Associate Professor of Spanish
szpiech@umich.eduOffice Information:
4140 MLB
Education/Degree:
Ph.D. Yale University, 2006About
I study the cultures and literatures of medieval Iberia, focusing especially on cultural interaction, exchange, and conflict. My interests converge around the concept of translation (of languages, alphabets, styles, beliefs, identities, and ideas) as a tool for defining the relations between Jews, Muslims, and Christians. I am particularly interested in conversion as a vehicle 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 focus much of my research on polemics (disputes and arguments) between different religious groups, and I have published studies on figures as King Alfonso X "the Wise," Ramon Llull, Ramon Martí, Abner of Burgos (Alfonso of Valladolid), Anselm Turmeda ('Abdallah al-Tarjuman), Solomon Halevi (Pablo de Santa María), and Juan Andrés, among others.
I am the author of a book on narratives of religious conversion and their function within polemical writing in the 12th to the 15th centuries, the editor of a book on medieval exegesis and cross-cultural contact and polemics, and co-editor of books on medieval polemics in Iberia and medieval astrolabes. I am now working on a project on the polemics against Islam in sixteenth-century Spain, a biography of Muhammad XI ("Boabdil", the last Muslim ruler of Granada), and am at the beginning stages of a monograph on the intersection of translation and discourses of genealogy and filial piety in Castile during the reign of Alfonso X the Learned and the subsequent four kings (1252–1369). I have recently completed a documentary film about Alfonso X and his impact (https://birth-of-spanish.rll.lsa.umich.edu).
I am currently participating in a research group funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy: “Fuentes medievales y modernas para el estudio de las relaciones transculturales en el Mediterráneo: redacción y transmisión” (FFI2015-63659-C2-1-P MINECO/FEDER). I am also currently a member of the research group "Islamolatina" based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/islamolatina/) and a collaborating member of IEMYRhd (Instituto de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas y de Humanidades Digitales) at the University of Salamanca.
Selected Publications:
Books and Journal Issues
- (2013) Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic
- (2015) Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean.
- (2019) Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures. Co-edited with Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, Charles Burnett, and Silke Ackermann.
- (2018) Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. Co-edited with Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers.
- (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
- “One Messiah or Two? The Messiah ben Joseph in Medieval Jewish-Christian Debate.” In Christian Readings of Rabbinic Sources, edited by Alexander Fidora and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, 189–214. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2024.
- “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. Ed. Matthew J. Smith and Caleb D. Spencer, 73–89. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
- “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. Ed. Sarah Davis-Secord, Belen Vicens, and Robin Vose, 125–60. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021.
- "Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Medieval Europe." The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe. Ed. Grace Davie and Lucian N. Leustean, 79–99. New York: Oxford University Press, 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. Ed. Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, and Shalom Sadik, 269–300. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
- “Turning and Returning: Religious Conversion and Personal Testimony in Iberian Societies.” In The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia. Ed. E. Michael Gerli and Ryan D. Giles, 268–83. New York: Routledge, 2021.
- “On the Road to 1391? Abner of Burgos / Alfonso of Valladolid on Forced Conversion.” In Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam: Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and Beyond. Ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, 175–204. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
- “Saracens and Church Councils, from Nablus (1120) to Vienne (1313–14).” In Jews and Muslims under the Fourth Lateran Council: Papers Commemorating the Octocentenary of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). Ed. Marie-Thérèse Champagne and Irven M. Resnick, 115–37. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.
- “Three Ways of Misreading Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.” In Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past. Ed. Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O’Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, Nina Rowe, 94–103 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019).
- “Prisons and Polemics: Captivity, Confinement, and Medieval Interreligious Encounter.” In Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. Ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, 271–303. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019.
- “From Mesopotamia to Madrid: The Legacy of Ancient and Medieval Science in Early Modern Spain.” In Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain. Ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás, 25–57. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.
- “L’hérésie absente: Karaïsme et karaïtes dans les oeuvres polémiques d’Alfonso de Valladolid (m. V. 1347).” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 182 (2018): 191–206.
- “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’s Divinity: Qur’ānic Quotations in Iberian Polemics after the Conquest of Granada (1492).” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20.3 (2018): 51‒80. Co-authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska
- “’Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras’: Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5.1 (2018): 99–132. Co-authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska
- “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, edited by Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Hess, 219‒244. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.
- “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.
- “A Witness of Their Own Nation: On the Influence of Juan Andrés.” In After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, edited by Mercedes García Arenal, 174‒198. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
- Translating Between the Lines: Medieval Polemic and Romance Bibles.” Medieval Encounters 22.1‒3 (2016): 113–139. (Special issue guest edited by Harvey Hames).
- “Granada.” In Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418, edited by David Wallace. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 2:154‒69.
- “From Founding Father to Pious Son: Filiation, Language, and Royal Inheritance in Alfonso X, the Learned.” Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures 1 (2015): 209–35.
- “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. A PDF of the text is available.
Recent graduate courses taught:
Medieval Iberian Otherness
Metamorphosis and Narrative in the Premodern Mediterranean
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:
Race and "Purity of Blood" in Medieval Spain
Jewish-Christian Disputations in Medieval Spain
The cultural world of Alfonso X
Race and the Representation of Muslims in Medieval and Early-Modern Iberian Literatures
Introduction to Aljamiado writing
Ramon Llull and the Dream of Conversion
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 study the cultures and literatures of medieval Iberia, focusing especially on cultural interaction, exchange, and conflict. My interests converge around the concept of translation (of languages, alphabets, styles, beliefs, identities, and ideas) as a tool for defining the relations between Jews, Muslims, and Christians. I am particularly interested in conversion as a vehicle 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 focus much of my research on polemics (disputes and arguments) between different religious groups, and I have published studies on figures as King Alfonso X "the Wise," Ramon Llull, Ramon Martí, Abner of Burgos (Alfonso of Valladolid), Anselm Turmeda ('Abdallah al-Tarjuman), Solomon Halevi (Pablo de Santa María), and Juan Andrés, among others.
I am the author of a book on narratives of religious conversion and their function within polemical writing in the 12th to the 15th centuries, the editor of a book on medieval exegesis and cross-cultural contact and polemics, and co-editor of books on medieval polemics in Iberia and medieval astrolabes. I am now working on a project on the polemics against Islam in sixteenth-century Spain, a biography of Muhammad XI ("Boabdil", the last Muslim ruler of Granada), and am at the beginning stages of a monograph on the intersection of translation and discourses of genealogy and filial piety in Castile during the reign of Alfonso X the Learned and the subsequent four kings (1252–1369). I have recently completed a documentary film about Alfonso X and his impact (https://birth-of-spanish.rll.lsa.umich.edu).
I am currently participating in a research group funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy: “Fuentes medievales y modernas para el estudio de las relaciones transculturales en el Mediterráneo: redacción y transmisión” (FFI2015-63659-C2-1-P MINECO/FEDER). I am also currently a member of the research group "Islamolatina" based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/islamolatina/) and a collaborating member of IEMYRhd (Instituto de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas y de Humanidades Digitales) at the University of Salamanca.
Selected Publications:
Books and Journal Issues
- (2013) Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic
- (2015) Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean.
- (2019) Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures. Co-edited with Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, Charles Burnett, and Silke Ackermann.
- (2018) Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. Co-edited with Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers.
- (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
- “One Messiah or Two? The Messiah ben Joseph in Medieval Jewish-Christian Debate.” In Christian Readings of Rabbinic Sources, edited by Alexander Fidora and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, 189–214. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2024.
- “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. Ed. Matthew J. Smith and Caleb D. Spencer, 73–89. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
- “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. Ed. Sarah Davis-Secord, Belen Vicens, and Robin Vose, 125–60. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021.
- "Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Medieval Europe." The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe. Ed. Grace Davie and Lucian N. Leustean, 79–99. New York: Oxford University Press, 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. Ed. Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, and Shalom Sadik, 269–300. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
- “Turning and Returning: Religious Conversion and Personal Testimony in Iberian Societies.” In The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia. Ed. E. Michael Gerli and Ryan D. Giles, 268–83. New York: Routledge, 2021.
- “On the Road to 1391? Abner of Burgos / Alfonso of Valladolid on Forced Conversion.” In Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam: Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and Beyond. Ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, 175–204. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
- “Saracens and Church Councils, from Nablus (1120) to Vienne (1313–14).” In Jews and Muslims under the Fourth Lateran Council: Papers Commemorating the Octocentenary of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). Ed. Marie-Thérèse Champagne and Irven M. Resnick, 115–37. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.
- “Three Ways of Misreading Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.” In Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past. Ed. Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O’Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, Nina Rowe, 94–103 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019).
- “Prisons and Polemics: Captivity, Confinement, and Medieval Interreligious Encounter.” In Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. Ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, 271–303. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019.
- “From Mesopotamia to Madrid: The Legacy of Ancient and Medieval Science in Early Modern Spain.” In Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain. Ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás, 25–57. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.
- “L’hérésie absente: Karaïsme et karaïtes dans les oeuvres polémiques d’Alfonso de Valladolid (m. V. 1347).” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 182 (2018): 191–206.
- “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’s Divinity: Qur’ānic Quotations in Iberian Polemics after the Conquest of Granada (1492).” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20.3 (2018): 51‒80. Co-authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska
- “’Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras’: Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5.1 (2018): 99–132. Co-authored with Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska
- “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, edited by Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Hess, 219‒244. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.
- “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.
- “A Witness of Their Own Nation: On the Influence of Juan Andrés.” In After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, edited by Mercedes García Arenal, 174‒198. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
- Translating Between the Lines: Medieval Polemic and Romance Bibles.” Medieval Encounters 22.1‒3 (2016): 113–139. (Special issue guest edited by Harvey Hames).
- “Granada.” In Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418, edited by David Wallace. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 2:154‒69.
- “From Founding Father to Pious Son: Filiation, Language, and Royal Inheritance in Alfonso X, the Learned.” Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures 1 (2015): 209–35.
- “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. A PDF of the text is available.
Recent graduate courses taught:
Medieval Iberian Otherness
Metamorphosis and Narrative in the Premodern Mediterranean
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:
Race and "Purity of Blood" in Medieval Spain
Jewish-Christian Disputations in Medieval Spain
The cultural world of Alfonso X
Race and the Representation of Muslims in Medieval and Early-Modern Iberian Literatures
Introduction to Aljamiado writing
Ramon Llull and the Dream of Conversion
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
Conversion and Narrative Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic
Ryan Szpiech
In Conversion, Prof. Szpiech draws on sources from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim polemics to investigate the importance of the narrative form in dramatizing the conversion of religious infidelity to faith in the context of medieval Western Mediterranean.
