Reading Aljamiado Manuscripts. Online Summer course 12-15 August 2024

About this course on www.edx.org: This course evaluates the medieval history of Toledo from the reign of King Alfonso “The Wise” (1252-1284) until the creation of the blood purity statutes in the 1450s. This local history will concentrate on the relations of Jews, Old Christians, and converts to Christianity (conversos). We will study King Alfonso X’s efforts to characterize himself as the “king of three religions” via his legal codices, the creation of the Cantigas de Santa María, and his intellectual endeavor known as the Toledo School of Translators. We evaluate the robust Jewish and converso noble families of the city and appreciate their intellectual, religious, and economic contributions to Castilian life. We will bear witness to the rise of anti-Jewish blood purity statutes, the creation of the Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews. We will virtually-tour the Cathedral of Toledo, El Transito Synagogue, Santa Maria la Blanca Synagogue, and several of its neighborhoods. We also will study and transcribe manuscripts from the municipal, cathedral, and national historic nobility archives to make new scholarly breakthroughs. No knowledge of Spanish is needed to participate in the course or in our transcription efforts. What you'll learn: Garner knowledge and assess the history of medieval Spanish intercultural coexistence in the city of Toledo and the Kingdom of Castile and Leon. Explore the world of medieval manuscripts and texts held in the archives of the Cathedral of Toledo, the City of Burgos, and the Archivo Nacional Histórico-Sección Nobleza. Learn the craft of medieval paleography, or reading authentic handwritten manuscripts. Transcribe medieval manuscripts and contribute to new scholar knowledge Enrollment and offerings: Offered Fall 2017. Enrollment of 1,565 students.

2016

UNIDEE - UNIVERSITY OF IDEAS 2016 There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art, and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe In 2015, UNIDEE - UNIVERSITY OF IDEAS, inheriting a long experience of residency for international artists (2000-2012), launched within the unique and special context of Cittadellarte – a research centre and an exhibition area – the experimentation of an educational prototype or ‘model’ that combined theory with practice, which bases the processes of learning on doing and discovery, favouring the exercising of imagination through a meeting with the differences and plurality of languages, and that responds to the desire and need to delve more deeply into things, phenomena and stories through relationships, dialogue and the exchanging of views of the participants. Through residential dynamics, UNIDEE sees education as a life experience and social process characterised by the particular cognitive and emotional intensity of the exchange by members of the spontaneous community that is formed each week within the module. This is an educational model based on a research and project laboratory under the guidance of a mentor who is an expert in the theme of that specific module and the active participation of a guest with the objective of examining the topics in their complexity and many facets, trying to maintain a balance of the thought forms (theories) and free or unforeseeable situations (creative processes). The participants create a common space, conversational and relational, in which attention is placed on the procedure and final collective shape that closes the educational experience without turning to easy and pre-established formulae but through the organisation of complicated situations that vary each time, without worrying about precise goals that need to be completed but reaching their conclusions slowly following the time required for reflection, deeper consideration and imagination. The laboratory modality with which we work together with mentors requires the participants to be involved in questioning their own field, using dialogue and collaboration to evolve their ability to interact in this game as though exercising in a gym of complexities, the unpredictability of performing moves; this allows the development of a doing attitude, giving value to mistakes, comparing contrasting points of view, opening up to view and do things differently than usual, shifting from one position to another without losing attraction for personal territory or language; favouring the ability to localize problems, enter into details, ask questions, confound significance and uses, and create new openings in meanings. The didactic approach is a demo-practical one of responsible use of power, in the manner of circulating and distributing knowledge within the group, which is expressed, for example, in the dual-dialogue between mentor and guest and between the mentor and participants where the horizontal and circular sharing of knowledge is aimed at the creation of a common ground and language. A brief time, a pause of one week or longer (for those deciding to return) is what the participants allow themselves away from their usual routine so as to expand on a topic or add final touches to a project, and therefore return to study or work in their own contexts. The intent of the modules is to form ‘artivators’, people who intend to use art as a methodology, practice and language, becoming agents for the activation of responsible actions and processes in urban transformation and social emancipation in the territories in which they live and carry out their professional activities. The originality of the UNIDEE programme lies in its collaborating with Universities and Academies of the Fine Arts so as to identify reciprocal shortcomings and intervene in the more immediate critical necessities to elaborate together and find another path compared to that indicated by the traditional educational system; and, furthermore, thanks to the flexibility of the modules, to invent new residential formats, similar to what happened with the re-defining of long residencies and in the development of two projects co-financed by the European Union “Ottomans and Europeans” and “Understanding Territoriality: Identity, Place & Possession – TIPP”, where every week the artists in residence met couples of intellectuals and operators in the sector at an international level and exchanged ideas and opinions with them, having collective discussions full of new stimuli and in-depth content for the final Open Studios. Encouraged by the unexpected high number of participants (111 presences from 16 different countries) and their enthusiastic feedbacks and proposals for future developments of this new educational model experimented in 2015, the intention for 2016 is to continue to analyse and thus fine-tune this educational method through the close examination of three other macro- topics, which are research, gift and alteration, considered central to both theoretical reflection and the practice of artists operating in the public sphere. With an interdisciplinary approach articulating these three concepts according to the Trinamic principle of Michelangelo Pistoletto, that bases the cognitive process on the combination of detachment of an analytical approach with the implication of who is profoundly involved in the situations, the three semantic areas are considered in their interrelationships as sites for generating forms of resistance, new possibilities in meaning and social transformation. The word ‘research’ contains the act of ‘searching anew’ that refers back to semantic proximity, as well as for assonance, in the action of ‘encircling’ something, a study object, a disciplinary field, a territory and leads us back to that which is an aspect of the study method, in other words to the condition of losing one’s self while researching, with the impression of moving in a labyrinth (in which the work, from labor, shares the same etymological root labh) to regain the thread, relocate direction. Besides the willingness to lose one’s self, the research also includes the strain of intellectual and poetical in-depth analysis, attitudes of care and dedication, the ability to enter into the crevices, into the circles of things and discover hidden details due to curiosity and amazement. Today this is nearly a privilege, as it is so difficult, to take a break from study, without taking anything away from work, to think according to the slow time of research that favours activities of reflection, impossible under the pressures of a project. The latter, was already used by conceptual artists in the late 1960s (in particular by the Art and Project Gallery in Amsterdam) to denote a proposal for an artwork, from the 1990s it became a broad term used to include various types of social art (collective practices, groups of self-organised activists, participatory art and socially involved and curatorial experiments), in which duration and process are more privileged compared to the aesthetic solution. In the present phase of cognitive capitalism dominated by networks and projects our working life is described by a succession of ‘projects’, based on efficient connections the value of which lies in the fact that they allow us to generate or enter into a following project, often very different in context and content (L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, 2005). Having liberated the restricted space of the canvas and metabolised the processes and dispositifs through which life enters art and vice-versa, the challenge for artists today is to not abandon their own field of research but to occupy themselves with it, taking care to examine any potential in depth and to cultivate new possibilities. To not tie one’s self totally to the exclusive rules and transformative power of the art system, but rather stop without losing interest in one’s own research and language, and without being satisfied with crossings connected to the themed projects of a certain Biennale or exhibition or space. What are the survival strategies to resist the neo-liberalist spiral emphasized by multiple projects? How do we regain the slow and unproductive time for research today? [...]

CALL FOR PAPERS - 41ST ACIS CONFERENCE

The Association will hold its 41st Conference, organized by the CEC-Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, in collaboration with the CHAM-Centro de Humanidades, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, from 4-6 September 2019. The conference will take place at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa with accommodation available nearby. ACIS encourages proposals from postgraduate students and a small number of partial conference fee bursaries are available – please see application process details below and encourage your students to consider this. Below are the suggested thematic areas for papers and panels, which must advance understanding of contemporary socio-cultural, economic and political issues and realities and relate primarily to Spain and/or Portugal and transnational issues and processes relating to the Iberian Peninsula within the wider Lusophone and Hispanic worlds. Both single-disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives are encouraged and the themes listed below are not exclusive. . .Politics, Government, International Relations, the EU, Nationalism, Regionalisms, Transnational issues and processes . .Economics, Business, Labour, Social and Welfare issues . .Cultural Production in all its forms (e.g. film, television, journalism, literature, media, advertising, digital communication & social networking) . .Social and Cultural Studies (e.g. identity, gender, ethnicity, popular culture) . .Leisure, Tourism, Sport . .Contemporary History . .Language, Linguistics, Language Policy . .Education and Pedagogy The selection of panels/papers will be made by the Conference programme convenors in consultation with the Executive Committee and these decisions will be final. Papers will be allocated 30 minutes on the programme (20 mins for the paper 10 mins for discussion). We will shortly be announcing the keynote speakers for the conference on our ACIS website. Keynote speakers in previous years have included novelist Use Lahoz, journalist and writer Elvira Lindo, historian and diplomat Professor Angel Viñas and the Association’s President, historian Professor Paul Preston. If you wish to offer a paper, please see the Guidelines for Papers (on the next page) and send your proposal to the ACIS 2019 Programme Convenors (Susana Relvas, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, and Jesús Revelles Esquirol, Universitat de Isles Baleares) at the email address: ACIS2019LISBON@gmail.com by Friday 17th May 2019. Informal enquiries concerning papers and topics are welcome before the deadlines.

University of Kent and Universidade do Porto (Portugal), 2019

We are pleased to announce a call for participants in an upcoming workshop on "Ibadi Manuscripts and Manuscripts Culture," to be held at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco from 5-6 April 2019. The details for the call are available here in English, French, and Arabic.