ARTH 400
CVPS: Jerusalem: The Making of the Holy Spring 2017
Division I
Cross-listed
This is not the current course catalog

What are the reasons for declaring a particular space holy? How are the borders of this holy space made visible? What practices and rituals are employed in holy spaces? Can the sanctity of the holy be transferred? The city of Jerusalem is the case study through which these questions will be critically examined. The city, sacred to three monotheistic religions, has been made and remade throughout history as a sacred space to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The course will examine Jerusalem’s changing architectural program over circa one thousand years, as well as its representation in images and texts from Jewish, Christian and Muslim sources. The main focus will be the Haram al-Sharif, the temple mount in Jerusalem as well as other spaces in the old city of Jerusalem and its vicinity, in which further sacred spaces were built and designed for pilgrims. Aspects of different rituals and even oral traditions will be brought into discussion to illustrate the varied methods and politics of the space and the continuous contestations over Jerusalem’s sacredness up to the present day. At the same time, modern, mainly nationalistic, methods for reconstructing past narratives for Jerusalem will be critically discussed, focusing mainly on archaeology, urban architectural developments and museum display.