On January 14th, Kathleen Maxwell was hosted as part of Pacifica Lecture Series. Professor Maxwell gave a lecture about Western and Islamic culture from an art historian’s perspective as an Art History professor at Santa Clara University. The audience consisted of members of the Pacifica Institute along with other individuals who were interested in the topic.
She began her lecture by explaining how she constructed a two-course sequence for freshman students, which covered the contributions of Islamic and Western culture to Medieval Renaissance. Her curriculum intends to make students question and evaluate both shared and diverse human experiences in order to recognize similarities and differences across cultures.
She reviewed a 1300-year timeline of relations between Islamic and Western cultures. One of the most important contributions of Islamic culture was the translation of Classical Greek text into Arabic at the time of House of Wisdom (Beyt’ul Hikmah) in Bagdad. Most of the classical texts were transferred to Western culture through Al-Andalus modern day Spain. The translators were mostly Christian and Jewish scholars who were non-native but versed speakers of Arabic and Greek languages.
According to Prof Maxwell, Medieval Renaissance of 12th century profited immensely from the translation of these same texts from Arabic back into Latin. “It’s also important that Islamic scholarship depends on classical antiquity and it would simply not existed without the Greek Heritage” is one the quotations by Franz Rosenthal mentioned during the lecture. Prof Maxwell supported the co-existence of Islamic and Western culture by showing some pictures of Mosques and Churches that have consisted of contributions from both cultures.