Medieval History
María Rosa Menocal, a renowned scholar and historian of medieval culture and literature, passed away on October 15th after a three-year battle with melanoma.
Menocal, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale and former director of the Whitney Humanities Center, focused her research on the literary traditions of the Middle Ages and on the interaction of various religious and cultural groups in medieval Spain.
Her 2002 book, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, describes the rich cross-fertilization that took place among those religious groups. The book placed the interactions of Jews, Christians and Muslims at the heart of the formation of a diverse and vibrant Western culture, and posed a vigorous challenge to the notion of inevitable polarization of Islam and the West in the popular imagination. It has been published in numerous languages, and received wide critical acclaim. A documentary for public television based on the book is under development.
Menocal once noted that she was inspired to write the book because "... the medieval period has been, and continues to be, so grossly misrepresented in almost all of our histories ? from the fact that we have so little knowledge that medieval European culture included, centrally, the study of Greek philosophy as it was interpreted by hundreds of years of Muslim and Jewish commentaries to the fact that we still use the word medieval to mean 'dark' and 'unenlightened' when, in some respects, Europe has never been as enlightened ? as it was then."
Click here to read the full obituary from Yale University
See also Culture in the Time of Tolerance: Al-Andalus as a Model for Our Time
See also her website for more information about María Rosa Menocal
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Medieval History
María Rosa Menocal, medieval historian, passes away
Menocal, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale and former director of the Whitney Humanities Center, focused her research on the literary traditions of the Middle Ages and on the interaction of various religious and cultural groups in medieval Spain.
Her 2002 book, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, describes the rich cross-fertilization that took place among those religious groups. The book placed the interactions of Jews, Christians and Muslims at the heart of the formation of a diverse and vibrant Western culture, and posed a vigorous challenge to the notion of inevitable polarization of Islam and the West in the popular imagination. It has been published in numerous languages, and received wide critical acclaim. A documentary for public television based on the book is under development.
Menocal once noted that she was inspired to write the book because "... the medieval period has been, and continues to be, so grossly misrepresented in almost all of our histories ? from the fact that we have so little knowledge that medieval European culture included, centrally, the study of Greek philosophy as it was interpreted by hundreds of years of Muslim and Jewish commentaries to the fact that we still use the word medieval to mean 'dark' and 'unenlightened' when, in some respects, Europe has never been as enlightened ? as it was then."
Click here to read the full obituary from Yale University
See also Culture in the Time of Tolerance: Al-Andalus as a Model for Our Time
See also her website for more information about María Rosa Menocal
- University Of Wisconsin-madison Hosts Symposium On Medieval Spanish Literature
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will host an international symposium to celebrate two of the greatest works of Spanish literature: the 14th-century "Book of Good Love" and the late 15th-century "Celestina." Events will begin Sunday, April 15 and run...
- The Ecology Of Medieval Art - New Course At Depaul University
Anne F. Harris, associate professor of art history and director of the Women's Studies Program, received a student-faculty summer stipend to write curriculum for a new interdisciplinary course she will offer next year - The Ecology of Medieval Art....
- Jonathan Ray Wins John Nicholas Brown Prize For The Sephardic Frontier
Professor Jonathan Ray of Georgetown University has been named one of the co-winners of John Nicholas Brown Prize, given out for the best first book in medieval studies. He won the award for his work, The Sephardic Frontier: The "Reconquista" and the...
- Crossing Borders: Hebrew Manuscripts As A Meeting-place Of Cultures
The Bodleian Library at Oxford University will start an exhibition next week, which tells the story of how Jews, Christians and Muslims have together contributed to the development of the book as an object of great cultural importance. The exhibition...
- Patronage And The Sacred Book In The Medieval Mediterranean
Patronage and the Sacred Book in the Medieval Mediterranean Organized by Esperanza Alfonso (CSIC) and Jonathan Decter (Brandeis University) Brandeis University, October 18-19, 2010 Sacred books (including Jewish Bibles, Christian Bibles, Qur´ans, prayer...