All posts by Maya Soifer Irish

About Maya Soifer Irish

Dr. Maya Soifer Irish an Associate Professor of History at Rice University, whose research focuses on religious violence and toleration, and explores the legal, social, and economic situation of religious minorities in Iberian Christian societies. She is the author of many articles, including “Beyond convivencia: Critical Reflections on the Historiography of Interfaith Relations in Christian Spain.” Her first book, Jews and Christians in Medieval Castile: Tradition, Coexistence, and Change, explores the changes in Jewish-Christian relations in the kingdom of Castile between the 11th and 14th centuries. She is currently working on a new book, The Politics of Persecution in Medieval Spain: Toward the Anti-Jewish Riots of 1391. Between 2018 and 2021 she served as President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS).

New Book — Cartographies of Exclusion: Anti-Semitic Mapping in Medieval England, by Asa Simon Mittman

Publications

Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025. Available as an e-book.

From the battles over Jerusalem to the emergence of the “Holy Land,” from legally mandated ghettos to the Edict of Expulsion, geography has long been a component of Christian-Jewish relations. Attending to world maps drawn by medieval Christian mapmakers, Cartographies of Exclusion brings us to the literal drawing board of “Christendom” and shows the creation, in real time, of a mythic state intended to dehumanize the non-Christian people it ultimately sought to displace.

To order

Dana Wessell Lightfoot and Alexandra Guerson win a large grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

News

Their project looks at the experiences of conversas in Valencia, Girona, and Barcelona during the second half of the fifteenth century. They are planning to hire a post-doctoral fellow to help with the research, as well as fund graduate students as research assistants at the University of Northern British Columbia and the University of Toronto.

Read the news release

Job: Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History, United States Naval Academy

Jobs

The History Department at the United States Naval Academy invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor specializing in Middle Eastern history. Candidates must have a Ph.D. in history or a closely related field and be U.S. citizens. The position is open to all candidates who have attained a Ph.D. degree in history or a closely related field, and to advanced doctoral students who expect to be granted their Ph.D. no later than June 2025. Specialization within this subfield is open, but the committee welcomes applicants with expertise in premodern or early modern Middle Eastern history, broadly defined.

Review of applications begins on September 30, 2024.

Apply

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Jewish Studies Program, Dartmouth College (2025-2027)

Call for Applications

The program seeks applicants with specialization in any of the following fields: 1. The history of Jews in North Africa and/or the Middle East during the early modern or modern periods; 2. Comparative Jewish literary traditions in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, or English; 3. Medieval Kabbalah and/or Hasidic texts. Priority will be given to candidates whose research makes use of theoretical modalities, particularly feminist theory and women’s and non-binary experience.

Deadline: Sep 18, 2024 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time

For more info and to apply