The Impact of Anti-Semitic Film Propaganda on German Audiences: Jew Süss and The Wandering Jew (1940),” in Art, Culture, and Media Under the Third Reich. Edited by Richard A. Etlin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002: read pp. 139-157.
• Ziva Amishai-Maisels, “Art Confronts the Holocaust,” in After Auschwitz: Responses to the Holocaust in Contemporary Art. Edited by Monica Bohm-Duchen. London: Lund Humphries, 1995: read pp. 49-77.

Week 15
Art and the Holocaust/Review