Congratulations to Linda Gale Jones (Dept. of Humanities, Pompeu University of Barcelona) for being awarded a grant by the Spanish and European Union as the Principal Investigator on the research project, “Writing Religious, Transcultural, Gendered Identities and Alterities in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean”. Below is further information about the project and its objectives for your perusal.
Introduction: The research project RELGEND is designed within the framework of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Work Plan on “Europe in a Changing World.” It addresses two of its core themes: “Religious diversity in Europe—past, present and future” and the need to incorporate the perspective of gender into research.
Objectives: RELGEND seeks to consolidate its interdisciplinary cross-cultural study of textual representations of Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious identities and alterity based on the analysis of sermons and ancillary texts composed in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Ottoman Turkish, and Romance languages (including Aljamiado). It will expand its research in new directions by 1) analysing homiletic materials in tandem with other religious, ethical, legal and literary texts to explore the relation between religious and gender identities and 2) by using this data to shed further light on the diverse interactions among the religious communities of the Mediterranean and northern Europe (intertextual and interpersonal contacts, transcultural and linguistic borrowings, religious conversion, polemics, etc.). The consideration of non-homiletic texts is justified by the multi-tasking of the religious agents: Jews, Christians and Muslims who preached sermons simultaneously fulfilled many other social and religious functions and composed/compiled texts across multiple genres (ethical treatises, devotional literature, juridical responsa, religious polemics, etc.). Hence, it is important to understand the relations between their homiletic production and other textual genres. 3) It will continue with the construction of the PREDMED database of information on Jewish, Christian and Muslim preaching (http://predmed.upf.edu/). The PREDMED database, webpage and research network will offer the academic community resources to expand the research on Iberian Christian sermon studies and encourage further research on medieval and early modern Jewish and Muslim preaching, sermons and preachers in the Iberian Peninsula and the larger Mediterranean.
RELGEND participates in the coordinated research project, “Medieval and Modern Sources for the Study of Transcultural Relations in the Mediterranean: Writing and transmission II” (PIs: Cándida Ferrero Hernández, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona) and Fernando González Muñoz (Universidad de A Coruña), whose common goals and tasks include analysing primary sources to explore constructions of religious identities and alterities and exploring intertextual and transcultural relations among Jews, Christians and Muslims. RELGEND adds an interdisciplinary comparative component by studying Muslim and Jewish primary sources in their original languages from their perspectives. It enhances the cultural studies component by treating gender as an important element in the study of religious identity, alterity and transcultural encounters. The work-plan team includes senior and junior scholars and a doctoral student who come from diverse academic disciplines: Religious Studies, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Medieval History, Jewish History, Ottoman Studies, Gender Studies, Medieval Latin and Hispanic Literature, and will apply the theoretical and methodological tools of these disciplines to their research. The emphasis on religious, transcultural and gender identities accords with the objectives of Horizon 2020, Europe in a changing world.