Instructor: Craig Perry, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies, Emory University What events and images come to mind when you see the topic “conversion and Jewish history”? For many, this phrase triggers negative associations with pressures to assimilate and periods of persecution from the Maccabean Revolt to the Jews’ expulsion from Spain in 1492. While these events are an important part of Jewish memory, this course will focus on lesser-known histories of conversion when people in medieval Islamic and Christian societies in fact converted to Judaism. Jews, too, converted to other religions for reasons you might imagine, and for others that will surprise you.