This course will explore the various faces of sacred and profane love as revealed in the oral, textual and visual cultures of the medieval world. Our primary chronological concentration will be the tenth through the fourteenth centuries A.D., although students interested in the 'before" or "after" of this period may explore either in their projects. Love, as a token of social status and refinements, takes center stage in the cosmopolitan society of Abbasid baghdad in the 9th C. A.D.; it also appears in a similar guise in a 'western' context some few centuries later at the courts of elegant nobles in places as diverse as Anjou, Aquitaine, Tolosa and Jerusalem. Love provides the principle impulse for the ardent searches of both Christians and Muslims for union with god; likewise, it is in terms of passion that this search is described. Love has also left delicate partially hidden traces in the medieval visual world described and constructed for both sacred and profane purposes. We will attempt to identify these traces and use them, with the aid of period texts of various genres, to reconstruct the visual culture(s) of sacred and profane love. Evaluations will be based on class participation, two writing assignments involving research, and one short class presentation. Readings will be in history, art history, philosophy and poetry.