| 25 Oct 2007 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm | CRASSH | |
- Description
Description
A lecture by Maria Menocal, Sterling Professor of the Humanities and the Director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale
A native of Havana, Cuba, Maria Rosa Menocal is a noted scholar and historian of medieval culture and literature. She received her Ph.D. in Romance Philology from the University of Pennsylvania and since 1985 she is the Sterling Professor of the Humanities and the Director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale.
Her writing and teaching is in the field of medieval literatures and cultures, with special focus in recent years on the vibrant mixed cultures of medieval Spain, an area in which she lectures widely. Her books include The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage, Writing in Dante's Cult of Truth: From Borges to Boccaccio, and Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. She is the co-editor (with Raymond Scheindlin and Michael Sells Cambridge) of The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Al-Andalus, a volume that places the Arabic literature of Islamic Spain in the context of the other languages and cultures of the Iberian peninsula. Her 2002 book on The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, which has been published in numerous languages, describes the cross-fertilization that took place among those flourishing religious groups.
Currently, she is working on a book for the Yale University Press, a collaboration with the distinguished art historian Professor Jerrilyn Dodds and Abigail Krasner, photographer and Arabist. Titled Out of Arabic: Conversion, Translation, and Memory in the Invention of Castilian Culture, a richly illustrated study will focus on Castilian as the shared culture of translation for the three monotheistic traditions, one that encompassed all the art forms.
An invited lecturer at universities and conferences throughout the nation and in Europe and the Middle East, Menocal has been a visiting professor at Bryn Mawr College and has held distinguished visiting professorships or lectureships at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the American University in Cairo, among others.
All welcome!
Professor Menocal also gives a lecture on The Abrahamic Faiths in Medieval Spain in the Faculty of Divinity on Wednesday 24 October at 1.00-2.00pm. This event is hosted by the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme. For details contact: Catriaona Laing on 763012.
