OUT OF EDEN: DEPORTATION, EXILE, & EXPULSION

FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE RENAISSANCE

HISTORY 211/311 (SPRING 2020)

PROF. ROWAN DORIN (dorin@stanford.edu)
TUESDAYS, 3:00-5:50PM
ONLINE CLASSROOM VIA ZOOM (MEETING ID: 867-363-505)

Masaccio, The Expulsion from Eden (detail), Cappella The Expulsion of Heretics from Carcassonne,
Brancacci, S. Maria del Carmine, Florence London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero E.II.2, f. 20v

The 20th century has rightly been called the ‘Century of Expulsions’, and debates over deportation
practices continue to blaze across contemporary newspaper headlines around the world. Yet if the modern
scale of such practices is unparalleled in human history, their pedigree extends back millennia. This
colloquium will explore the long history of expulsion and exile in Western societies, tracing the relationship
between different exclusionary practices from the mass deportations of ancient Near Eastern empires, to
the outlawing of murderers in saga-era Iceland, to the landscape of exile in Renaissance Italy.
The principal goal of this course is to help you develop and write a substantial (ca. 15pp) piece of
original research. Accordingly, each week we will focus on a different conceptual framework for studying
the history of expulsion, accompanied by close readings of primary texts and discussions of relevant
secondary literature. At the broadest level, what defines expulsion? What role does space play in framing
and understanding practices of expulsion – do they necessarily involve movement? How do deportation,
exile, and expulsion relate to other forms of punishment, and what sets them apart from other methods of
repression? How are these practices of exclusion related to social and religious concerns about purity and
purification, and how do they inflect discussions of community and belonging? Adopting a closer lens, how
and why did individual expulsions take place – or fail to take place – and what does tell us about the nature
and limits of power and governance in pre-modern societies? What happened to those who were expelled
(or who were ordered to be expelled)? And how are expulsions recorded, remembered and forgotten?
The course is open to any interested student. No specific historical background is required, although
familiarity with the broad outlines of pre-modern European/Mediterranean history will be an asset. All
course readings will be in English, with primary sources given in translation. Enrollment is capped at 18; in
the event that the course is over-subscribed, preference will be given to History majors. The course is
certified for the “Social Inquiry” Ways requirement.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
1) Weekly Readings: Each week’s readings generally consist of a set of primary sources and a set of
related articles or book chapters, generally totaling ca. 150 pages. In addition, each week I will also
provide basic contextual information for the readings as well as a set of questions to help orient you. All
readings are available online (either on Canvas or via Stanford University Library’s e-Resources). In the
course of the readings, you will encounter many unfamiliar names and terms. You are strongly
encouraged to consult the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, or
other online resources, as appropriate.

2) Weekly Response Papers: Starting Week 2, you will be expected to submit a short response to the
weekly readings. For some weeks, you will be allowed to write on any topic of your choice; other weeks
will have specific prompts aimed at helping you develop your own research paper. Response papers
should be approximately 1 page, single-spaced (max. 500 words), and they should be submitted to the
appropriate Canvas folder by 5pm the day before the course meeting. You are allowed to skip two
response papers over the course of the quarter. More details will be given in class.

3) Research Paper: Over the course of the colloquium, you will develop and write a substantial (ca. 15pp)
piece of original research. You may write on any topic of your choice (in consultation with me),
including periods and places that fall outside the scope of the course, so long as your topic engages
meaningfully with the broad themes of the course. We will be discussing research resources and
strategies throughout the quarter, and particularly in Week 2.
a. By Week 4, you must submit an Annotated Bibliography that briefly discusses principal
primary and secondary sources relating to your chosen topic, along with a thesis statement
laying out the argument you plan to make in your paper.
b. A Draft of the final paper (min. 15pp) is due in Week 7
c. You will give a short Presentation on your topic in Week 9.
d. The Final Paper is due in Week 10.
Further information on all of these will be given in class.
4) Attendance: Weekly attendance is mandatory and any non-emergency absences must be discussed
with me well in advance.

2
5) Office Hours: My weekly office hours will be held via Zoom on Wednesdays from 10:15-11:45am.
Please drop in (or, if you have a conflict, set up an appointment at another time) before Week 3, so that
we can discuss your background and interests. I encourage you to attend office hours regularly,
whether to discuss the weekly readings, paper ideas, or anything else.

GRADING BREAKDOWN:
Attendance, Participation, & Response Papers: 40%
Annotated Bibliography (Week 4): 10%
Draft Paper (Week 7): SAT/UNSAT
In-Class Presentation (Week 9): 15%
Final Paper (Week 10): 35%
NB: All late assignments will be penalized by a reduction of 5% per day.

PART I – THE ANCIENT WORLD

WEEK 1 (7 APRIL): EDEN’S OFFSPRING - EXILE AND EXPULSION IN THE LONGUE DURÉE
Secondary Readings: Benjamin Z. Kedar, “Expulsion as an Issue of World History,” Journal of
World History 7:2 (1996), 165-80; William Walters, “Deportation, Expulsion, and the International
Police of Aliens,” Citizenship Studies 6:3 (2002), 265-92; Matthew J. Gibney, “Banishment and the
Pre-History of Legitimate Expulsion Power,” Citizenship Studies (2019), *1-*24

WEEK 2 (14 APRIL): CHOOSING A PERSPECTIVE - MASS DEPORTATIONS IN THE NEAR EASTERN KINGDOMS
Primary Readings: 2 Kings 18:1-16, 24:8-17, 25:8-21; Mordechai Cogan, The Raging Torrent:
Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel (Jerusalem, 2008), docs.
28, 29, 31.
Secondary Readings: Bustenay Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire
(Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 1979), pp. 1-2, 18-32; Robert P. Carroll, “Exile! What Exile?
Deportation and the Discourses of Diaspora,” in Leading Captivity Captive. ‘The Exile’ as History and
Ideology, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 62-79; William W. Hallo,
“Jerusalem under Hezekiah: An Assyriological Perspective,” in Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality
to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. L. I. Levine (New York: Continuum, 1999), 36-50
*Introduction to Research Methods and Resources

WEEK 3 (21 APRIL): INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS – ATHENIAN OSTRACISM

Primary Readings: Mabel Lang, Ostraka (Princeton, 1990), selected plates; Aristotle, Athenian
Constitution, cc. 21-22; Plutarch, Life of Aristides, excerpts; Teles of Megara, On Exile
Secondary Readings: Sara Forsdyke, Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy: The Politics of Expulsion in
Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005), ch. 4; Benjamin Gray, “From exile of citizens to
deportation of non-citizens: ancient Greece as a mirror to illuminate a modern transition,”
Citizenship Studies 15 (2011), 565-582; Paul J. Kosmin, “A Phenomenology of Democracy: Ostracism
as Political Ritual,” Classical Antiquity 34 (2015): 121-61

3
WEEK 4 (28 APR): WATER, FIRE, AND THE SPACES OF EXPULSION - ROMAN EXILE
Primary Readings: Ovid, Tristia, excerpts; Justinian’s Digest (Book 48), excerpts
Secondary Readings: Gordon P. Kelly, A History of Exile in the Roman Republic (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2006), ch. 2; Sarah Cohen, “Augustus, Julia and the Development of Exile ad insulam,”
Classical Quarterly 58 (2008), 206–217; Sabine Grebe, “Why Did Ovid Associate His Exile with a
Living Death?,” Classical World 103 (2010), 491-509
*Annotated Bibliography due by 5pm on Friday, May 1

PART II: MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE EUROPE

WEEK 5 (5 MAY): THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF EXPULSION: OUTLAWRY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
Primary Readings: Grettir’s Saga; Grágás, excerpts
Secondary Readings: Paul Dresch, “Outlawry, Exile, and Banishment: Reflections on Community
and Justice,” in Legalism: Community and Justice, eds. Fernanda Pirie and Judith Scheele (Oxford:
OUP, 2014), 1-27; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga
Iceland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), ch. 7

WEEK 6 (12 MAY): CONTAGION & SEGREGATION – LEPROSY IN THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN
Primary Readings: Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 12:1-16; 2 Kings 5: 1-27; Hartmann von Aue, Poor
Heinrich; Gesta Romanorum, Tale LXXI (vol. II, pp. 226-230); Arabian Nights, Nights 481-482 [Abu
Ja’far, the Leper]; additional selections from legal, religious and scientific texts
Secondary Readings: Michael W. Dols, “The Leper in Medieval Islamic Society,” Speculum 58
(1983), 891-916; Carole Rawcliffe, “Isolating the Medieval Leper: Ideas – and Misconceptions –
about Segregation in the Middle Ages,” in Freedom of Movement in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of
the 2003 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Peregrine Horden (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2007), 229-48;
Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “An Ultimate Pariah? Jewish Social Attitudes toward Jewish Lepers in
Medieval Western Europe,” Social Research 70/1 (2003), 237-68

WEEK 7 (19 MAY): REASON(ING)S OF STATE - EXPELLING JEWS IN THE 13TH AND 14TH CENTURIES
Primary Readings: Robert Chazan, ed., Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages (New York:
Behrman House, 1980), 309-22; Calendar of Close Rolls – Edward I. Volume III: 1288-1296 (London,
1904), 95-96; Norman P. Zacour, ed., Jews and Saracens in the consilia of Oldradus de Ponte
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), nos. 87 & 264
Secondary Readings: Robert Chazan, Refugees or Migrants: Pre-Modern Jewish Population
Movement (Yale: Yale University Press, 2018), ch. 4; Sophia Menache, “Faith, Myth, and Politics – the
Stereotype of the Jews and their Expulsion from England and France,” Jewish Quarterly Review n.s.
75 (1985), 351-74; William Chester Jordan, “Princely Identity and the Jews in Medieval France,” in
From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996), 257-73;
*Draft Paper due by 5pm on Friday, May 22

4
WEEK 8 (26 MAY): ‘GOD HAS GIVEN US THIS BURDEN OF EXILE’ – FATES OF EXILES IN RENAISSANCE ITALY
Primary Readings: 1302 condemnations of Dante; excerpts from contemporary statute-books and
court records; Dante, Letters, nos. 6 & 12; Selected Letters of Alessandra Strozzi, ed. and trans.
Heather Gregory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), nos. 10, 12, 21, 22, 24, 30, 31;
Secondary Readings: Christine Shaw, The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2000), ch. 4; Susannah K. Foster Baxendale, “Exile in Practice. The Alberti Family In
and Out of Florence, 1401-1428,” Renaissance Quarterly 44 (1991), 720-756

PART III: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD

WEEK 9 (2 JUNE): PRESENTATION WEEK!

WEEK 10 (9 JUNE): MEMORY AND MYTHMAKING – EXPULSIONS AND THEIR AFTERLIFE

Primary Readings: Lamentations 1-5; David Raphael, ed., The Expulsion 1492 Chronicles: An
Anthology of Medieval Chronicles Relating to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal
(North Hollywood: Carmi House Press, 1992), excerpts
Secondary Readings: Susan Einbinder, “Recall from Exile: Literature, Memory, and Medieval
French Jews,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 15 (2008), 225-40; Edward Peters, “Jewish History and
Gentile Memory: The Expulsion of 1492,” Jewish History 9 (1995): 9-34; Nicholas Terpstra, Religious
Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2015), ch. 3
*Final Papers due by 5pm on Thursday, June 11