Category Archives: Publications

New Book: The Jewish Neighborhood in Medieval Ashkenaz

Michael: On the History of the Jews in the Diaspora, Vol. 17

Editors: Simha Goldin and Joseph Isaac Lifshitz

Jews lived amongst Christians for at least one millennium and, in this collection of articles, we learn that the daily life and relationship between Jews and Christians was both varied and complex. Even the borders of the Jewish street or the Jewish neighborhood were not that defined. This volume seeks to explore not only the physical structure of the medieval Jewish neighborhood but also the very concept of “neighborhood” and the social and cultural implications embedded therein.

New Issue of Medieval Encounters

Volume 30, Issue 5-6 (Oct 2024): Special Issue: Why Write Poetry? Transcultural Perspectives from the Later Medieval Period, edited by Krystina Kubina and Nikos Zagklas

CONTENTS:

[Open Access] Introduction: Why Write Poetry? Transcultural Perspectives from the Later Medieval Period — Krystina Kubina and Nikos Zagklas

“The Sweetness of the Persian Tongue”: the Limits of Poetry in Medieval and Early Modern Georgia — Nikoloz Aleksidze

Poetic Alchemy: the Rise of Romance from a Persian Perspective: Dedicated to Julie Scott Meisami, 1937–2021 — Cameron Cross

[Open Access] Greek Poetry in a Multicultural Society: Sicily and Salento in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries — Krystina Kubina and Nikos Zagklas

Hebrew Panegyric of the Late Middle Ages: Shemaryah, Son of Elijah, and His Praise Poems — Saskia Dönitz

Book Reviews, e.g. on “England’s Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century”, written by John Tolan

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

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.