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).

Four articles relevant to medieval Jewish studies published in Speculum

The centennial issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies (“Speculations,” January 2026) includes four short articles relevant to the study of medieval Jews: “Entanglement, Identity, and Difference: Medieval Jews in Christian Europe,” by Elisheva Baumgarten; “The Two Faces of Medieval Jewish Studies,” by Rachel Katz and Lucy Pick; “Medieval England’s Jewish Diaspora and Critical Archival Studies,” by Adrienne Williams Boyarin; and “Goitein, the Indian Ocean, and a Missed Opportunity to Make Medieval History Global,” by Marina Rustow.


New book — Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Jessalyn L. Bird and Rita George-Tvrtković

Brill, December 2025

This volume will introduce advanced students and non-specialists to various historical interactions between Christians, Jews, and Muslims within the frame of the “sea at the centre”. Its chronological range is the long central Middle Ages (1000 to 1600 CE), and includes most Mediterranean regions: Iberia, North Africa, the Levant, Asia Minor, the Balkans, Italy, Provence, and the sea itself.

New book — From Prophet to Miracle-Working Saint: Dynamic Approaches to Elijah in Ancient and Medieval Cultures

Edited by Vlad Bedros, Barbara Crostini, Andrei Dumitrescu, and Chana Shacham-Rosby

Brill, 2026

From the publisher: The versatile figure of Elijah as Jewish prophet, Christian saint and Muslim “green man” plays at once a controversial and a unifying role across cultures. This collection of essays delves into the rich Elijah traditions that connect late-antique Mesopotamia to modern Europe. It emphasizes how Elijah’s many-sided character cannot be explained by his sparse mentions in the Bible. His enormous popularity rather depends on a network of artistic and performative interpretations that developed in different traditions and were divulged through cultic practices and feasts in which Elijah was the protagonist.

New book (available for pre-order) — Craig Perry, Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History

Princeton University Press, January 2026.

From the publisher: “In this book, Craig Perry mines a remarkable cache of fragmentary documents preserved in an Egyptian synagogue to write a new history of slavery and the slave trade in the medieval Middle East. These documents—which range from the everyday correspondence of traveling merchants to legal queries sent to Jewish jurists—provide the richest surviving archive for the social history of slavery during the centuries when Cairo was an imperial and commercial capital at the intersection of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. Perry draws on this archive, known as the Cairo Geniza, to shed new light on such crucial topics as the slave trade in state diplomacy, the entanglements of gender and household slavery, and the lives of the enslaved.”

New Ph.D. Fellowship in Sephardic Studies at Brandeis University

Brandeis University invites applicants for The Edmond J. Safra Doctoral Fellowships in Sephardic Studies.  The fellowships include an annual stipend for five years, health care coverage, and additional funds in the amount of $5,000 per year for summer study (language preparation, travel for research, etc.).  Prospective PhD students apply directly through a relevant department (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, History, etc.) and indicate that they wish to be considered for a Fellowship. Brandeis especially encourages applicants wishing to focus on the Jews of medieval Spain, the medieval Middle East, or the Ottoman Empire/Middle East through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.