Sacred Intersections focuses on a thousand-year period of Christian and Islamic art, art history, poetry, and mysticism. As the program continues in Winter quarter, we will turn our attention to a time of, roughly, the 12^th through the 14^th centuries. This was a period that built on the creativity, spirituality, and change of the previous era and took the arts to new heights through creative and cultural fusion. We will study the motivating ideas and issues of the age: the mystical poetic traditions of the Persian empire (present-day Iran and central Asia) and their influence on contemporary poetry; the awe-inspiring forms of Gothic architecture, and the poetry of the Beguine mystics (of present-day Germany).  The idea that both mystic and artist were “seers”—seeing beyond the physical into the transcendent and metaphysical—impelled them into visionary realms. We will examine poets such as Rumi and Hafez and other charismatic figures.  We will study illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, stained glass, sculpture, and sacred architecture of European and Byzantine Christendom and Islamic empires stretching from Spain to Central Asia.  Art workshops will enable students to move from theory to practice. Class time will be divided among the following activities: faculty lectures, art workshops, seminars, writing, films and a possible field trip to a local mosque. This program is preparatory for further study and/or careers in the visual arts, education, museum studies, religion, communication, international relations, history, and writing.