Notes on Contributors
Ali H. Akhtar is a global historian at Bates College, where he is associate professor and chair of Religious Studies with appointments in Asian Studies and Classical and Medieval Studies. A graduate of Cornell University (B.A.) and New York University’s joint-doctoral program in History and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, Akhtar has taught at a variety of institutions including NYU, Bard College, Bates College, and Ewha Women’s University (Seoul). Akhtar’s books, articles, and reviews have been published by Cambridge University Press, American Historical Review, Harvard Theological Review, the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and the Journal of World History.
Esperanza Alfonso holds a PhD in Hebrew Philology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1998). She is tenured research fellow at the Center for Human and Social Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council, has taught at Cornell University (2000, 2004–2005), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002–2005), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2006–2008) and the University of Pennsylvania (Spring 2013). She is the author of: Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the 10th to the 12th-Century (London: Routledge, 2007); has edited “Patronage in Islamic Societies,” special issue, Al-Qantara 29, 2 (2008); and co-edited, with Carmen Caballero-Navas Late Medieval Jewish Identities: Iberia and Beyond (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), with Ross Brann, “Al-Andalus and its Legacies,” special issue, Comparative Literature Studies 45, 2 (2008), and with Javier del Barco, M. Teresa Ortega Monasterio and Arturo Prats, Bibles of Sepharad/Biblias de Sepharad (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional de España, 2012).
Adam Bursi is a post-doctoral fellow at Utrecht University in the research project SENSIS: The Senses of Islam. His research studies early Islam in dialogue with other late antique religions, focusing on the ways that rituals related to relics, pilgrimage, and healing were tightly interwoven with the formation and performance of communal membership among early Muslims. He has held positions as a fellow at the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee and as a cataloguer of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at Saint John’s University.
Peter Cole is, most recently, the author of Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017).
Jonathan Decter is the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies at Brandeis University. His most recent book, Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy Among Jews of the Medieval Mediterranean (University of Pennyslvania Press, 2018) was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture. His first book, Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe (Indiana University Press, 2007) won the Salo W. Baron Prize for best first book in Jewish Studies.
Elisabeth Hollender is professor of Jewish Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt. Her research focuses on medieval liturgy in Ashkenaz, mainly Ashkenazic piyyut and Ashkenazic piyyut commentaries. She is author of, i.a., Clavis Commentariorum of Medieval Hebrew Poetry (2005) and Medieval Piyyut Commentary in Ashkenaz (2008), co-editor of Poetry and Exegesis (2016) and The Poet and the World (2019), and has published many articles in journals and collected volumes.
Uriah Kfir is senior lecturer in medieval Hebrew poetry in the Department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His book, A Matter of Geography: A New Perspective on Medieval Hebrew Poetry, was published by Brill in 2018.
S.J. Pearce is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University. She has published articles on various aspects of medieval Andalusi literature and cultural history and is the author of the The Andalusi Literary and Intellectual Tradition (Bloomington, 2017), which is the recipient of the 2019 La Corónica International Book Prize. She has held research fellowships at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
Francis Edward Peters is professor emeritus of History, Religion, and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Peters graduated from Regis High School in Manhattan in 1945. He entered the Jesuits that summer and spent four years at their novitiate at St. Andrew on Hudson in Hyde Park, N.Y. He then studied at St. Louis University for three years, earning his B.A. in 1950 and his M.A. in Latin and Greek in 1952, as well as a licentiate in philosophy awarded by the Pontifical Institute in Rome. He was released from his Jesuit vows in 1954. He earned a degree in Russian language studies from Fordham University in 1956 and completed his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at Princeton University in 1961. He taught at NYU from 1961 to 2008. Trained in both Islamic studies and in classical Greek and Roman studies and has published extensively in both, he considers himself a historian of religion, particularly the comparative study of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. At NYU Peters served as chairman of both the Classics and the Middle Eastern Studies departments. He has published more than twenty books, from the earliest, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, New York University Press (1967) and Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam, New York University Press (1968) to the latest, Jesus and Muhammad. Parallel Tracks, Parallel Lives, Oxford University Press (2010). In progress is Constructing Christianity: What Jesus’ Followers Built Over His Empty Tomb.
Arturo Prats Oliván is assistant lecturer (professor contratado doctor) in the Department of Hebrew and Aramaic Studies at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, where he completed his PhD in Semitic philology in 2004. His current research focuses in the cross-cultural exchange and cultural identity reflected in the Hebrew-Spanish literature of late medieval Iberia, particularly in the fifteenth century. He is the author of La disputa de Selomoh Ben Reʿuben Bonafed con la Aljama de Zaragoza (Granada, Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2010); “Elegía en prosa de Šelomoh Bonafed: Lamento por la muerte de una madre,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes Hebreos, sección hebreo 55 (2006): 335–368; “La sátira y la invectiva en eldiwan de R. Šelomó bar Reubén Bonafed,” Sefarad 66.1 (2006): 66–88; with Esperanza Alfonso, “A Hebrew Penitential Poem (Tokhahah) in the Macabre Style,” Medieval Encounters 14.1 (2008): 99–123; and with Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, “Selomoh Bonafed y la lógica cristiana del siglo XV,” Revista española de Filosofía Medieval 10 (2003): 15–27. He also collaborated in the publication of Manuscritos hebreos excepto bíblicos, comentarios bíblicos y obras gramaticales en las bibliotecas de El Escorial, Universidad Complutense de Madrid y Real Academia de la Historia edited by Javier del Barco (Madrid: CSIC, 2006).
Cynthia Robinson is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of Medieval and Islamic Art at Cornell University. She is author of numerous publications in academic journals and edited collections. Her most recent books are Imagining the Passion in a Multi-Confessional Castile, 14th–15th c. (PSUP, 2013), and, with Bárbara Boloix, El palacio nazarí de Daralhorra (Universidad de Granada; Patronato de la Alhambra, 2019). Her debut novel, Birds of Wonder (Standing Stone Books) appeared in 2018.
Tova Rosen is professor emerita of medieval Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University, Israel. After receiving her D.Phil. from Oxford, she taught at Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University in the Negev. She also taught at Princeton University, and was a Visiting Professor at Columbia and Berkeley universities. Her books include: Yetzira mehukama (readings in Shemuel Ha-Nagid; with Eddy Zemach, Keter, 1983). Le-ezor shir (A monograph on the Hebrew muwashshah, Haifa University Press, 1985). Shirat ha-hol (Intro to medieval Hebrew secular poetry, Ha-kibutz ha-meuhad, 1997). Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature (Pennsylvania University Press, 2003). Tzeid ha-tzeviya (translation of Unveiling Eve into Hebrew by Oran Moked, Tel Aviv University Press, 2006). Shemuel ha-Nagid: Selected Poems (Tel Aviv University Press, 2008). The Liturgical Poems of Moshe ibn Ezra: A Critical Edition (two volumes, edited with Israel Levin, Tel Aviv University Press, 2012, 2014). Ha-ʾish ʾim ha-gitara ha-kehula (translations from Wallace Stevens, Keter, 1985; an expanded and updated edition is in process).
Aurora Salvatierra Ossorio Ph.D. (1992) in Hebrew Literature, University of Granada (Spain), is associate professor (profesora titular) of Hebrew Literature in the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada. Her research fields are focused on Hebrew poetry and narrative in al-Andalus and in the Christian Iberia.
Raymond P. Scheindlin is professor emeritus of medieval Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, specializing in medieval Hebrew poetry. Most of his work involves Hebrew poets in medieval Spain. He has also made a specialty of literary translation of premodern Hebrew texts.
Jessica Renee Streit is assistant professor of medieval and Islamic Art in the Department of Art and Architectural History at the College of Charleston. She holds a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Cornell University, with the major field of Islamic Art, and a BA in Art History from the University of New Mexico. Dr. Streit specializes in the art and architecture of medieval Spain and Morocco, and is more broadly interested in cultural exchange between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean.
Shawkat M. Toorawa is professor of Arabic Literature and Chair of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. From 2000 to 2016 he taught at Cornell University.
David Torollo is a scholar of medieval Iberia. His research focuses on questions related to cultural studies, such as translations of didactic texts between Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish; compilations of wisdom material; the sacred texts of Judaism, Islam and Christianity as a meeting point for debate; and linguistic and cultural aspects of the Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic traditions. He currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship at King’s College, London.
Hamza M. Zafer is assistant professor of Late Antique Judaism and Early Islam in the department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Washington. His work focuses on the development of narrative traditions in the Qurʾān and other early Islamic sources, as well as upon early relationships between Arabian Muslim and Jewish communities. He teaches panoramic courses on major themes in religious studies such as concepts of prophecy across cultures, and evil and the nature of the devil, as well as more focused, text-based classes for advanced students.