Associate Professor of Spanish (Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures, Judaic Studies, Middle East Studies) Director, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies
szpiech@umich.eduOffice Information:
phone: 734-489-3727
Education/Degree:
Ph.D. Yale University, 2006About
I am an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures, Middle East Studies, and Judaic Studies, and an affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.
I study the cultures and literatures of medieval Iberia, focusing especially on cultural interaction, exchange, and conflict. My interests converge around polemical writing (religious disputations and conflicts) and translation (of languages, alphabets, styles, beliefs, identities, and ideas) as elements defining the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
I am particularly interested in conversion and translation as vehicles for exchange (real and imagined) between disparate groups, as well as in modern scholarly debates about how to frame the history and criticism of Medieval Iberia and its cultures (One, two, or three cultures? Conquest or reconquest? Spanish or Iberian? Tolerance or persecution?). I have focused much of my research on the fourteenth-century convert Abner of Burgos (known as Alfonso of Valladolid after conversion), and written a book on narratives of religious conversion and their function within polemical writing in the 12th to the 15th centuries. I have also edited a book of essays on exegesis and co-edited two other collected volumes related to my former role as editor of the journal Medieval Encounters (which I edited from 2013–2022).
Selected Publications:
Books and Journal Issues
- (2013) Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic
- (2019) Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures. Co-edited with Charles Burnett, Silke Ackermann, and Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
- (2015) Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean.
- (2014) “A Sea of Stories: Writings and Reflections in Honor of María Rosa Menocal.” Special issue co-edited by Ryan Szpiech and Lourdes Maria Alvarez. La Corónica 43.1 (2014): 93–255.
- (2011) “Between Gender and Genre in Later-Medieval Sepharad: Love, Sex, and Polemics in Hebrew Writing From Christian Iberia.” Special issue edited by Ryan Szpiech. Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 3.2 (2011): 119–217.
Selected Articles and Chapters
- “Sounding the Qur’an: The Rhetoric of Transliteration in the Antialcoranes.” In The Iberian Qur’an, edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, 285–318. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.
- “Interruption: Conversion as an Event in Paul of Tarsus and Paul of Burgos.” In Literature and Religious Experience: Beyond Belief and Unbelief, edited by Matthew J. Smith and Caleb D. Spencer, 73–89. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
- “Turning and Returning: Religious Conversion and Personal Testimony in Medieval Iberian Societies.” In The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity in Diversity, edited by E. Michael Gerli and Ryan Giles, 268–84. New York: Routledge, 2021.
- “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Medieval Europe.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe, edited by Lucian Leustean and Grace Davis, 79–99. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
- “Seeing the Substance: Rhetorical Muslims and Christian Holy Objects in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.” In Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean, edited by Sarah Davis-Secord, Belen Vicens, and Robin Vose, 125–60. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021.
- “The Book of Nestor the Priest and the Toledot Yešu in the Polemics of Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid.” In Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures: Studies in Honour of Daniel J. Lasker, edited by Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, and Shalom Sadik, 269–300. Studia Judaica 113. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
- “On the Road to 1391? Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid on Forced Conversion.” In Coming to Terms with Forced Conversion: Coercion and Faith in Pre-Modern Iberia and Beyond, edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Etan, 175–204. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
- “Three Ways of Misreading Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.” In Whose Middle Ages? A Reader, edited by Andrew Albin, Will Cerbone, Mary Erler, Thomas O'Donnell, Nick Paul, and Nina Rowe, 94–103. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019.
- “Prisons and Polemics: Captivity, Confinement, and Medieval Inter-religious Encounter.” In Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, 271–303. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2019.
- “L’hérésie absente: karaïsme et karaïtes dans les œuvres polémiques d’Alfonso de Valladolid (m. v. 1347).” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 182 (2018): 191–207.
- “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur’anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics after the Conquest of Granada (1492)”. Co- authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna Starczewska. Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20.3 (2018): 51–80.
- “Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras: Rendering Arabic in the antialcoranes.” Co-authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna Starczewska. Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5.1 (2018): 99–132.
- “Conversion as a Historiographical Problem: The Case of Zoraya/Isabel de Solís.” In Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World, ed. Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli. New York: Routledge, 2017. 24‒38.
- “From Convert to Convert: Two Opposed Trends in Late Medieval and Early Modern Anti-Jewish Polemic.” In Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Hess, 219‒244. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.
- “The Art of Amazement: Wonder and Fictionality in Ramon Llull’s Vita coaetanea (1311).” Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 55 (2015–2016): 223–254.
- “‘Testes sunt ipsi, testis et erroris ipsius magister’: El musulmán como testigo en la polémica cristiana medieval.” Medievalia 19.2 (2016): 133‒153.
- “Translating Between the Lines: Medieval Polemic and Romance Bibles.” Medieval Encounters 22.1‒3 (2016): 113–139.
- “Cracking the Code: Reflections on Manuscripts in the Age of Digital Books.” Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures 3.1 (2014): 76–301.
- “The Aura of an Alphabet: Gospel Citations in Hebrew in the Pugio Fidei of Ramón Martí.” Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 61, no. 4 (2014): 334–63.
- “‘Petrus Alfonsi…Erred Greatly’: Alfonso of Valladolid's (d. ca. 1347) Imitation and Critique of Petrus Alfonsi's Dialogus.” In Petrus Alfonsi and his Dialogus: Background, Context, Reception, edited by Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann and Philipp Roelli, 321–48. Micrologus’ Library 66. Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014.
- “La disputa de Barcelona como punto de inflexión.” Studia Lulliana 54 (2014): 3–32.
- “Rhetorical Muslims: Islam as Witness in Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic.” Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 34.1 (2013): 153–185.
- “The Convivencia Wars: Decoding Historiography’s Polemic with Philology.” In A Sea of Languages: Literature and Culture in the Pre-modern Mediterranean. Ed. Susan Akbari and Karla Malette. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.
- “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos in the Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) by Juan Andrés.” La Corónica 41.1 (2012).
- “Latin as a Language of Authoritative Tradition.” Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature.Ed. Ralph Hexter and David Townsend. Oxford University Press. 63–85.
- “Citas árabes en caracteres hebreos en el Pugio fidei del dominico Ramón Martí: entre la autenticidad y la autoridad.” [Includes study and critical edition of the Arabic and Latin texts followed by a Castilian translation of both.] Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 32.1 (2011): 71–107. http://al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al-qantara/article/view/250/244
- “In Search of Ibn Sina’s ‘Oriental Philosophy’ in Medieval Castile.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 20 (2010): 185-206.
Recent graduate courses taught:
Translation and Anxiety
Narrating Conversion in the Medieval Mediterranean
This Text which is not One: Five Ways of Reading the Libro de buen amor
Recent undergraduate courses taught:
1492: History and Legend
The cultural world of Alfonso X
From the Cid to Cide Hamete: Representations of Muslims in Medieval and Early-Modern Iberian Literatures
Moriscos and Aljamiado in Golden-Age Spain
Medieval Frame-Tale Narratives
Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia
Conversion and Conversos in Fifteenth-Century Iberian Literature
Castilian Chivalry and the Libro del Caballero Zifar
The Literatures of Iberia 900-1700
Originals, Copies, and Translations
Research Areas(s)
- Medieval Iberian Literatures, Converso Studies, Medieval Islam, Religious Polemics
About
I am an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures, Middle East Studies, and Judaic Studies, and an affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.
I study the cultures and literatures of medieval Iberia, focusing especially on cultural interaction, exchange, and conflict. My interests converge around polemical writing (religious disputations and conflicts) and translation (of languages, alphabets, styles, beliefs, identities, and ideas) as elements defining the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
I am particularly interested in conversion and translation as vehicles for exchange (real and imagined) between disparate groups, as well as in modern scholarly debates about how to frame the history and criticism of Medieval Iberia and its cultures (One, two, or three cultures? Conquest or reconquest? Spanish or Iberian? Tolerance or persecution?). I have focused much of my research on the fourteenth-century convert Abner of Burgos (known as Alfonso of Valladolid after conversion), and written a book on narratives of religious conversion and their function within polemical writing in the 12th to the 15th centuries. I have also edited a book of essays on exegesis and co-edited two other collected volumes related to my former role as editor of the journal Medieval Encounters (which I edited from 2013–2022).
Selected Publications:
Books and Journal Issues
- (2013) Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic
- (2019) Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures. Co-edited with Charles Burnett, Silke Ackermann, and Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
- (2015) Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean.
- (2014) “A Sea of Stories: Writings and Reflections in Honor of María Rosa Menocal.” Special issue co-edited by Ryan Szpiech and Lourdes Maria Alvarez. La Corónica 43.1 (2014): 93–255.
- (2011) “Between Gender and Genre in Later-Medieval Sepharad: Love, Sex, and Polemics in Hebrew Writing From Christian Iberia.” Special issue edited by Ryan Szpiech. Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 3.2 (2011): 119–217.
Selected Articles and Chapters
- “Sounding the Qur’an: The Rhetoric of Transliteration in the Antialcoranes.” In The Iberian Qur’an, edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, 285–318. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.
- “Interruption: Conversion as an Event in Paul of Tarsus and Paul of Burgos.” In Literature and Religious Experience: Beyond Belief and Unbelief, edited by Matthew J. Smith and Caleb D. Spencer, 73–89. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
- “Turning and Returning: Religious Conversion and Personal Testimony in Medieval Iberian Societies.” In The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity in Diversity, edited by E. Michael Gerli and Ryan Giles, 268–84. New York: Routledge, 2021.
- “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Medieval Europe.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe, edited by Lucian Leustean and Grace Davis, 79–99. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
- “Seeing the Substance: Rhetorical Muslims and Christian Holy Objects in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.” In Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean, edited by Sarah Davis-Secord, Belen Vicens, and Robin Vose, 125–60. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021.
- “The Book of Nestor the Priest and the Toledot Yešu in the Polemics of Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid.” In Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures: Studies in Honour of Daniel J. Lasker, edited by Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, and Shalom Sadik, 269–300. Studia Judaica 113. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
- “On the Road to 1391? Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid on Forced Conversion.” In Coming to Terms with Forced Conversion: Coercion and Faith in Pre-Modern Iberia and Beyond, edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Etan, 175–204. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
- “Three Ways of Misreading Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.” In Whose Middle Ages? A Reader, edited by Andrew Albin, Will Cerbone, Mary Erler, Thomas O'Donnell, Nick Paul, and Nina Rowe, 94–103. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019.
- “Prisons and Polemics: Captivity, Confinement, and Medieval Inter-religious Encounter.” In Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, 271–303. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2019.
- “L’hérésie absente: karaïsme et karaïtes dans les œuvres polémiques d’Alfonso de Valladolid (m. v. 1347).” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 182 (2018): 191–207.
- “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur’anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics after the Conquest of Granada (1492)”. Co- authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna Starczewska. Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20.3 (2018): 51–80.
- “Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras: Rendering Arabic in the antialcoranes.” Co-authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna Starczewska. Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5.1 (2018): 99–132.
- “Conversion as a Historiographical Problem: The Case of Zoraya/Isabel de Solís.” In Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World, ed. Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli. New York: Routledge, 2017. 24‒38.
- “From Convert to Convert: Two Opposed Trends in Late Medieval and Early Modern Anti-Jewish Polemic.” In Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Hess, 219‒244. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.
- “The Art of Amazement: Wonder and Fictionality in Ramon Llull’s Vita coaetanea (1311).” Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 55 (2015–2016): 223–254.
- “‘Testes sunt ipsi, testis et erroris ipsius magister’: El musulmán como testigo en la polémica cristiana medieval.” Medievalia 19.2 (2016): 133‒153.
- “Translating Between the Lines: Medieval Polemic and Romance Bibles.” Medieval Encounters 22.1‒3 (2016): 113–139.
- “Cracking the Code: Reflections on Manuscripts in the Age of Digital Books.” Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures 3.1 (2014): 76–301.
- “The Aura of an Alphabet: Gospel Citations in Hebrew in the Pugio Fidei of Ramón Martí.” Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 61, no. 4 (2014): 334–63.
- “‘Petrus Alfonsi…Erred Greatly’: Alfonso of Valladolid's (d. ca. 1347) Imitation and Critique of Petrus Alfonsi's Dialogus.” In Petrus Alfonsi and his Dialogus: Background, Context, Reception, edited by Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann and Philipp Roelli, 321–48. Micrologus’ Library 66. Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014.
- “La disputa de Barcelona como punto de inflexión.” Studia Lulliana 54 (2014): 3–32.
- “Rhetorical Muslims: Islam as Witness in Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic.” Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 34.1 (2013): 153–185.
- “The Convivencia Wars: Decoding Historiography’s Polemic with Philology.” In A Sea of Languages: Literature and Culture in the Pre-modern Mediterranean. Ed. Susan Akbari and Karla Malette. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.
- “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos in the Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) by Juan Andrés.” La Corónica 41.1 (2012).
- “Latin as a Language of Authoritative Tradition.” Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature.Ed. Ralph Hexter and David Townsend. Oxford University Press. 63–85.
- “Citas árabes en caracteres hebreos en el Pugio fidei del dominico Ramón Martí: entre la autenticidad y la autoridad.” [Includes study and critical edition of the Arabic and Latin texts followed by a Castilian translation of both.] Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 32.1 (2011): 71–107. http://al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al-qantara/article/view/250/244
- “In Search of Ibn Sina’s ‘Oriental Philosophy’ in Medieval Castile.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 20 (2010): 185-206.
Recent graduate courses taught:
Translation and Anxiety
Narrating Conversion in the Medieval Mediterranean
This Text which is not One: Five Ways of Reading the Libro de buen amor
Recent undergraduate courses taught:
1492: History and Legend
The cultural world of Alfonso X
From the Cid to Cide Hamete: Representations of Muslims in Medieval and Early-Modern Iberian Literatures
Moriscos and Aljamiado in Golden-Age Spain
Medieval Frame-Tale Narratives
Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia
Conversion and Conversos in Fifteenth-Century Iberian Literature
Castilian Chivalry and the Libro del Caballero Zifar
The Literatures of Iberia 900-1700
Originals, Copies, and Translations
Research Areas(s)
- Medieval Iberian Literatures, Converso Studies, Medieval Islam, Religious Polemics
