Participants:
Abigail Balbale, Pete Burkholder, Louisa Burnham, Robert Clark, Andrew Devereux, John Drendel, Edward English, Allen Fromherz, Barbara Fuchs, Adam Gaiser, Camilo Gomez-Rivas, Jocelyn Hendrickson, Yuen-Gen Liang, Karen Mathews, Adam Miyashiro, Kiril Petkov, Valerie Ramseyer, Jarbel Rodriguez, Michael Ryan, Paul Sidelko, Joseph Stanley, Richard Taylor, Lara Tohme, David Wrisley
Abigail Krasner Balbale
PhD Candidate,
Harvard University
Languages Spoken: Classical Arabic, Levantine Arabic, French, Spanish (Castilian)
Field(s): I focus primarily on the political and cultural history of al-Andalus, and my dissertation examines a succession of Muslim rulers who legitimated their authority using wide-ranging cultural, legal and military tools. More generally, I’m interested in the interaction of different ethnic and religious groups in the medieval Mediterranean and in the diffusion of cultural production that accompanied the dissolution of the caliphate.
Current Projects: Dissertation: “Caliphs, Kings and Qadis: Culture and Authority in Sharq al-Andalus, 1145-1266”
Selected Publications:
The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, co-authored with María Rosa Menocal and Jerrilynn Dodds, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008.
Extracurricular Interests: Running, photography, reading novels.
Institute Project & Plans: I look forward to meeting scholars and teachers working on cultural hybridity in the medieval Mediterranean. My dissertation explores the complexities of a particular moment in Iberian religious interaction, and I know that this summer’s seminar will enrich my understanding of the broader region. My research examines Sharq al-Andalus in a period when crusade ideology seemed to define the encounter between Muslim and Christian. Both rulers and inhabitants demonstrate a more accommodating approach than crusade suggests, sharing weapons, artistic styles and languages, and joining forces against common enemies. Though neither religion nor ethnicity could be counted on to determine political ideology, articulations of legitimacy frequently depended on language rooted in both. I use political and legal documents and material sources to investigate how rulers presented themselves to their subjects and rivals. I am planning to continue my archival work in Spain this summer, primarily in the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid and the Municipal Archives in Murcia during the month of June. I hope that the month in Barcelona, with the access it will provide to the archives of the Crown of Aragon, will allow me to examine more treaties, histories and royal documents dealing with Sharq al-Andalus.
Pete Burkholder
Assistant Professor of History,
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Languages Spoken: French
Field(s): In terms of teaching, I’m in a small department, so I have to cover a lot ground (I’m the only pre-modernist). So I teach a variety of medieval courses, Roman history, history methods, and many others. In terms of research, I study Angevin social history in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, medieval warfare, and depictions of the Middle Ages in film. I split my research time about equally with pedagogical research (I also run my college’s faculty development program).
Current Projects: I have a number projects going at present, including a prosopographical study of an Angevin castellan family, an examination of an early use of gunpowder weaponry, and an analysis of the depiction and significance of weaponry in medieval film. I also have a project (pending funding) that would use videogames to augment student learning of medieval warfare.
Selected Publications:
“Getting Medieval on American History Research: A Method to Help Students Think Historically,” The History Teacher (forthcoming)
“Documents, Literacy, and the Angevin Castellany,” in Steven Fanning & Marguerite Ragnow, eds., The Individual and the State in Medieval Europe (Medieval Institute Press, forthcoming)
“Video Killed the Term Paper Star? Two Views,” in Randy Bass & Bret Eynon, eds., The Difference that Inquiry Makes: A Collaborative Case Study of Technology & Learning (2009)
“Who Founded Durtal? Reconsidering the Evidence,” Haskins Society Journal 20 (2008)
“Popular [Mis]conceptions of Medieval Warfare,” History Compass 5 (2007)
Extracurricular Interests: Triathlons and road cycling. I’m a big Tour de France junkie, and will have to cheer on Lance Armstrong this July amidst throngs of Spaniards supporting their own Alberto Contador.
Institute Project and Plans: I must admit that I don’t specialize in Mediterranean history, per se. That said, I recently helped create an ocean basins history sequence that’s required of our majors. My body of water is the Mediterranean, and I’ve been frustrated with the course for a variety of reasons. My teaching philosophy favors a case-study approach (as opposed to a coverage model), so I’m hoping to develop some exciting, rigorous and effective case studies to enhance my course. In that vein, I’m hoping I can draw on the knowledge of other seminar participants who do have expertise in medieval Mediterranean history.
Louisa Burnham
Associate Professor,
Middlebury College
Languages Spoken: English, French, Italian
Field(s): Medieval religion and heresy
Current Projects:
1. The case of a highly unusual heretic from the hinterlands of Perpignan (d. 1329). His unorthodox ideas (somewhat reminiscent of Menocchio’s) are leading me to study Catalan and Occitan vernacular alchemy in the first quarter of the fourteenth century (amongst many other things both sublime and ridiculous).
2. The case of a heretical (Beguin) notary of Girona in the mid-1320s. In addition to the manuscripts related to his interrogation, this case is leading me to study intrigue at the papal court of Avignon, the royal court of Jaume II and the court of Felip of Majorca.
Selected Publications:
So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: The Beguin Heretics of Languedoc (Cornell University Press, 2008).
“La crise spirituelle de 1316: Les franciscains de Narbonne et leurs relations avec les habitants de la ville,” in Moines et religieux dans la ville (XII-XVe siècles), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 44 (2009), 469-491.
“‘Just Talking about God’: Orthodox Prayer, among the Heretical Beguins,” in Franciscans at Prayer, ed. by Timothy Johnson (Leiden, Brill, 2007), pp. 249-270.
“Reliques et résistance chez les Béguins de Languedoc,” Annales du Midi 118 (2006), pp. 353-368, in a special edition dedicated to new work by American scholars.
“Les Franciscains Spirituels et les Béguins du Midi” in Jacques Berlioz, ed., Le pays cathare: les religions médiévales et leurs expressions méridionales (Paris, Le Seuil, 2000), pp. 147-160.
“The Visionary Authority of Na Prous Boneta” in Alain Boureau and Sylvain Piron, eds. Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298): Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société (Paris, J. Vrin, 1999), pp. 319-339.
Extracurricular Interests: Good food, markets, monasteries (esp. Cistercian), Romanesque architecture, anything related to medieval technology, knitting, early music (singing and listening), fountain pens.
Institute Project and Plans:
I teach classes on the Medieval Mediterranean and on Medieval Cities that are frequently concerned with issues of cultural hybridities. In particular, the Medieval Mediterranean class culminates in a close study of al-Andalus and the vexed question of “convivencia.” I hope to deepen my knowledge in this area in order to improve my teaching. Moreover, getting to know Barcelona more intimately will enable me to use it as a case study of a Roman town turned mercantile powerhouse for Medieval Cities.
I am also planning on researching (and writing) both of my current research projects in the archives and libraries of Barcelona. I particularly wish to explore the texts and culture of vernacular alchemy at the beginning of the fourteenth century, hoping to discover how an alchemist might have ended up in an obscure village to the west of Perpignan. For my other project, I will be exploring archival materials related to the courts of Jaume II and Felip of Majorca and the politicization of heresy. How did the Franciscan poverty controversy and the repression of the Beguins play out at these courts?
Personally, I really want to improve my oral/aural Catalan.
Completed Project
Robert (Bob) Clark
Associate Professor,
Kansas State University
Languages Spoken: English, French
Field(s): French medieval literature, especially theater, gender and sexuality, manuscript illumination
Current Projects: edition of the Mystère de la Sainte Hostie
Selected Publications:
‘Les Frères Parfaict et François de Beauchamps, historiens du théâtre médiéval au XVIIIe siècle,’ Pères du théâtre
médiéval, ed. Marie Bouhaïk-Gironès and Véronique Dominguez. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes,
forthcoming.
‘Encountering a Dream-Vision: Visual and Verbal Glosses to Guillaume de Digulleville’s Pelerinage Jhesucrist
(with Pamela Sheingorn), Push Me, Pull You: Interaction, Physicality, and Devotional Practice in the Late Medieval
and Renaissance Art, Ed. Laura Gelfand and Sarah Blick, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill,
‘Host Desecration in Medieval and Early Modern Paris and the Politics of Persecution (1274-1553)’. Performance,
Drama and Spectacle in the Medieval City: Essays in Honour of Alan Hindley. Edited by Catherine Emerson, Mario
Longtin and Adrian Tudor (Leuven: Peters, forthcoming).
‘The Miracles de Notre Dame par personnages: Decadent Dramas?’ Parisian Confraternity Drama of the 14th
Century: The Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages. Ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox. Turnhout:
Brepols, 2008. 219-37.
‘Gautier’s ‘Wordplay as Devotional Ecstasy.’ Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts. Ed. Kathy M.
Krause and Alison Stones. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. 113-25.
‘The Courtly and the Queer: Some Like It Not.’ Chançon Legiere a Chanter: Essays in Old French Literature in
Honor of Samuel N. Rosenberg. Ed. Karen Fresco and Wendy Pfeffer. Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publications, forthcoming.
Extracurricular Interests: Art history (since I’m not an art historian), photography, hiking, singing, my cats.
Institute Project and Plans:
My project is to seek a broader understanding of the politics of host desecration. I have worked on this topic in its French, Parisian context. The NEH Institute will allow me to investigate instances of host desecration in another setting and hopefully gain a deeper understanding of how accusations of host desecration could be deployed to local political ends. I am also eager to learn as much as I can about Catalan language and culture and to make long-lasting ties with scholars.
Andrew Devereux
PhD Candidate, Department of History,
Johns Hopkins University
Languages Spoken: French, Castellano, Italian, full comprehension of Catalan
Field(s): I work on medieval and early modern Iberia and the Mediterranean. My PhD dissertation is a study of the political thought undergirding Aragonese expansion in the Mediterranean in the late fifteenth century, but my academic and teaching interests encompass numerous aspects of religious, cultural, and intellectual history. I am particularly interested in the relations between the three Abrahamic faiths within the Mediterranean basin.
Current Projects: One angle of my doctoral dissertation focuses on aspirations to Christian unity among Latin Christians during the fifteenth century. While this was related to evolving political ideas on universal monarchy, a topic I explore in my dissertation, the relevance to the NEH Summer Institute can be found in Latin Christian views and depictions of Orthodox Christians living under Ottoman rule in the eastern Mediterranean. These Latin views of the Orthodox were varied and complex, depicting them as guardians, in some sense, of Classical learning and simultaneously as a potential Fifth Column who would assist a Latin Christian invasion and conquest of Ottoman-ruled lands in the eastern Mediterranean. Primarily, however, the Orthodox were portrayed as schismatics who stood in the way of attaining the Christian union that certain Latins desired. I hope to place Latin views of Orthodox Christians into a broader context of views of religious minorities in the western Mediterranean, namely Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula.
Selected Publications:
“Royal Genealogy and the Gothic Thesis in Medieval Iberian Historiography,” Foundations. Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy 2 (2006): 3-26.
Extracurricular Interests: Live Music, Literature, Film, Hiking.
Institute Project and Plans:
My intention this summer is, first and foremost, to develop my pedagogical background for teaching the history of the medieval Mediterranean at the undergraduate level. In broad terms, as a participant at the Institute I hope to have the chance to engage in academic dialogue about various conceptual approaches to the practice of Mediterranean history. More specifically, I hope that my study of Latin views (frequently misinformed and somewhat fantastical) of the Orthodox Christians living under Ottoman rule will help to elucidate a more complex framework for understanding western Catholics’ visions of the eastern Mediterranean. By juxtaposing these against Latin views and treatment of religious minorities in the fifteenth-century western Mediterranean, I hope that this project might serve as a means of developing a fuller understanding of European thinking on religious identity at a time when most European polities were on a path towards greater religious uniformity.
John Drendel
Professor,
Université du Québec à Montréal
Languages Spoken: French, Italian
Field(s): Social history
Current Projects: Rural Elites in the Medieval Mediterranean World. The Conjuncture in 1300.
Selected Publications:
With Kathryn Reyerson, Urban and Rural Communities in Medieval France: Provence and Languedoc: 1000- 1500, Brill, 1998.
Extracurricular Interests: road cycling
Institute Project and Plans: To advance towards completion a research project on village politics in Provence in the fourteenth century.
Edward English
Executive Director, Medieval Studies,
Adjunct Associate Professor,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Languages Spoken: English, passable Italian, some French and German
Field(s): elite families in terms of politics and economic activities
Current Projects: “Conflict and Consensus: Siena and Its Nobles, 1240-1420.”
Organizing a conference on “Mediterranean Courts and the Cultures of Islam and Europe.”
Selected Publications:
Enterprise and Liability in Sienese Banking, 1230-1350. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Medieval Academy of America, Speculum Anniversary Monographs, 12, 1988; edited with Mark Meyerson, Christians, Muslims and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain. Notre Dame: University of Notre Press, 1999; edited with Carol Lansing, A Companion to the Middle Ages. Blackwell Companions to European History. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2009.
Institute Project & Plans:
The summer institute will be of great value for my responsibilities at UCSB for curriculum development and teaching of both graduate and undergraduate students. The topics of the institute would make possible a comparative aspect in my own research on the culture and social and religious activities of thirteenth and fourteenth century Italian merchants. My main research interest has been on international merchant culture, in particular its commercial and economic organizational bases, and its familial and corporate foundations. The institute will give me a better comparative perspective in terms of the other Mediterranean cultures and their economic entrepreneurship. Besides participating in the meetings of the seminar, I hope to work in and gain real experience the local archives. I have published on notarial practices and the history of the notarial art. Time spent in the archival collections and manuscript depositories in Barcelona would certainly enrich my teaching of UCSB’s growing number of graduate students working on Italian and more recently Iberian topics. I am also interested in the evolution of the will. The institute will enrich contextual and comparative aspect of that too. My interest in documents deployed for commercial objectives among the three communities are also of great interest for my research and teaching. This also holds true for my interest in the familial aspects of business organization and the use of capital. For all of these documents across the Mediterranean, there are many questions that have not been fully addressed in terms of how these three communities influenced each other.
Allen Fromherz
Assistant Professor,
Georgia State University
Languages Spoken: French, Arabic , Spanish
Field(s): Medieval Mediterranean and North African History
Relevant Current Projects:
A Vertical Sea: South-North Encounters in the Medieval Western Mediterranean. (Under consideration at EUP)
Editor – North Africa and Egypt- Oxford Dictionary of African Biography
Selected Publications:
Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times, Edinburgh University Press, 2010;
The Almohads: Rise of an Islamic Empire, IB Tauris, 2010.
Extracurricular Interests: Cuisine and viniculture!
Institute Project and Plans:
My goal during the institute is to gain a working knowledge of the archival system in Barcelona as well as opportunities for research in the region. It is hoped that this research will contribute to the writing of my upcoming book. I also hope to develop new and lasting friendships with my colleagues and with the institute directors. I look forward to the opportunity to learn and to listen after a year of teaching!
Barbara Fuchs
Professor, Spanish & Portuguese/English,
UCLA
Languages Spoken: Spanish, French
Field(s): early modern Spanish and English
Relevant Current Projects: maurophilia and romance
Selected Publications:
Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain (University of Pennsylvania Pres, 2008);
Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge University Press, 2004);
Romance (Routledge, 2004).
Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity (University of Illinois Press, 2003);
Extracurricular Interests: theater, art, architecture, cooking, hiking
Institute Project and Plans: I am working on the translation of French romances with Moorish characters into Iberia, to explore how the representation of Islam changes in an Iberian context. I began with the sixteenth-century Spanish maurophile genre (El Abencerraje, the romancero, etc.) and wanted to explore the transmission into Iberia of earlier texts that imagine sympathetic Moorish characters, in particular “Floire et Blancheflor.”
Adam Gaiser
Assistant Professor,
Florida State University
Languages Spoken: English, Arabic, some Russian, some Spanish
Field(s): Islamic Studies, specializing in the early medieval Ibadiyya; Islamic sectarianism
Current Projects: My next book will examine accounts of the early Kharijite Shurat as they are preserved in later Sunni and Ibadi texts, and will draw parallels with late antique Christian models of martyrdom and asceticism to understand how these narratives were formulated.
Selected Publications:
Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The Origin and Elaboration of the Ibadi Imamate Ideal (Oxford, forthcoming)
“The Iba¯di¯ ‘Stages of Religion’ Re-examined: Tracing the History of the Masa¯lik al-Di¯n,” in Journal of the School of Oriental and African Studies (forthcoming)
“Source-Critical Methodologies in Recent Scholarship on the Kha¯rijites,” in Historical Compass 7/5 (2009): 1376-90
Extracurricular Interests: Numismatics, philately, latin dance, science fiction, good food and wine
Institute Project and Plans:
In addition to collecting materials (and ideas) for a graduate seminar on Islam in Spain, and for an undergraduate lecture course on “Abrahamic Religions,” I want to research the presence of Ibadis in Spain. To date there has been little to no work on the ties between North African Ibadis and Spanish Sunnis (and Jews, as part of the silver trade), despite tantalizing hints in Arabic sources of such connections. I plan to focus on Ibadi commercial diasporas in Andalusia as a means of establishing political ties between the Umayyad Caliphate and the Rustumid (Ibadi) Empire. I expect the trans-Saharan slave trade, which the Ibadis controlled during this time, will play a role in what trade existed between Spain and N. Africa. There might also be a connection in the silver trade. In general, I know little about the Islamic period in Spain, and look forward to learning all that I can about it. Beyond this, my wife and I look forward to meeting the other participants, exploring Barcelona and eating like kings and queens.
Camilo Gomez-Rivas
Assistant Professor,
The American University in Cairo
Languages Spoken: I am fluent in Spanish and Arabic. I have advanced comprehension level of French, but speak it at an intermediate level. I understand Italian.
Field(s): I am interested in the social history of al-Andalus and the Maghrib, in the interaction between the communities of the Medieval western Mediterranean and in the study of Islamic law and society.
Current Projects: I am currently revising into a book my dissertation, entitled The Fatwas of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib: Urban Transformation and the Development of Islamic Legal Institutions under the Almoravids.
At the institute I am beginning book-length project with the tentative title: Refugees of the Medieval Mediterranean: Image and Status of the Displaced Peoples of Iberia 1050-1500
Selected Publications:
“Qadi Iyad.” In Islamic Legal Thought: Jurists and Their Work, eds. Ousamma Arabi, David S. Powers, and Susan Spectorsky (forthcoming).
“Andalusian Jurist, Berber Commander, and Mozarab Rebel: Understanding Iberia’s Islamic Experience.” In The Sage Handbook of Islamic Studies, eds. Akbar Ahmed and Tamara Sonn. London: Sage Publications, 2010.
Extracurricular Interests: The last couple of years have been so busy I sometimes forget what it is I like to do. I listen to public radio (US, British, Egyptian) a lot. I hiked a good bit in Morocco and Oregon. I like good beer and wine and food and making it (but avoid organizing my life around these things). I admit, I am Barça fan, and enjoy watching European, African, and South American soccer. I also love to play. I read fiction, translate Arabic poetry, and play percussion.
Institute Project and Plans:
I am starting a project, comparative in scope, about the reception, image, and legal status of refugees in the medieval Mediterranean and their strategies for cultural survival. I think I can benefit enormously from talking to other scholars of the medieval Mediterranean, learning about their theoretical approaches and the nature and details of the archival and material sources they use. Learning from and participating in this conversation is my chief goal while at the institute. I am also greatly looking forward to exploring medieval Iberian archives, since my dissertation work largely focused on Arabic and Maghribi material.
I also look forward to meeting everyone and hearing about their work experiences in teaching and research. This will be my first activity of this kind as an assistant professor. My own experience being somewhat unique – starting an academic career in Cairo – I look forward to comparing notes and establishing long-term relationships with scholars in the greater field.
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Jocelyn Hendrickson
Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Religions,
Whitman College
Languages Spoken: English, Arabic
Field(s): Islamic legal history in medieval and early modern North Africa and al-Andalus
Current Projects: Revising my dissertation, “The Islamic Obligation to Emigrate: Al-Wanshari¯si¯’s Asna¯ al-Mata¯jir Reconsidered” into a book, finishing a few other articles related to Ma¯liki¯ fatwa¯s, and beginning a new project on the pilgrimage to Mecca as imagined and performed from the Islamic West.
Selected Publications:
Hendrickson, Jocelyn. “A Guide to Arabic Manuscript Libraries in Morocco, with Notes on Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Spain.” MELA Notes: Journal of Middle Eastern Librarianship 81 (2008): 15-88.
Institute Project and Plans:
I have several goals for this summer’s institute. The concrete project which I plan to complete while in Barcelona is the development of a syllabus and supporting materials for a course I will be offering for the first time in Spring 2011, From Muslim to Christian Spain. This will be an upper-level religion course exploring aspects of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula and following the fates of Jews and Muslims under Christian rule from the Reconquista to the Inquisition. Themes might include the legal and political position of Jews and Christians under Muslim rule, intellectual and artistic production, the transmission of knowledge, a critical examination of convivencia, inter-communal violence, constructions of orthodoxy and heresy, and the political uses of history and memory. I hope to draw heavily upon Jewish, Christian, and Muslim primary texts as well as a variety of scholarly and popular sources.
My secondary goals include improving my Spanish, forging connections with new colleagues, and gaining a sense of which archives in Spain might prove profitable for future research projects.
Yuen-Gen Liang
Assistant Professor of History,
Wheaton College (MA)
Languages Spoken: Castilian, French, Arabic, Mandarin
Field(s): Late-medieval/early modern Spain and the Mediterranean World
Current Projects: Completing manuscript A Family History of Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba Lineage and the Construction of the Spanish Realm
Selected Publications: manuscript under contract
Extracurricular Interests: Travel, tennis
Institute Project and Plans:
Begin historiographical reading for second book length project on the European-Christian and Middle Eastern-Islamic worlds in late-antiquity/early Middle Ages. Document research on Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations as a way to perpetuate social structures.
Karen Mathews
Lecturer,
University of Miami
Languages Spoken: French, German, Spanish, Italian
Field(s): medieval European and Islamic art history
Current Projects: Muslim/Christian relations as manifested in the use of spolia in medieval architectural monuments both in Muslim (Mamluk Cairo) and Christian (Venice, Genoa, Pisa) contexts.
Selected Publications:
“Mamluks, Mongols, and Crusaders: Religious Conflict and its Representation in Mamluk Architecture,” in Liz James and Sarah Lambert eds., Clash of Cultures: the Languages of Love and Hate, Leiden: Brepols. (forthcoming Spring 2011);
“Borrowing or Stealing?: The Use of Spolia in the Mosque Complex of Sultan al-Mu’ayyad Sheikh,” ARCE Bulletin 180 (Summer 2001) 25-7;
“Expressing Cultural Identity and Political Legitimacy in the Year 1000: The Use of Spolia on the Ambo of Henry II,” Medieval Encounters 5, no. 2 (1999) 156-83.
Extracurricular Interests: sports
Institute Project and Plans:
My goals for participation in the institute are to engage in a dialogue about the culture of the medieval Mediterranean and study both the theoretical and practical understandings of hybridity in this area in the Middle Ages. I am looking forward to introducing myself to new approaches to the study of the Mediterranean and discussing this topic with the other Institute participants. I will also be working on a research topic that addresses the role of Spain, particularly the county of Barcelona and the Balearic Islands, as important intermediaries in the cultural and commercial exchange between the Islamic territories of the Western Mediterranean and the maritime republics of Italy. I would like to continue my research into the topic of Medieval Spain as a hybrid culture and how it can serve as an important model for the understanding of cultural borrowings between Muslims and Christians in the Mediterranean and the meanings that such appropriation had for artists and patrons in the medieval period.
Adam Miyashiro
Assistant Professor of Medieval Literature,
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Languages Spoken: English
Field(s): Comparative medieval literature; postcolonial studies in premodern contexts; England and Spain in the 14th century; chronicle writing in the medieval Mediterranean and Atlantic.
Current Projects:
Book length manuscript on representations of ‘race’ in medieval romances and chronicles
A chapter about Ibn Khaldun and Ranulf Higden
A chapter about the Old English and Arabic translations of Orosius
Selected Publications:
“Disease and Deceit in Béroul’s Roman de Tristan.” Neophilologus 89.4 (2005): 509-525.
Review of Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West, by Zhang Longxi, Cornell University Press, 2005. Journal of Law and Religion 22.2 (2007): 619-623.
Extracurricular Interests: Cooking/baking; computers and web-design; sports (surfing, tennis, hiking, and biking); and gardening.
Institute Project and Plans:
I have two goals in attending the NEH Institute in Barcelona: to write a chapter of my book project, Reading Race in Medieval Europe, based on both on-going research and the research I undertake at the Institute. Secondly, I plan to develop a related course to offer at my home institution about medieval Mediterranean cultural contacts. Since I have just completed my first year on the tenure-track, I have a keen interest in developing a secondary specialization in medieval Iberian studies to meet the growing institutional interest at Stockton in what they call a “global education.” Institutes like this one support our collective goal of making premodern studies relevant to studies of global contact – between cultures, religions, and languages. In this way, I hope to revitalize medieval studies at Stockton College, by rethinking and resituating medieval Europe with the historical continuities prevalent in much of the Mediterranean world.
A personal goal of mine, however, is to study Catalan. For many years, I have always had a close relationship to the Castilian languages of Latin America, having lived for more than a decade in the Los Angeles area. Having never been to Spain before, I am interested in the regional languages, their developments and the differences between linguistic regions.
Kiril Petkov
Associate Professor,
University of Wisconsin-River Falls
Languages Spoken: English, Italian, German, Russian, Spanish (not really fluent, but can get by), Bulgarian
Field: pre-modern Mediterranean and Europe
Current Projects: upper-level course in the pre-modern Mediterranean; Juan Ferrandes de Heredia between East and West
Valerie Ramseyer
Associate Professor of History,
Wellesley College
Languages Spoken: Italian (fluent), French (basic)
Field(s): History of Southern Italy and Sicily in the Early and Central Middle Ages (c. 500-1200)
Current Projects:
Book: Lombards and Greeks, Arabs and Normans: Southern Italy in the Early Middle Ages
Article: “Cave Villages in the Medieval Mezzogiorno”
Selected Publications:
The Transformation of a Religious Landscape: Medieval Southern Italy, 850-1150 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)
“Pastoral Care as Military Action: the Ecclesiology of Alfanus I Archbishop of Salerno (1058-85)” in The Bishop Reformed: Studies in Episcopal Culture and Power in the Central Middle Ages, ed. John Ott and Anna Trumbore (Ashgate, 2007)
"Religious Life in Eleventh-Century Salerno: The Church of Santa Lucia in Balnearia," in Haskins Society Journal XIII (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002)
“Territorial Lordships in the Principality of Salerno, 1050-1150,” in Haskins Society Journal IX (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001)
Extracurricular Interests: Yoga, hiking, traveling, my 4-year-old son Pascal
Institute Project and Plans:
I will be working on two projects:
A book, entitled Lombards and Greeks, Arabs and Normans: Southern Italy in the Early Middle Ages, which will examine southern Italy and Sicily as a whole from c. 500-1100.
A major theme in the book is the relationship between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities in southern Italy and Sicily, and the intermixing of religious traditions. Thus while in Barcelona, I plan on reading the literature related to this topic for medieval Spain and other parts of the Mediterranean in order to better understand the varied nature of interconfessional relations in the medieval Mediterranean world and come up with a more complex and nuanced understanding of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish interactions.
An article, entitled “Cave Villages in the Medieval Mezzogiorno” which will examine the movement back to caves in the early Middle Ages in parts of Sicily and southern Italy, discussing the morphology of cave-villages, the economy of the cave-complexes, and the reasons behind the occupation/reoccupation of caves. It will also look at the larger theme of a “civiltà rupestre” by comparing the experience of southern Italy with other regions of the Mediterranean with a tradition of cave-dwellings, including Spain.
Associate Professor of History,
Wellesley College
Languages Spoken: Italian (fluent), French (basic)
Field(s): History of Southern Italy and Sicily in the Early and Central Middle Ages (c. 500-1200)
Current Projects:
Book: Lombards and Greeks, Arabs and Normans: Southern Italy in the Early Middle Ages
Article: “Cave Villages in the Medieval Mezzogiorno”
Selected Publications:
The Transformation of a Religious Landscape: Medieval Southern Italy, 850-1150 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)
“Pastoral Care as Military Action: the Ecclesiology of Alfanus I Archbishop of Salerno (1058-85)” in The Bishop Reformed: Studies in Episcopal Culture and Power in the Central Middle Ages, ed. John Ott and Anna Trumbore (Ashgate, 2007)
"Religious Life in Eleventh-Century Salerno: The Church of Santa Lucia in Balnearia," in Haskins Society Journal XIII (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002)
“Territorial Lordships in the Principality of Salerno, 1050-1150,” in Haskins Society Journal IX (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001)
Extracurricular Interests: Yoga, hiking, traveling, my 4-year-old son Pascal
Institute Project and Plans:
I will be working on two projects:
A book, entitled Lombards and Greeks, Arabs and Normans: Southern Italy in the Early Middle Ages, which will examine southern Italy and Sicily as a whole from c. 500-1100.
A major theme in the book is the relationship between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities in southern Italy and Sicily, and the intermixing of religious traditions. Thus while in Barcelona, I plan on reading the literature related to this topic for medieval Spain and other parts of the Mediterranean in order to better understand the varied nature of interconfessional relations in the medieval Mediterranean world and come up with a more complex and nuanced understanding of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish interactions.
An article, entitled “Cave Villages in the Medieval Mezzogiorno” which will examine the movement back to caves in the early Middle Ages in parts of Sicily and southern Italy, discussing the morphology of cave-villages, the economy of the cave-complexes, and the reasons behind the occupation/reoccupation of caves. It will also look at the larger theme of a “civiltà rupestre” by comparing the experience of southern Italy with other regions of the Mediterranean with a tradition of cave-dwellings, including Spain.
Jarbel Rodriguez
Associate Professor,
San Francisco State University
Languages Spoken: English, Spanish
Fields: captivity and slavery; Christian/Muslims relations; medievalism
Current Projects: Christians and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean: A Sourcebook
Selected Publications:
Captives and their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Castholic University Press, 2007);
with Trevor Getz, Richard J Hoffman, Exchanges: A Global History Reader (Prentice Hall, 2008)
Extracurricular Interests: Family, Music, Sports.
Institute Project and Plans:
In the year 1311, James II, ruler of the eastern Iberian kingdom of Aragon wrote a letter to the pope. In it he claimed that in the Muslim kingdom of Granada, with its 200,000 inhabitants, perhaps 500 were of Arab ancestry. The rest, he argued, were Christian converts or their descendants. A few years earlier, another European, the Dominican friar Ricoldo de Monte Croce, upon seeing the repeated conversion of Christians to Islam wondered if the “whole world was becoming Saracen.” These are but two examples from the chorus of voices in Christendom that was growing increasingly concerned over the conversion of Christians to Islam. To what can we attribute this anxiety over conversion? How did the close relationships between Muslims and Christians as well as the permeable boundaries (cultural, geographic, economic, religious) that existed between the two groups contribute to the (perceived) ease with which Christians converted to Islam? How did converts and the act of conversion itself help to shape Christian perceptions of Islam and what do these converts and these conversion experiences tell us about interactions, contacts, transculturation, cooperation, and coexistence? These are some of the questions that guide my next project, a book length study of Iberian Christian conversion to Islam in the later Middle Ages (14th – 15th century). My research situates conversion on the axis that has convivencia on one end and crusade on the other and considers how switching faiths occurred amidst the rhetoric of crusade and the daily experiences of convivencia.
Michael Ryan
Assistant Professor of History,
Purdue University
Languages Spoken: Castilian, some Catalan, some French
Field(s): Late medieval social, intellectual, and cultural history with an emphasis on magic, divination, apocalypticism, and the occult.
Current Projects: First monograph, A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology, Divination, and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon under contract with Cornell University Press. Currently conducting work on a new monograph, Rogues, Quacks, and Frauds: Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities’ Approach to Charlatanism in the Late Medieval Mediterranean.
Selected Publications:
co-editor, with Karolyn Kinane, End of Days: Essays on thd Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2009);
“Antichrist in the Middle Ages: Plus ça change…” History Compass 7/6 (2009): 1581-1592;
“Pilgrimage and Power: The Restriction of Mudéjares’ Pilgrimage in the Kingdom of Valencia,” Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008): 115-128;
“To Condemn a King: The Dream of Bernat Metge and King Joan’s Ties with the Occult” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 3:2 (Winter 2008): 158-186;
“Sidereal Remedies: Medicine and the Stars in Newberry Library MS Ayer 746,” AVISTA Forum Journal: Medical Science, Technology and Art 17:1/2 (Fall 2007): 8-20.
Extracurricular Interests: cooking, listening to music, reading for pleasure, working out, swimming, spending quality time with friends, entertaining
Institute Project and Plans: I have two goals in participating in this institute. I want to conduct research on a new article-length project in which I investigate King Martí’s interaction with Jewish and Muslim communities in his realm. I am curious to see how those interactions fit within Martí’s construction of his monarchical authority and his concept of religious orthodoxy. I am also looking forward to engaging in dialogue with fellow Mediterranean enthusiasts, which will help me as I construct my proposed undergraduate class on the world of the medieval Mediterranean Basin. Barcelona is like a second home to me and I am excited about the opportunity to spend a month residing and researching there with other scholars of the Mediterranean Basin, with whom I hope to form lasting professional relationships.
Paul Sidelko
Assistant Professor,
Metropolitan State College of Denver, Department of History
Languages Spoken: French, German, Arabic
Field(s): Muslim/Christian/Jewish relations in the Medieval Mediterranean, with a focus on Syria and Palestine during the Crusades. Islamic History; French and European Imperialism in the Middle East
Current Projects: Agricultural activity and the Rural Economy in Crusader Syria and Palestine
Selected Publications: “The Landed Estates of the Hospitallers in Crusader Syria and Palestine”
Extracurricular Interests: Film; Music; Skiing
Institute Project and Plans: I am interested in supplementing my knowledge in the Medieval Mediterranean. My primary focus and research is on the Eastern Mediterranean and I want to explore connections with Spain and the Western Mediterranean. I am also looking forward to developing professional relationships with other scholars and academics working in the field.
Joseph Stanley
PhD Candidate in History,
SUNY - Binghamton
Languages Spoken: English, Italian
Field(s): My dissertation examines the development of merchant culture in medieval and Renaissance Italy. My primary sources are merchant manuals, guild hall iconography, as well as mercantile public patronage.
Relevant Current Projects: PhD dissertation
Selected Publications:
“Cognate Fathers of the Church: Grace, Original Sin, and the Possibility of Sinlessness in the Anti-Pelagian Works of Jerome and Augustine.” in Binghamton Journal of History (August 2008).
Extracurricular Interests: Sailing & Soccer!
Institute Project and Plans:
My proposal’s abstract reads as such: Scholarship has long recognized Italian preponderance in Mediterranean commerce during the late Middle Ages. In recent years, studies have greatly enriched our understanding of how cross-cultural communication helped foster Italian mercantile relations in foreign, non-European markets Yet surprisingly, a corpus of material that constitutes a valuable documentary record of the Italian merchant’s education and understanding of Islamic culture remains untouched: pratiche della mercatura, or manuals of commercial practice. These handbooks, widely circulated throughout central and northern Italy, contained vital information pertaining to the merchant’s understanding and awareness of Islamic cultures and customs outside the realm of commercial affairs. Taking these manuals as its documentary focus and building on the valuable historiographical shift of recent decades, this project provides new perspectives on cross-cultural exchange in medieval Mediterranean commerce, perspectives which undoubtedly will further our understanding of Italian trade and its command in the medieval period.
Taking part in the Institute will also enable me to complete several conference papers currently in preparation. Additionally, I will be teaching an undergraduate seminar next academic year that focuses on the medieval merchants in the Mediterranean. Thus, I look forward to interacting with such an esteemed interdisciplinary community.
Richard Taylor
Professor of Philosophy,
Marquette University
Languages Spoken: English, some French, a little Spanish with effort
Field(s): Medieval philosophy in Arabic and Latin, Arabic Neoplatonism, Averroes, Avicenna, Aquinas and the Arabs
Current Projects: Book project on Averroes; research on the transmission of philosophical texts from Arabic into Latin; work in the Aquinas and the Arabs Project (www.AquinasAndTheArab.org).
Selected Publications:
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) of Cordoba. Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle, Richard C. Taylor, trans. & intro., Therese-Anne Druart, subeditor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, cix, 498 p.
Reviews: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010.
Philosophy in Review 2010
The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
“Ibn Rushd / Averroes and ‘Islamic’ Rationalism,” in Medieval Encounters. Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 15 (2009) 125-135. [Special issue on Al-Andalus: Cultural Diffusion and Hybridity, ed. Ivry Corfis].
“Damas et Bagdad (VIIe-Xe siècle)” for Histoire de la philosophie, Jean-François Pradeau, ed. (Paris: Seuil, 2009) pp. 162-178.
“Ibn Rushd / Averroës” for Histoire de la philosophie, Jean-François Pradeau, ed. (Paris: Seuil, 2009) pp. 179-186.
“Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause in the Soul according to Aquinas and Averroes,” in The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul. Reflections on Platonic Psychology in the Monotheistic Religions, Maha El-Kaisy Friemut and John M. Dillon, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 187-220.
Extracurricular Interests: Not much other than raising kids now in their 20s. (Now I have time for extracurriculars!) Travel is often fun. But I am bit of a workaholic and a lifelong student.
Institute Project and Plans:
I am looking forward to having the opportunity to focus on the history of Andalusia ca. 1100-1250 and the development of ideas leading up and a generation beyond the time of Averroes (d. 1198). In particular I intend to focus on the cultural context of his work and the religious environment in the Almohad period. I will be doing this with a view to setting out the context of the development of the thought of Averroes in the first chapter of the book I am working on. I will also be working on Ch. 6 "Religion, Ethics and Politics." But I am also interested in doing further reseach on the translation movement which emerged at Toledo with Gundisallinus and Gerard of Cremona (translators of the Liber de causis, Avicenna and more) and was continued by Michael Scot at Toledo and in Sicily at the court of Frederick II. These interests also intersect with my work on Aquinas and the Arabs. Finally, I am looking forward to deepening my understanding of the complexities of the 'Cultural Hybridities" on which the Institute is focused by working with and learning from other participants in the Institute.
Lara Tohme
Assistant Professor and Co-Director of Architecture,
Wellesley College
Languages Spoken: Arabic, Italian and French
Field(s): Art and Architectural Historian (specializing in Medieval and Islamic)
Current Projects: My current research focuses on twelfth-century Sicily and the ways in which the Normans adopted and adapted Byzantine, Romanesque, and Islamic motifs to formulate a new architectural language that promoted the supremacy of the Normans in the medieval Mediterranean world. I am completing a book, titled Appropriation and Cultural Conversion: the Creation of a New Architectural Language in Norman Sicily, which examines the churches and monasteries built during this period, and explores the processes of cultural and architectural conversion of Sicily, and Palermo in particular, from a locus of Islamic cultural dominance to a center of Latin Christianity.
Selected Publications:
with Ghazi Bisheh, Muhammad al-Asad, Fawzi Zayadine, and Ina Kehrberg. The Umayyads: The Rise of Islamic Art. Islamic Art in the Mediterranean Series. Museum With No Frontiers, Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2001.
“Contextualizing Umayyad Architecture: Toward a Historiography,” in Islamic Cities in the Classical Age, ed. Nasser Rabbat (Brill, 2012) [forthcoming]
“Between Balnaeum and Hamam: the Role of Umayyad Baths in Syria,” in Bathing Culture in Anatolian Civilization: Architecture, History and Imagination, ed. Nina Ergin (Peeters Press, 2011) [forthcoming]
“Spaces of Convergence: Christian Monasteries and Umayyad Architecture in Greater Syria,” in Negotiating Secular and Sacred in Medieval Art: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, eds. Alicia Walker and Amanda Luyster (Ashgate, 2009)
“A True Kufic Inscription on the Kapnikarea Church in Athens?” Co-author with Chrysanthos Kanellopoulos, al -Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 20 (2008)
Extracurricular Interests: Travel, hiking, and cooking.
Institute Project and Plans:
This summer, I hope to reformulate and improve an undergraduate lecture course, ARTH 267 - Cross-cultural Encounters in the Medieval Mediterranean. This class, which I taught in Fall 2006, and will be teaching again in Spring 2011, aims to introduce students to the plurality of material culture in the medieval Mediterranean. After I first taught this class, it became clear to me that I needed to broaden the scope of the material presented, not only in terms of the actual number and choice of objects or buildings, but also in how the material is contextualized and communicated to an undergraduate audience. I anticipate that participating in this Institute will expose me to a wider-range of materials, approaches, and perspectives to integrate as I redesign the syllabus over the summer.
In addition to actively participating in the workshops, lectures, and discussions at the Institute, I hope to devote the remainder of my time at the libraries and museums in Barcelona where I will concentrate on my own research and on the completion of a draft of my book (described above). This study is relevant not only to historians of medieval architecture, but also to scholars who are engaged in exploring other hybrid or plural societies. I am therefore eager to share this project with the other participants in this Institute, who would undoubtedly provide welcome feedback, insights and criticism that would be instrumental for the completion of my book.
David Wrisley
Associate Professor,
American University of Beirut
Languages Spoken: French, Arabic (MSA, Levantine and Tunisian/Algerian) Italian, Latin American Spanish
Field(s): medieval comparative literature, mostly 14th/15th c.
Current Projects: discourses and knowledge of Orient in medieval Burgundy; comparative historiography of the 14th century Cypriot-Mamluk struggle; love theory and martyrdom in Christianity and Islam
Selected Publications:
“Illumination between Multi-Confessional Debate and Anti-Conciliarism: Jean Germain’s Debat du Chrestien et du Sarrasin (BnF fr. 948),” in The Social Life of Illumination (forthcoming).
“The Prise d’Alexandrie”, for A Companion to Guillaume Machaut – An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Master (forthcoming).
“Light upon light,” translation of a multi-authored book on the Qur’a¯n and calligraphy, from French and Arabic into English (ISAT, Algiers, 2010).
“The Loss of Constantinople and Imagining Crusade at the Fifteenth-Century Court of Burgundy” al-Abhath 55 (2007-08): 81-115.
“Situating Islamdom in Jean Germain's Mappemonde Spirituelle (1449)” Medieval Encounters 13.2 (2007): 326-346.
“L’Orient de Jehan Wauquelin” Jehan Wauquelin: de Mons à la cour de Bourgogne, Burgundica 11, Eds. Marie-Claude de Crécy, Gabriëlla Parussa and Sandrine Hériché Pradeau (Turnhout : Brepols, 2005). 171-184.
Extracurricular Interests: I am a foodie, very interested in natural and traditional foods. I travel a lot. I collect vintage cufflinks and prayer beads. I like reading about urbanism and drinking wine. I obsessively study languages (watch for my little notebooks) and must have been a dialectologist in another life.
Institute Project and Plans:
This July I intend to look generally at transcultural ideas of martyrdom, and specifically at their intersection with chaste love, beginning with the Arabic tradition moving if possible to European congeners. As Giffen claimed some 40 years ago, the chaste-lover-turned-martyr is one of the more original contributions of Arab culture to world literature. I am interested in reexamining that claim in the context of the Summer Institute. The issue originates in an apocryphal ?adi¯th (said to originate with the Prophet, yet found in none of the canonical collections) that those who love passionately, remain chaste, hide their love and die, will die as martyrs. Apparently reported for the first time by Abassid poet, Ibn Da¯’u¯d (d. 910) in his Book of the Flower, it crystallized an entire sub-genre about the maladies of love. The largely uncharted domain of Arabic ‘love theory’ is found in dozens of untranslated Islamic treatises on chastity and passion. In Barcelona I will begin from a later watershed text in that tradition. The Clear and Eloquent Account of Those Lovers Who Died as Martyrs was written by a ?anafi¯ scholar of Anatolian origin, Mughul?a¯y (c. 1290-1361). Unlike many scholars who condemned passion, the “love gaze,” and chaste homo- and heteroerotic longing, Mughul?a¯y seems to take seriously the idea of the martyrs of a chaste ‘courtly’ love so much so that he creates a biographical dictionary of them.
I can’t wait to be in Barcelona, learn about the research resources there, revive my dormant Spanish, learn some Catalan, and walk around discovering the place. I am also looking forward to the collegial context in which I hope to explore new frameworks for my comparative interests in Latin/Romance and Arabic literatures, both for teaching and research.