Participants :
Fred Astren, Amy Austin, Stephen Bensch, Ibtissam Bouachrine, Peter Cowe, Theresa Earenfight, John Eldevik, Hussein Fancy, Nahyan Fancy, Eileen McKiernan González, Mary Halavais, Michelle Hamilton, Andrew Kurt, Susan Laningham, Karla Mallette, Leonard Marsh, Afrodesia McCannon, Anjela Cannarelli Peck, Jonathan Ray, Miriam Shadis, Munir Shaikh, Krista Twu, Valerie Wilhite, Nina Zhiri
Fred Astren
Professor and Director, Jewish Studies Program
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
fastren@sfsu.edu
Current Projects:
Jews in early Islam as represented in traditional Muslim sources
early medieval Jewish history and the Mediterranean (perhaps to be a book)
Selected Publications:
Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004).
(Editor, with Benjamin H. Hary and John L. Hayes), Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication, and Interaction, Festschrift for William M. Brinner (Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 2000).
“Re-reading the Muslim Sources: Jewish History in Early Medieval Muslim Conquest Narratives,” invited for publication in Yohanan Friedmann (ed.), Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 35 (2009), a volume in memory of Moshe Pearlmann (in preparation).
“The Gibeonite Gambit in the Middle Ages: Harranians, Karaites, and Khaybari Jews on the Margins of Islamic Society,” in María Ángeles Gallego (ed.), Reason and Faith in Medieval Judaism and Islam, (Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, submitted for publication (forthcoming in the Commentaria Series).
Statement:
I have just finished an article on the Muslim conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries and the Jews, which has led me to think about problems in late antique and early medieval Jewish history. Jewish history in this period has most often been framed using national histories of the dominant cultures in which Jews lived (e.g., Jews in Visigothic Spain, the Byzantine Empire, the Caliphate, etc.). But this focus can lead to myopia. Alternatively, transnational conceptualization has been equated with a Jewish national narrative, which can occlude relations with “host” cultures, over-emphasizes religion, and is subject to manipulation for contemporary apologetic and ideological purposes. National dimensions of Jewish history need to be considered synoptically, while the transnational needs to be reconsidered in new contexts.
Thinking of the Muslim conquests as a circum-Mediterranean phenomenon has got me thinking about the “new” Mediterranean studies that has arisen in the wake of North Atlantic studies and the publication of The Corrupting Sea. I am looking for ways to theorize in new frameworks a “pre-history” of the Jews known in the later Middle Ages from the Geniza and archives of medieval Europe.
In Barcelona, my attention will be directed toward reevaluating the broad historical characterization of Jews as mercantile and reliant upon money for power.
Back to top
Amy M. Austin
Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Arlington
701 S Nedderman Drive, Box 19557, Arlington, Texas 76019-0557
amaustin@uta.edu
Current Projects:
Book Manuscript:
In Other Words: Images and Spaces of Convivencia in Medieval Iberia
This study proposes a re-conceptualization of the notion of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim “coexistence” (convivencia) in medieval Iberia through an examination of the use of images, words, and textual space in the projects of Catalan author, philosopher, and theologian Ramon Llull (1232-1316). Using Llull as a point of departure to analyze the works of Juan Ruiz, Juan Manuel, and Teresa de Cartagena, this project investigates the cognitive and symbolic reading processes that mediate between the spiritual and the worldly, between language and exegesis, and between embodied images and the doctrines they communicate.
Articles:
“The Nature of the Beast or Reading Humans in Celestina”
“Seeing the Tree through the Forests: Image as Translatio of Convivencia in Ramon Llull’s Llibre del gentil”
Selected Publications:
“Escenificación corporal y autorreferencialidad en el entremés La casa holgona de Pedro Calderón de la Barca.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 58.2 (2006): 383-398
Statement:
Through my participation in the NEH Summer Institute in Barcelona, I hope to gain expertise in the political, cultural, and geographical complications surrounding the medieval Mediterranean. Expanding my knowledge of the social and cultural histories of the Mediterranean would further enhance my department’s efforts to create a curriculum that moves beyond the boundaries of the traditional canon. My participation would also support the on-going efforts at the University of Texas at Arlington to coordinate medieval scholarly work, especially that of underrepresented groups, across the disciplines. I envision the 2008 NEH Summer Institute in Barcelona as a forum to provide me with a more solid base from which to continue my investigations into the connections inherent in medieval Iberian literature. The interactions that cross and blur geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary lines are a fundamental topic for the growing and rich forum of conversation and intellectual investigation of medieval European literature. Through the seminar and my independent research, I hope to find further evidence to support the placement of Ramon Llull (1232-1316) at the center of the contemporary critical discussion that is reconsidering the role of the Mediterranean in the formation and study of medieval literary history.
Back to top
Stephen Bensch
Professor
Swarthmore College
Department of History, Swathmore College, Swarthmore PA 19081
sbensch1@swathmore.pa
Current Projects:
The Noblility of Empúries, X-XIV c.;
Catalans and Genoese in North Africa
Selected Publications:
Barcelona and its Rulers, 1096-1291 (Cambridge UP, 1995)
“A Baronial Aljama: The Jews of Empúries in the Thirteenth Century,” Jewish History (2008)
“From Prizes of War to Domestic Merchandise: Slavery in Catalanoia and Aragon 1000-1300,” Vitaor (1994)
Statement:
I intend to explore questions related to prohibited trade between Muslims and Christians. Both Christianity and Islam created similar strictures about regulating and prohibiting certain types of exchange. These regulations were, not surprisingly, frequently broken as merchants sought to profit from whatever products they could exchange for the hightest profit In Barcelona I intend to explore archival material regarding customs duties and their enforcement, particularly the Lleuda de Mediona. The rupture of trading prohibitions offers a revealing and little explored perspective on questions of identity and the moral dimensions of trade
Back to top
Ibtissam Bouachrine
Assistant Professor
Smith College
Department of Spanish & Portuguese,
219 Wright Hall, Smith College, Northampton MA 01063
ibouachr@smith.edu
Teaching Fields:
Cultures of Spain through Visual Arts, Queer Iberia, Sex and the Medieval City, and Advanced Spanish Conversation
Back to top
S. Peter Cowe
S. Peter Cowe
professor
UCLA
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures,
368 Humanities Building
UCLA
415 Portola Plaza,
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1511
cowe@humnet.ucla.edu
Current Projects:
Critical edition of the three medieval Armenian coronation rites and related texts (homilies and royal verse chronicle); study exploring the role of word, image, and ceremonial as vehicles of royal ideology in Armenian Cilicia (13th-14th cc.) together with possible influences from Capetian France and parallels in Nemanjid Serbia;
the course and intellectual impact of dialogue between the Latin mendicants and Armenian scholars over the 13th-14th centuries (Cilicia, Greater Armenia, the Crimea) with special focus on natural philosophy and the transmission of Andalusian Jewish and Arab thought via Latin to the Armenians.
Selected Publications:
The Armenian Version of Daniel, (University of Pennsylvania Armenian Texts and Studies 9) Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992.
Mxit‘ar Sasnec‘i's Theological Discourses, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium vol.21 (Armenian text) vol. 22 (English translation), Leuven: Peeters, 1993.
Ani: World Architectural Heritage of a Medieval Armenian Capital (University of Pennsylvania Armenian Texts and Studies 16) Leuven: Peeters, 2001.
Daredevils of Sasun: Poetics of an Epic, Azat Eghiazaryan, (Armenian Studies Series 12), Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishing House, 2008 (translator and editor of the English version).
The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, conference proceedings (The Medieval Mediterranean Series) Leiden: E. J. Brill (in preparation)
“The Politics of Poetics: Islamic Influence on Armenian Verse,” Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam, J. J. Van Ginkel et al. (eds.), Leuven: Peeters, 2005, pp. 379-403.
“The Armenians in the Era of the Crusades (1050-1350)” and “Church and Diaspora: The Case of the Armenians” in Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol.5, Eastern Christianity, M. Angold (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 404-429: 430-456.
“New Light on the Evolution of the Byzantine Coronation Liturgy,” A. Teopel (ed.), Stephen Gero Festschrift, (Analecta Lovaniensia) Leuven: Peeters (in press)
“The Inauguration of the Cilician Coronation Rite and Royal Ideology,” Armenian Review 45 (1992), pp.49-59.
“Armenological Paradigms and Yovhann?s Sarkawag’s ‘Discourse on Wisdom’ —Philosophical Underpinning for an Armenian Renaissance?” Revue des études arméniennes 25 (1994-95), pp. 125-155.
“The Role of Correspondence in Elucidating the Intensification of Latin-Armenian Ecclesiastical Interchange in the First Quarter of the Fourteenth Century,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 13 (2004) 47-68.
“Theology of Kingship in 13th Century Armenian Cilicia,” “Culture of Cilician Armenia” International Conference, Hask Hayagitakan Hand?s (2008) (in press)
Statement:
As symbols both illumine and obfuscate the entity with which they are paired, this quality is also inherent in all research paradigms. They must be set in counterpoint or integrated in various ways to foster greater richness of meaning and reference. Delineating the center of Medieval Studies as N.W. Europe, focusing on the historical development of polities that smoothly emerged into nation states and defining this as a ‘west’ in categorical distinction to an ‘east’ illustrates Moretti’s description of the tree model. Though it has undoubtedly yielded important results, it is not conducive to an understanding of how the Armenian polity functioned during this era (along with other states and ethnic and religious groups), but has had the effect of marginalizing them.
Consequently, I look forward to discussing the institute’s alternative approach of deconstructing the center-periphery antithesis and highlighting the process of interaction. This resembles Moretti’s wave model, and is potentially a more appropriate discourse within which to situate what we might call the ‘Armenian oikoumene’ active over thee continents together with that of parallel groups and clarify their role as vectors in economic, military, and cultural exchange throughout the broader Mediterranean whole.
Back to top
Theresa Earenfight
Associate Professor of History and Chair, Medieval Studies Program
Seattle University
901 12th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122
Theresa@seattleu.edu
Current Projects:
Comparative study of gender in medieval European political theory on monarchy and modern notions of power, statecraft, and institutions
Biography of Queen Juana Enríquez (1425-68)
Selected Publications:
“Two Bodies, One Spirit: Isabel and Fernando’s Construction of Monarchical Partnership.” In Queen Isabel I of Castile: Power, Patronage. Edited by Barbara Weissberger. Woodbridge, UK Boydell and Brewer, 2008. 3-18.
“Without the Persona of the Prince? Kings, Queens, and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval Europe.” Gender and History 191 (April 2007): 1–21.
Edited Collection: Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, includes my essay: “Absent Kings: Queens as Political Partners in the Crown of Aragon.” Aldershot (UK): Ashgate Publishing, 2005.
“Political Culture and Political Discourse in the Letters of Queen María of Castile.” La corónica 31.2 (Fall 2003): 135–52.
“The Political Dynamic between the Aragonese Monarchy and the Consell de Cent of Barcelona during the Lieutenancy of María of Castile (1440–1458).” El Mon Urbá a la Corona d’Aragó del 1137 als decrets de Nova Planta. [The Urban World of the Crown of Aragon from 1137 to the Decrees of the Nova Planta] 3 volumes. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2003. III: 245–64.
“María of Castile: Ruler or Figurehead? A Preliminary Study in Aragonese Queenship.” Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 45–61.
Statement:
My study of political theory on medieval and early modern rulership addresses the question: To what extent was the political culture of the Crown of Aragon influenced by its location in the western Mediterranean at a crossroads in Italy, Muslim Spain and North Africa? Using royal and municipal archives, I will trace the circulation of political ideas and literate public political discourse among governing groups during the reign of Alfonso V and María of Castile (1416-58)—nobles, town councils, royal officials—and how these ideas on governance shaped early modern ideas on empire. I will focus on two key texts—the English John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (ca. 1390), which contains an influential extended discourse on rulership, and the Valencian Francesc Eiximenis’s Dotzè del Crestià (ca. 1383, also known as the Regiment de princeps e de communitats). María’s aunt, Philippa of Lancaster, wife of João I (1385–1433), brought Gower’s book to Portugal, but it is not known precisely when or by whom the book first circulated in Castile and the Crown of Aragon. The connection of the Dotzè to the Aragonese royal family has been clearly established, but I aim to trace its influence on Catalan elites.
Back to top
John Eldevik
Visiting Asst. Professor
Pomona College
History Department, 551 College Ave. Claremont, CA 91711
jeldevik@pomona.edu
Current Projects:
Book manuscript on bishops and reform in the eleventh century
Selected Publications:
“Driving the Chariot of the Lord: Siegfried I of Mainz (1060-1084) and Episcopal Identity in an Age of Transition,” in The Bishop Re-Formed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, ed. John S. Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones (London: Ashgate,2007): 159-186.
Medieval Germany: Research and Resources, GHI Research Guide 21, Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, 2007
“New Studies in Medieval Law and Conflict Resolution,” Comitatus 36 (2005): 157-172.
“Ecclesiastical Lordship and the Politics of Submitting Tithes in Medieval Germany:
The Thuringian Tithe Dispute in Social Context,” Viator 34 (2003): 40-56
Statement:
Each Spring I teach a history survey for our department entitled “Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean”. I really enjoy teaching this interdisciplinary course comparing Latin, Greek and Islamic civilization in the Middle Ages, but wanted to gain some new insights on the field of Mediterranean history, particularly interdiscplinary perspectives. I also hope to begin exploring connections and contacts between northern Europe and the Mediterranean.
Back to top
Hussein Anwar Fancy
Junior Fellow, Michigan Soceity of Fellows
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Department of History, 1029 Tisch Hall, 435 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
fancy@umich.edu
Current Projects:
“Mercenary Logic: Muslim Soldiers in the Service of the Crown of Aragon” (Book Project)
“Forging Captives: Slave Smuggling in Medieval Catalonia” (work-in-progress)
Statement:
In addition to completing a modest research project at the ACA, I am extremely excited – selfishly so – to meet with and and learn from fellow scholars who define the Mediterranean as their locus of study. I hope not only to get advice for my own lumbering projects but also to return the favor in some fashion or the other.
Back to top
Nahyan Fancy
Assistant Professor
History
DePauw University, 7 E Larabee St., Greencastle, IN 46135, USA
nahyanfancy@depauw.edu
Current Projects:
“Science and Religion in Medieval Egypt: Ibn al-Nafis, Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection”
Selected Publications:
“The Virtuous Son of the Rational: A Traditionalist's Response to the Falasifa,” in Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. Tzvi Langermann (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, in press)
Statement:
I would like to have the opportunity to develop a syllabus for an intermediate-level, comparative course on the medieval Mediterranean world. I also hope to refine my own methodological perspectives on hybridity and acculturation, to gain more insight into the ways in which scientific knowledge was transmitted and appropriated in the medieval world.
Back to top
Eileen McKiernan González
Assistant Professor
Berea College
Art Department, 101 Chestnut St., CPO 2162, Berea, KY 40404
mckiernan-gonzaleze@berea.edu
Current Projects:
The development of the Mudejar in Iberian convents
Selected Publications:
“Goya’s La Tauromaquia: The Visual Weight of Violence,” Romance Quarterly, 54/1 (2007), 39-48.
“Women and the Commemoration of the Dead in Twelfth Century Spain” In Constructions of Death, Mourning and Memory Conference, October 26-28, 2006, Proceedings. Edited by Lillian Zirpolo. Woodcliff Lake: The WAPACC Organization, 2006, 4-7.
“The Persistence of the Romanesque in the Kingdom of Aragón,” in Church, Vellum and State: Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John Williams, edited by Therese Martin and Julie Harris, Leiden: Brill, 2005, 443-478.
Statement:
My project, “Gendered spaces and the construction of identity,” seeks to understand a seeming contradiction between the reinforcement and expansion of military borders and their implications in the cultural realm. I use convents associated with the court to reveal the transformation of style to designate power structures and affiliations across the peninsula and Mediterranean. In the neighboring kingdoms of Castilla-León and Aragón the style of royal foundations varied widely by the fourteenth century shifting along with their conquests. Castilla-León adapts a Mudejar style based in the forms of the Almohad and Nasrid dynasties – incorporating Islamic decorative motifs and technical developments into the secular and religious structures of the Christian court. In Aragón, however, this adaptation is rejected in favor of styles coming from the north and east. I would like to expand my research into the developments at sites such as Santa María de Pedralbes in the fourteenth century and to look at surviving courtly settings, a difficulty for the twelfth century in my prior work as few palaces survive with original decoration. I am also interested in the changing favor of different religious orders, and especially the impact of urban convents as favored communities – and the rise of the Poor Clares in particular. In courtly areas, the rapid rise of early Italian Renaissance forms in architecture, painting, and sculpture is in direct contrast to the very slow assimilation of these forms in Castilla where Mudejar influence persists well into the sixteenth century.
Back to top
Mary Halavais ( Hal-a-vay)
Associate Professor, History
Sonoma State University (California State University, Sonoma County)
1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928
halavais@sonoma.edu
Current Projects:
This summer, I’ll be putting together the syllabus for a Mediterranean senior seminar at Sonoma State.
Selected Publications:
Like Wheat to the Miller (Morisco/Christian convivencia in 16th C Aragon) is available on the Gutenberg-e site and the ACLS Humanities E-Book site.
Statement:
Beyond putting together a solid seminar for my students, my hope is to spend some time reading and getting oriented in the Crown Archive, and some more time listening to what others are working on right now.
Back to top
Michelle M. Hamilton
Associate Professor
University of California, Irvine
322 HH Irvine, CA 92697-5275
michellh@uci.edu
Current Projects:
Hebrew aljamiado ms.;
Spectral Arab in Hispanomedievalism
Selected Publications:
Representing Others in Medieval Iberian Lit Palgrave, 2007 : Wine, Women And Song (ed.) Juan de la Cuesta, 2004
Statement:
Develop ideas on next project (investigation of privileging of Gothic origins in Spanish historiography and how that plays out in cultural production of 13th-15th centuries).
Back to top
Andrew Kurt
Visiting Asst. Professor (History)
Grand Valley State University
Dept. of History, 1060A MAK, Allendale, MI 49401
kurta@gvsu.edu
Current Projects:
Cordoban martyrs (9th);
European-Ethiopian relations in the late Middle Ages / The search for Prester John in Ethiopia
Selected Publications:
Minting, State and Economy in the Visigothic Kingdom, ca. 418 to ca. 713 (Paris: Wetteren, forthcoming 2008).
“Solomonid Empire” [Ethiopia, 1270-1480] and “Songhai Empire” [Mali, 1400-1600], in Encyclopedia of the Empires of the World (Facts on File, forthcoming).
“The Places and Purposes of Minting in the Germanic Kingdoms,” in a Festschrift for Professor Andrew Watson (Universidad de Valencia, forthcoming 2008).
“Nueva ceca visigoda: Lorca (Iliocri[ca]) y sus nexos con las cecas del sur,” Numisma (no. 241, Jan.-Dec. 1998), 27-39.
“Visigothic Minting and the Expulsion of the Byzantines from Spain in the Early Seventh Century,” The Picus (1996), 133-66.
Statement:
My first goal is thorough curriculum development for a course with the working title ‘The Mediterranean: Commerce and Cultures, 500-1500’, as well as for enrichment of my courses on the Middle Ages, Islamic empires, and Western-Muslim relations. Especially for the new course on the Mediterranean I am seeking particularly to increase my knowledge of interregional commercial activity and cultural interchange. I would also like to explore possible pedagogical approaches to Mediterranean history and to build an excellent but appropriate bibliography for a challenging upper-level course. My second goal is to search the archives concerning the topic of
European contact with Ethiopia, concentrating on Iberian visitors there and the exchange of ambassadors between Ethiopia and Aragon in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A larger question which interests me is Europeans’ knowledge of Africa from about 1300 to 1550.
What exactly was known of this region both far away yet connected to Europe by the sea and its shipping activities? How did this knowledge change with increased commercial contact? A look at histories, geographies, and maps will help.
Back to top
Susan Laningham
Associate Professor
Tennessee Tech University
5 William L. Jones Dr., Cookeville, TN 38505
slaningham@tntech.edu
Current Projects:
Putting the finishing touches on the editing and Introduction for the new translation of the vita of the sixteenth-century nun and mystic, Maria Vela, to be published by the University of Chicago Press for its "Other Voice" series. My book manuscript is underway; the topic is the ascetic female body in Counter-Reformation Spain.
Selected Publications:
"Maladies Up Her Sleeve? Clerical Interpretation of a Suffering Female Body in Counter-Reformation Spain," in the inaugural issue of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal (University of Maryland Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies);
"Making a Saint Out of a Sibling," in Thicker Than Water: Sisters And Brothers In The Early Modern World (Ashgate, 2006)
Project: For the benefit of my book manuscript, I will re-examine Spanish asceticism as a possible hybrid of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish notions of self, gender, and body. I will also apply my findings to an upcoming Senior Seminar for senior history majors at Tennessee Tech, entitled "Heroes, Saints, and Other Ascetics," The course will focus on the evolution of ascetic behavior, from ancient Greek athletes to Counter-Reformation mystics, including within its range first-century Jewish Theraputae, the desert fathers and mothers of late antiquity, and the Sufis of Islam. I will also take the opportunity to study Barcelona as a possible destination for students in a future "History of Spain" course.
Karla Mallette
Assistant Professor
Dept of French and Italian, Miami University
207 Irvin Hall, Oxford OH 45056
karla.mallette@gmail.com
Current Projects:
translation of framed narratives between Arabic, Greek, Latin, and Romance vernaculars; Italianate lingua franca of the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean
Selected Publications:
The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History (Penn Press, 2005)
European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean (currently under review)
Statement:
I’m working on the transmission history of medieval framed narratives between Arabic and the Romance vernaculars, and this summer I’ll be looking at the transmission histories of two works: the Kalila wa-Dimna (translation commissioned by Alfonso el Sabio in 1251) and the Sindbad/Sendebar (translation commissioned by Prince Fadrique in 1253). In particular, I’ll be comparing the fate of these translations made in Spain and the other European translations of the same works (the Stephanites kai Ichnelates made in Sicily and John of Capua’s Directorium humanae vitae, both translations of the Kalila wa-Dimna, and their spawn; the vast European tradition of translations of Sindbad as the Seven Sages of Rome).
I’ll also be working on the Italianate lingua franca used by merchants and sailors in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. My interest in this material is primarily philological (I’m looking into the possibility that the language was used to transmit narrative material). However most of the research on the lingua franca has been conducted by linguists, anthropologists, and social historians, and studying it requires a thorough knowledge of economic history. So I’ll be absorbing as much social and economic history as I can during the NEH seminar.
Back to top
Leonard Marsh
Associate Professor of French
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, NY
marsh@lemoyne.edu
Current Projects:
Arab influence on French courtly literature
Sibylline tradition in Rabelais
Architecture and narrative in 19th century French prose
Selected Publications:
“Amazing Space: Portrayal of Grace in Corneille’s Polyeucte.” Journal of Christianity and Foreign Languages 8 (2007): 24-34.
“Voltaire’s Candide.” The Explicator 62 (2004): 144-46.
“Reading Signs of Mystery in Flaubert’s ‘Hérodias.’” Journal of Christianity and Foreign Languages 5 (2004): 40-54.
“Of Walls and the Window: Charting Textual Markers in Flaubert’s ‘Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier.’” Modern Language Studies 30 (2000): 157-165.
“Hugo’s ‘Éclaircie.’” The Explicator 58 (2000): 77-78.
“Monks in the Kitchen: Reading One of Rabelais’s Curious Combinations.” Romance Notes 40 (1999): 25-31.
“Of Horns and Words: A Reading of Rabelais’s Signs.” Romanic Review 88 (1997): 53-66.
“Félicité on the Road: A Synchronic Reading of ‘Un Coeur simple.’” Romanic Review 81 (1990): 56-65.
Statement:
My intent is to begin a research project which probes the possible influence of the Arab presence in the Mediterranean on French courtly literature. I will be building on my previous study of La Chastelaine de Vergy, which was heavily marked by a structuralist approach. I hope that the Summer Institute will afford me with the makings of a fresh approach, one that takes into account the cultural landscape that produced the text. I have a number of questions dealing with particular themes in the Chastelaine, namely secrecy and ritual, justice, and loyalty in love. In Barcelona I hope to find if these themes, or permutations thereof, could have been exported across the Pyrenees with the traffic attendant to the siege of Barbastro and the crusade against the Albigensian heresy and then embedded in French courtly literature. I look forward to meeting and benefiting from the expertise of the scholars who have been invited to address the Institute members. In addition, I hope that we will all benefit from the expertise each of us brings to the Institute.
Back to top
Afrodesia McCannon
Associate Professor
Rowan University
201 Mullica Hill Road, Glassboro, NJ 08028
mccannon@rowan.edu
Current Projects:
Studies of medieval autobiography in the Vie de saint Louis by Jean de Joinville and the Llibre dels fets del rei en Jaume.
Selected Publications:
“The King's Two Lives: The Tunisian Legend of Saint Louis” Journal of Folklore Research 43 (2006): 53-74; “Two Queens, a King, and a Nobleman: Queens as the Foreground for Aristocratic Anxiety in the Vie de saint Louis” Capetian Women, Palgrave/Global Publishing at St. Martin’s Press. The New Middle Ages Series, ed. Bonnie Wheeler. October 2004.
Statement:
I am hoping that my participation in the institute will help me further research I've already begun on the Llibre dels fets by Jaume I. The Book of Deeds, which is the first European autobiography written by a king, is dictated in the royal or majestic "we” except for a noticeable peppering of lapses from the first person plural “we” into the first person singular, “I”. I hope to research what the tension between the “I” and “we” in the text might signify as a means of investigating early autobiography and subjectivity. I further want to learn how Arab historical forms may have influenced the text. Additionally, I would like to increase focus on the dynamic between Arab and European history, culture, and literature in several of my literature courses.
Back to top
Anjela Cannarelli Peck
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
Hamilton College
Clinton, NY
apeck@hamilton.edu
Current Projects: Caving Subjects, Wonderful Monsters: Convivencia After 1492
Statement:
I will be drafting one of my final two chapters for my current project, which juxtaposes literary darkspaces (caves and cave-like loci) with the physical wombs of Iberian women. In my book, I argue that these literary darkspaces and Iberian wombs are reproductive, hybrid sites situated on the border between different religions, languages and cultures. Through a comparative analysis of these spaces, deployed in literary and historical works written between the 15th to mid 17th centuries in Spanish, Arabic, and Latin as well as aljamiado (Spanish transliterated into Arabic) texts, I propose that a paradigm shift occurred in conceptualizing Iberian subjectivity. Although the Iberian sense of self was changed from trans-cultural, trans-regional subjects (like mudéjar, mozárabe, judío and cristiano) that dominated the 15th century to fossilized religious and ideological categories (such as morisco, marrano or cristiano viejo) defined by the Catholic Church State and enforced by the Inquisition in the 16th and 17th centuries, I suggest that Spanish identity was ubiquitously represented as heterodox. That is, when canonical and peripheral literary texts such as Cervantes’ Don Quijote, Lope de Vega’s El Otomano famoso and anonymous morisco texts including “sh‘er f? aho?l al-?iy?ma” (Poem of the Horrors of the Resurrection), Los libros plúmbeos and El-alhadiz del alcazar del oro are juxtaposed with other hegemonic and marginal medical, religious, and political texts, Spanish subjectivity is depicted as deviant and even monstrous.
Back to top
Jonathan Ray
Assistant Professor
Georgetown University
Theology Department
37th and O streets, NW
Washington, DC 20057
jsr46@georgetown.edu
Current Projects:
Book on 1492 and the formation of the Sephardic Diaspora
Article on Jews in medieval Christian Charters
Selected Publications:
The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2006)
“Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing our Approach to Medieval Convivencia,” Jewish Social Studies 11, 2 (2005): 1-18
“The Jews between Church and State in Reconquest Iberia,” Viator 38, 1 (2007): 155-165
Statement:
This summer I plan to examine the nexus of power and autonomy within the medieval Jewish community in both its Andalusi and Hispano-Christian milieu. This forms part of the background for a book project on the creation of the Sephardic social and religious networks throughout the Mediterranean in the immediate aftermath of the 1492. I will look at the development of Jewish communal authority and its intellectual underpinning within the context of the shifting social and political climate of Andalusi Jewry. At the heart of this discussion is the way in which local factions within this society enlisted the waning authority of older, Baghdadi institutions to buttress their own claims to power. In doing so, I hope to offer greater insight into the transfer of Jewish cultural norms and institutional structures from East to West, and to highlight the way in which Jews interacted with their Muslim and Christian host societies. In addition to my own project, I also look forward to expanding my horizons on the artistic, literary and historical sources for the study of the medieval Mediterranean.
Back to top
Miriam Shadis
Assistant Professor
Department of History, Ohio University
405 Bentley Hall Annex, Athens, OH 45701
shadis@ohio.edu
Current Projects:
I am finishing an article on Women and Court Service in 12th and 13th century Castile, León and Portugal, and an article on Urraca of Castile, Queen of Portugal (1187-1220.) I am working on a larger project on the queens of early Portugal, and am beginning a study of dower and dowry practices in Iberia (see below.) I have just submitted for publication with Palgrave MacMillan a study of the Castilian queen Berenguela (1180-1246.) I am currently the General Editor for the Medieval Feminist Forum, editing two special issues on the “Geographies of Gender” (Winter 2007 and Summer 2008).
Selected Publications:
“Women, Gender and Rulership in Romance Europe: The Iberian Case,” History Compass 4 (3), 481-487. http://www.history-compass.com, March, 2006
“Blanche of Castile and Marion Facinger’s “Medieval Queenship”: reassessing the argument,” in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave, 2003.)
“A Taste of the Feast: The Daughters and Granddaughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine,” with Constance H. Berman in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lady and Lord, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons; (New York: Palgrave, 2002.)
“Berenguela of Castile’s Political Motherhood: the management of sexuality, marriage, and succession,” in Medieval Mothering, John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. (Series: The New Middle Ages), Garland Press, 1996.
“Piety, Politics and Power: the Patronage of Leonor of England and her daughters, Blanche of Castile and Berenguela of León,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, June Hall McCash, ed., The University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Statement:
My goals are three-fold: 1) to broaden and deepen my knowledge of the medieval Mediterranean, filling in some lacunae in my earlier education; 2) to prepare for a course I will teach for the first time this fall, on Medieval Spain; and 3) to begin archival work on a new project on the relationship between medieval women, marriage, and property, furthering my investigation of Mediterranean legal practices regarding women and property, and studying dowry and dower practices (in Spain, charters of arras.) I hope to build on the seminal work of Diane Owen Hughes (“From Brideprice to Dowry”), the study of Aragonese marriage charters by José LaLinde Abadia, and the work of David Herlihy on women property owners. I will build upon and reconfigure the questions proposed by these earlier scholars, starting with the varieties and consistencies of Mediterranean practice, and considering the changes and continuities over time. My project will engage a wider conversation about medieval women and property in the Mediterranean already begun by scholars such as Shona Kelly Wray, Jutta Siebert and Rebecca Winer, among others.
Back to top
Munir Shaikh
Adjunct Professor of History
University of Redlands
1200 E. Colton Ave.
Dept. of History, Gannett Center
Redlands, CA 92373
munir_shaikh@redlands.edu
Current Projects:
Nasrid ideology/legitimation; Ibn al-Khatib
Selected Publications:
“World Events” in Susan Douglass, ed., World Eras volume 2: The Rise and Spread of Islam 622-1500. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Publishing, 2002. “Geography” in Susan Douglass, ed., World Eras volume 2: The Rise and Spread of Islam 622-1500. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Publishing, 2002.
Book Review of Ana Echaverria. Fortress of Faith: The Attitude Towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Published in Islamic Studies, Spring 2001.
Statement:
I see this Summer Institute as an opportunity to gain further grounding in the diverse disciplinary practices that inform our knowledge of medieval Mediterranean life and key developments that gave rise to “the West”. I am looking forward to receiving practical guidance regarding the use of archival, archeological, and other materials, which so far I have not had the opportunity to do. I am excited about engaging inter-disciplinary issues and questions with fellow participants and the leading scholars brought together as program faculty. The intensive nature of the program, and the requirement to work on a meaningful project, suggest the possibility of tremendous personal and scholarly growth in a relatively short period of time.
Back to top
Krista Sue-Lo Twu
Associate Professor
University of Minnesota Duluth
English Department
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN 55812
ktwu@d.umn.edu
Current Projects:
Revision of MS on Raymund of Penaforte’s Summa de Poenitentia and Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale
Translation of Raymund of Penaforte’s Summa de Poenitentia
Selected Publications:
“Chaucer's Vision of the Tree of Life: Crossing the Road with the Rood in the Parson’s Tale,” Chaucer Review 39.4 (2005).
“The Awntyrs off Arthure: Reliquary for Romance,” Arthurian Literature XX (2003).
“This is Comforting?: Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, rhetoric, dialectic & ‘unicum illud homines deumque commercium.’”Carmina Philosophiae 7 (1998). *reprinted in New Directions in Boethian Studies, eds. N.H. Kaylor and P.E. Phillips, Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 2005.
Review Article of Consolation of Philosophy. trans. Joel C. Relihan, 2001. Carmina Philosophiae 11 (2002).
Book Review: Book for a Simple and Devout Woman: A Late Middle English Adaptation of Peraldus’s “Summa de vitiis et virtutibus” and Friar Laurent’s “Somme le roi”. ed. F.N.M. Diekstra. Speculum 76.4 (October 2001).
Statement:
While in Barcelona I will begin a long-term project on Raymund of Penaforte—my first post-tenure project. The project will center on a scholarly modern English translation of Raymund’s Summa de Poenitentia with a critical introduction. I am looking forward to incorporating the trans-disciplinary topics of discussion on the emergence of the West and the nature of the middle ages in the Mediterranean into my work. The research contributing to this translation will also lead to publication of a scholarly biography of Raymund, several articles on the Raymundina, and several analytical articles on the Summa itself. I hope also to become well acquainted with the archive resources in and around the city so as to facilitate a return to Barcelona during my sabbatical leave, two or three years from now.
Back to top
Valerie Michelle Wilhite
Visiting Assistant Professor
Middle Tennessee State University
Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Box 79
Murfreesboro, TN
37132
vwilhite@hotmail.com
Current Projects:
I am interested in the “last sigh” of the troubadour tradition, the period of the Albigensian Crusade, Raimon Vidal, and even the consistori of both Toulouse and Barcelona. I’d like to look at court culture in the courts of the Crown of Aragon and other areas to see what role joglaria held in these.
I am currently revising a paper on Guiraut Riquier’s appeal to Alfonso X for a title of troubadour as distinct from joglar.
Selected Publications:
“Language for Lovers: Lessons from the Troubadours and Mystics.”
Invited to submit manuscript to Words of Lov and, Love of Words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Ed. Albrecht Classen, Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2008.
“Instructing the Court: Raimon Vidal’s Pedagogy for the Courtly Joglar.” Selected Proceedings of the 11th
Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society. Ed. Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby.
Boydell & Brewer, 2006.
“The Loss of Love’s Emotions: The Urban Consistori and the Reconceptualization
of Love Lyric.” Les Emotions au coeur de la ville (XIVe-XVIe siècle). Ed. Elodie
Lecuppre-Desjardin et Anne-Laure Van Bruaene. Studies in
European Urban History. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005.
Statement:
For this summer I am hoping to get a firm grasp of the Mediterranean as a unified entity that gave breath to the troubadour tradition. While the origins of my interest in medieval literature and even my current research on Occitan literature are wholly situated in the region we can unify under the title The Mediterranean, it is by joining the NEH Summer Institute on The Medieval Mediterranean that I think this truth will take on more force.
Also, I would like to strengthen my commitment to the other literatures of the Mediterranean while working towards an idea of the Mediterranean as an entity of which Occitan language and culture is one element. And while in Barcelona this summer I am also hoping to find more materials in the Archiu de la Corona d’Arag’o and the BC that will allow me to have a better understanding of the transformation of troubadour values and courtly culture as we move from the birth of troubadour song to its last days. I am also looking forward to having my image of the period and the milieu reshaped by conversations with the other participants.
Back to top
Nina Zhiri
Professor
UCSD, Literature Department
9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla CA 92093-0410
ozhiri@ucsd.edu
Current Projects: A study of Early Modern Orientalism
Selected Publications:
L'Extase et ses paradoxes, Essai sur la Structure narrative du Tiers Livre de François Rabelais, Paris, Champion, 1999 (276 pp.)
Les sillages de Jean Léon l'Africain, du XVI° au XX° siècle, Casablanca, Wallada, 1995 (231 pp.)
L'Afrique au miroir de l'Europe, fortunes de Jean Léon l'Africain à la Renaissance, Geneva, Droz, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 247, 1991 (246 pp.)
“Sauvages et Mahometans”, Esculape et Dyonisos, Mélanges offerts à Jean Céard, Geneva, Droz, 2008.
“Leo Africanus and the Limits of Translation”, Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period, ed. Carmine diBiase, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2006.
“Edward Said, l’orientalisme et la modernité”, Prologues, Casablanca, Fall 2004.
“Le drame de la décadence : Léon L’Africain et Ibn Khaldûn”, to be published in Léon l’Africain, Paris, Presses de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
“Le Tiers Livre, le temps et le sens”, to be published in Rabelais et la question du sens, Actes du Colloque de Cerisy, Geneva, Droz, collection Etudes Rabelaisiennes.
“Leo Africanus, Translated and Betrayed”, The Politics of Translation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Luise von Flotow, and Daniel Russell, University of Ottawa Press, 2001 (pp.161-174).
“Description of Africa”, Travel Knowledge, European Discoveries in the Early Modern Period, edited by Ivo Kamps and Jyotsna G. Singh, New York, Palgrave, 2001 (pp. 249-266).
Statement:
Participating in this Institute will hopefully allow me to put to into a larger frame my research on early modern Oriental Studies, and to put one of my working hypotheses that the birth of the field of knowledge called at that time "Oriental studies" should be understood partly as a reflection of these momentous changes in the Mediterranean, and of the redistribution of its space among Christianities and Islams, not to mention the displacement of Spanish Jews. Before its progressive widening to further Orients, Orientalism was concerned mainly with cultures of the Mediterranean, and the first development of Oriental studies should be understood as a circulation of knowledge, intellectual interests, ideas, and people across the Mediterranean.
More pointedly, I have been working recently on an influential text by a converted Morisco (Juan Andrés), and I just discovered that some texts that I need to read seem to be of much easier access in Barcelona than in Southern California. Actually, one specific study, an MA thesis, is to my knowledge only available at the University of Barcelona, where it was defended in the 60s. I hope that in my spare time I will be able to advance this research, that should become a chapter of a future book or a research article.