ReDiscovering Convivencia

Pluralism and mutual recognition between Muslims, Jews, and Catholics was a hallmark of the period of convivencia — living together in religious tolerance — in Muslim Spain between 711–1492 CE. “ReDiscovering Convivencia” is an interdisciplinary undergraduate course featuring a public exhibition of student work at Notre Dame. The course is co-taught by Keough School of Global Affairs Professors Ebrahim Moosa, Mirza Family Chair of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies, and Atalia Omer, Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies. Special guest Dr. Mounia Chekhab Abudaya, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Qatar Museum of Islamic Art, also joins the course during a week-long campus residency and public lecture.

During the course, students participate in a seven-day arts immersion program to Granada, Spain. There they will explore the nexus of art history and practice, architecture, politics, religious studies, and theology as they learn about this moment of interreligious exchange between Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

Credits

Dr. Mounia Chekhab Abudaya, Qatar Museum of Islamic Art

Dr. Mounia Chekhab-Abudaya is Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar. She completed her Ph.D. in Islamic Art History and Archaeology at the Pantheon Sorbonne University in Paris and specializes on the Western Mediterranean, manuscripts and pilgrimage-related devotional materials in the Islamic world. With a great interest in languages, Dr. Chekhab-Abudaya holds a double degree in Literal Arabic and Middle-Eastern Dialects from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO). She took part in the revamping of the Museum of Islamic Art's permanent galleries, which reopened in 2022, alongside a temporary exhibition Baghdad: Eye's Delight. In 2024, she curated an exhibition entitled Splendours of the Atlas : A Voyage through Morocco's heritage, in partnership with the National Foundation of Museums of Morocco.

Notre Dame’s Contending Modernities Research Initiative, Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion

For more than three centuries, religious and non-religious communities have competed—sometimes violently—as they have responded to the many transformations we know collectively as modernity. Contending Modernities is a major interdisciplinary effort to generate new knowledge and greater understanding of the ways in which religious and secular forces interact in the modern world. In its first phase, the initiative examined how Islam and Catholicism have understood, accommodated, altered, and resisted the radical transformations that have characterized the modern world. As it has grown, the initiative has engaged other discursive traditions and expanded its geographic focus to include projects in Indonesia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, and introduced a thematic focus on decoloniality.

Discover Contending Modernities

Funding & Support

This is a partner program of the 2027 Notre Dame Arts Biennial, supported with funding from the Notre Dame Arts Initiative.

This project is also made possible with funding from Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Contending Modernities Research Initiative, and the Mirza Family Chair of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies.