Dear SNAP Members,
Once a semester, I send out a news update. SNAP has experienced a flurry of activity in the last few months, and we are excited to continue working on projects in the future.
Membership continues to expand and I’d like to welcome everyone who has recently joined our community. I hope you will be active participants, contributors, and collaborators with other members. Founded in July 2010, SNAP has now grown to include some 100 members across the world. We work in multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences; our periods of study range from late antiquity to contemporary times; and we use multilingual and multimedia sources.
In the last year-and-a-half, SNAP has completed a busy run of panels and conferences, including a series of three panels at the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies annual meeting, our own SNAP symposium at Catholic University of America, and a roundtable at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting. These activities have enabled us to present our work, share it with a range of members and non-members, meet each other in collaborative workshop settings, and generate enthusiasm as well as ideas for new projects.
Having completed this run, the executive board is now focusing on editing the essays that form the Medieval Encounters special issue and we look forward to moving it closer to production. Two members, Miriam Ali de Unzaga and Adam Gaiser, are also moving forward with a SNAP special issue of the Journal of North African Studies. Though Miriam and Adam will update the membership shortly with their own message, I am very pleased to report that they have now compiled a collection of fascinating abstracts. These abstracts were chosen from a large number of submissions responding to their call for papers, a testament to how innovatively and expertly they crafted the document. The ideas at the heart of the cfp themselves came from a membership-wide discussion we conducted over the listserv in spring 2011. I am so excited to see how collaboration from the ground up helped develop the project, and how two members have taken on leadership of the collaboration.
The development of the SNAP-JNAS special issue, in fact, serves as a model (and there are others) of how we can build collaborative projects. As the executive board deliberates the next steps we would like to take (a two-year plan of sorts), this is a great opportunity for you to propose your own collaborative projects that engage with other colleagues. SNAP has now reached a critical mass and members themselves will be able to find collaborators for panels, conferences, publications, joint teaching, etc. Recent activity on the listserv has indicated member interest in, for example, a panel at the 2012 MESA annual meeting. The executive committee and I strongly encourage you to go ahead and contact each other individually or via the listserv to explore/propose/formulate ideas, form panels, organize conferences, co-author publications, co-edit issues, co-design courses, etc. Though our membership is excitingly varied (which is one of our strengths), I see clusters among medieval and early modern historians, premodern and modern literary scholars, art history/architecture/archaeology scholars, religious and legal scholars, and social scientists (anthropologists and political scientists). There are certainly other clusters as well.
Within our multi- and interdisciplinary demographic profile, I would imagine that a future collaboration with a literary studies core would be much welcomed. A project that considers Iberia and North Africa spanning the divides of early modernity and modernity or the nineteenth-twentieth centuries and the present day would also be relevant. These are just a couple of ideas; I’m sure there are many more out there.
Having presented ourselves at ASPHS, MESA, and AHA, it would be timely to share our work at MLA, AAR, CAA, Kalamazoo, Medieval Academy, RSA, Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, or other scholarly venues. Additional activities outside the American academy, in Europe, North Africa, and beyond, are of course strongly encouraged. The executive board would be delighted to help individual members or groups of members to brainstorm and develop ideas into collaborative projects.
Our ideas are manifold and our members are active scholars exploring the Iberian-North African world. In recognition of members’ accomplishments that relate to our organization’s mission, I am delighted to attach below a list of recent publications, conference papers, and other professional work. This list gives us a sense of the work that members are doing individually and collaboratively. Before the next update, I will again call for any announcements and include them in the message. Congratulations to all of you.
Sincerely,
Gen
SNAP Members’ Publications
Fierro, Maribel. “A Muslim land without Jews or Christians: Almohad policies regarding the ‘protected people’.” In Matthias Tischler und Alexander Fidora (Hrsg.), Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden. Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter. Aschendorff Verlag, 2011, 231-47.
Fierro, Maribel. “al-Turtushi”, Christian-Muslim Relations: A bibliographical history (1050-1200 CE), vol. III. In David Thomas and Alex Mallet (eds.), with Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala, Johannes Pahlitzsch, Mark N. Swanson, and Herman Teule. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011, 387-396.
Fierro, Maribel. “Colors and the quest for political legitimacy in the Islamic West.” In Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair (eds.), And Diverse Are Their Hues: Color in Islamic Art and Culture (The Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, 78-97.
Fierro, Maribel. “Local and global in hadith literature: the case of al-Andalus.” In Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh, Joas Wagemakers (ed.), Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki. Leiden: Brill, 2011, 63-89.
Fierro, Maribel. “El tratado sobre el Profeta del cadí ,Iyad y el contexto almohade.” Legendaria Medievalia en honor de Concepción Castillo Castillo. Córdoba, 2011, 19-34.
Fierro, Maribel. “Ulemas en las ciudades andalusíes: religión, política y prácticas sociales.” Escenarios urbanos de al-Andalus. Vélez Málaga, 2011, 137-67.
Fierro, Maribel. “Gauthier Juynboll. Memories from a Spanish colleague and friend,” 2011. http://www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/lucis/actueel/in-memoriam-juynboll.html
http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/maribel-fierro-juynboll-memorial001.pdf
Fierro, Maribel. Abdarramán III y el califato omeya de Córdoba. Nerea, 2011.
Gimenez-Eguibar, Patricia and Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler. “La mala algarabía: Church, Monarchy, and the Arabic Language in 16th-Century Spain.” Medieval History Journal 14:2 (2011): 229-58.
Jones, Linda G. “’He Cried and Made Others Cry’: Crying as a Sign of Pietistic Authencity or Deception in Medieval Islamic Preaching.” In Elina Gertsman (ed.), Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History. New York: Routledge, 2012, 102-135.
Jones, Linda G. “Compassion and Cruelty: The Politics of Emotion in the Ibn ‘Asim al-Gharnati’s Junnat al-Rida.” In Delfina Serrano Ruano (ed.), Violence, Cruelty and Compassion in Arabo-Islamic Literature. (Madrid: CSIC, 2011).
Liang, Yuen-Gen. Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
Ohanna, Natalio. Cautiverio y convivencia en la Edad de Cervantes [Captivity and Coexistence in de Age of Cervantes]. Alcalá de Henares: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 2011.
Ohanna, Natalio. “Heterodoxos en cautiverio. De Cipriano de Valera a los protestantes del norte de África.” Hispanic Review 80.1 (2012): 21-40.
Ohanna, Natalio. “Lecciones de allende la frontera: el Viaje de Turquía y su propuesta de apertura social.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 88.4 (2011): 423-36.
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejandro. “Arquitectura y urbanismo andalusíes en Benaocaz y sus despoblados de Archite y Aznalmara” en Papeles de Historia, 6 (2010), 123-143.
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejandro. “Arquitectura y urbanismo islámicos en la Sierra de Cádiz”. Arqueología, Historia y Viajes sobre el Mundo Medieval 41 (october 2011), 50-59.
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejandro. “Infraestructuras hidráulicas andalusíes en la Sierra de Cádiz: el qanat de Villaluenga del Rosario.” Papeles de Historia 6 (2010), 145-164.
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejandro. “El papel de la mujer en la familia en época nazarí (siglos XIII-XV): hacia una síntesis analítica de las fuentes documentales y arqueológicas”. http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/42132/1/Perez_Ordonez_mujernazari.pdf Cabra Espinosa, M.; López Cordero, J. A. (eds.): III Congreso Virtual sobre Historia de las Mujeres (15 al 31 de octubre de 2011). Jaén, 2011. Available in the web http://www.revistacodice.es/publi_virtuales/iii_congreso_mujeres/
Ray, Jonathan (Ed.). The Jew in Medieval Iberia, 1000-1500. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012.
SNAP Members’ Conference Presentations
Jones, Linda G. “No Preaching to the Converted? A Juridical Dilemma concerning the Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean.” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Francisco (November 2011).
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejandro. “La casa andalusí y su contexto urbano. Pautas para su interpretación.” XII Ciclo de Conferencias Al-Mossassa Batalyaws. Badajoz, 22-23 de septiembre de 2010.
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejandro. “Vida cotidiana en la cultura árabe-islámica: Introducción a la vivienda andalusí.” Departamento de Árabe de la Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Granada. Granada, 9 de febrero de 2011.
Vicens, Belen. “Swearing by God: Muslim oath-taking in late medieval Christian Iberia.” Medieval Studies Interdisciplinary Working, University of Notre Dame (November 2011).
SNAP Members’ Professional Service
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejando (Member, Organizing Committee). I International Congress of Middle Ages for Predoctoral Researchers, Novice Medievalists: Innovation, Scope, Action. Almería, June 18-22, 2012. Visit http://i-ciip-em.blogspot.com/ for more information.
Pérez Ordóñez, Alejandro (Coord.). “Jueves Mínimos en la Cuesta del Chapiz.” 3er seminario: “Palacios Medievales II.” Laboratorio de Arqueología y Arquitectura de la Ciudad (LAAC-EEA-CSIC). 5 de mayo de 2011-30 de junio de 2011.