"The Holy Land: Europe's First Colony and Its Post-Colonial Fallout."

The course deals with the rising ideology of "Holy War" in the 11th century Europe, which culminated in the First Crusade and the colonialization of the Holy Land. As the motive of penitence was transformed into the motive of conquest, Christian Europe defined and consecrated itself over and against Islam as its evil and subhuman "other".

The "Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem" became Europe's first colony, and gave rise to a new discourse that would endure in Western culture as an ideological precondition for the ensuing centuries of European colonializing initiatives.

Only recently has a very different "post-colonial" discourse emerged as a mature vantage-point for challenging the master-narratives of subjugation that served the colonializing nations of Europe so well during the last five centuries.

I hope to have a mix of disciplines represented in the participants in the this course, and my goal is to invite students to evaluate the relevance of this inaugural moment in European ideology to later colonial initiatives.

I hope you will circulate this course announcement among colleagues and graduate students who might be open to exploring the "pre-history" of European Christian colonial history.