Omar Paton was one of the last Castilian Muslims to complete the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. He undertook the journey from his home city of Ávila (Castile), departing in 1491. Upon his return from the East, Paton depicted the experiences and emotions he lived during his long and dangerous pious expedition in his Memoir of the Journey to and…[Read more]

Omar Paton was one of the last Castilian Muslims to complete the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. He undertook the journey from his home city of Ávila (Castile), departing in 1491. Upon his return from the East, Paton depicted the experiences and emotions he lived during his long and dangerous pious expedition in his Memoir of the Journey to and…[Read more]

To encourage classroom dialectic I often turn to the “quitting” structure of “The Canterbury Tales,” within which pilgrims offer requitals of previous tales that range from exuberant acclamations to
raucous attacks. Within these extremes lie productive forms of correction that emerge as subtle critiques, opposing arguments, and timely (or…[Read more]

To encourage classroom dialectic I often turn to the “quitting” structure of “The Canterbury Tales,” within which pilgrims offer requitals of previous tales that range from exuberant acclamations to
raucous attacks. Within these extremes lie productive forms of correction that emerge as subtle critiques, opposing arguments, and timely (or…[Read more]

For the past twenty years, scholars of world and global history and literature have shown that the early modern world was a complex, entangled place. And yet, by emphasizing connection, such work at times overlooks the many separations that drove the engines of global early modernity: transoceanic slave trades, tribute labor, and the economic…[Read more]

Version of academic record: Wacks, David A., Review of Roza Candás, Pablo, ed. Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka: La peregrinación de ʿOmar Paṭōn. Oviedo, 2018. ISBN 978-84-16343-67-6. 482 pp. La corónica, vol 48, no. 2, pp. 177-180. doi:10.1353/cor.2020.0013

Analyzing trans narratives about the early moderns through the lenses of affective labor and social reparation, this chapter reclaims as trans the Shakespeare films that have been misinterpreted as homosexual. In doing so, this chapter builds a longer, more intersectional history of gendered embodiment. Reparative trans performances—works in w…[Read more]

As neural language models begin to change aspects of everyday life, they understandably attract criticism. This position paper was commissioned for a roundtable at Princeton University, dedicated to one of the most influential critiques: “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru,…[Read more]

Using the evidence of the aural as intrinsic to mester de clerecía’s mode of diffusion and reception as point of departure, this chapter examines sound as a wider and complex system of references, actualizations, and allusions that articulate and structure the mode in its composition, as part of its tools to effect meaning. Music and song play ob…[Read more]

The Danza general de la muerte (Dance of Death) (late 14th-century) is a rhymed dialogue in Castilian in which death personified greets one victim after another. It is the earliest of 3 extant Castilian versions of the Dance of Death, which was popular across Europe in the Middle Ages. The Dance of Death gives expression to the premodern view that…[Read more]

The Danza general de la muerte (Dance of Death) (late 14th-century) is a rhymed dialogue in Castilian in which death personified greets one victim after another. It is the earliest of 3 extant Castilian versions of the Dance of Death, which was popular across Europe in the Middle Ages. The Dance of Death gives expression to the premodern view t…[Read more]

From its linguistic origins as a Biblical land of great wealth across the sea, to its more recent nostalgic imaginary as a lost Golden Age of Mediterranean Jewish culture, Sefarad has been as much an idea as a physical place, a lens through which Iberian Jews have interpreted their world, first in al-Andalus, then in Christian Iberia, and later in…[Read more]

Abstract: The manuscript Cod. Donaueschingen A III 19 of the Badische Landes-bibliothek Karlsruhe is a very thin booklet of six leafs in quarto format. It was written by a professional scribe in Nuremberg around 1490. The booklet is titled Priamel red (‘Priamel speech’) and contains a collection of gnomic texts in Early New High German. The mat…[Read more]

From the introduction:
“This volume brings to light a series of studies inspired by the conference, ‘Wine, Women and Song,’ that took place at the University of California at Berkeley in the spring of 2001. The conference provided a forum for topics in medieval Iberian literature and its legacy in the Spanish Colonial tradition. One of our…[Read more]

«De Camino a la Gloria: orígenes y sentido del Camino de Santiago en la Edad Media». Ponencia invitada en la mesa redonda “Del Camino al Pórtico” organizada por la asociación SED Cultura, retransmitido desde la sede de Ediciones Encuentro el 10/6/2021.

En el presente artículo se analiza una crónica que, pese a haber sido poco tratada en el mundo académico, constituye una importante fuente para el estudio de los últimos años del emirato nazarí de Granada desde el punto de vista andalusí: la Nubḏat (Ajbār) al-ʿaṣr. Escrita por un antiguo soldado granadino durante la primera mitad del siglo XVI en…[Read more]

In this work, we study the medieval Christian reception of the book of Job as a possible starting point for further reflections on the consideration and experience of suffering within the medieval religious worldview. After a presentation of the book of Job as a paradigmatic Judeo-Christian expression of the problem of human suffering —a u…[Read more]

En el presente artículo presentamos un estado de la cuestión (revisión bibliográfica y esbozo de una posible línea a seguir) acerca de las ideas de misión y cruzada y su interrelación (la manera en que se conjugan ambos conceptos, aparentemente contradictorios o excluyentes) en el pensamiento filosófico, político y misionero del mallorqu…[Read more]

«Auditu auris audivi te, nunc autem oculus meus videt te. Experiencia, encuentro y conocimiento a partir de Job 42,5» VIII Congreso Internacional de Filosofía Medieval de SOFIME (Porto, 6-8 de septiembre de 2021).