In the Name of the Father: Translation and Anxiety in Medieval Castile, 1252–1369

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture

A talk by Ryan Szpiech, Associate Professor in the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures and Judaic Studies and an affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. Professor Szpiech studies the cultures and literatures of medieval Iberia, focusing especially on cultural interaction, exchange, and conflict. His interests converge around polemical writing (religious disputations and conflicts) and translation (of languages, alphabets, styles, beliefs, identities, and ideas) as elements defining the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He is particularly interested in conversion as a vehicle for exchange (real and imagined) between disparate groups, as well as in modern scholarly debates about how to frame the history and criticism of Medieval Iberia and its cultures (One, two, or three cultures? Conquest or reconquest? Spanish or Iberian? Tolerance or persecution?). Professor Szpiech has focused much of his research on the fourteenth-century convert Abner of Burgos (known as Alfonso of Valladolid after conversion). He has recently finished a book on narratives of religious conversion and their function within polemical writing in the 12th to the 15th centuries.

Please register below and let us know you’re attending. No fee. Limited seating. Self-pay parking in lots 2, 3, and 4. Parking information at main.transportation.ucla.edu/campus-parking/visitors

Funding for CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholars is provided by the Humanities Division of the UCLA College of Letters and Sciences, and the Armand Hammer Endowment for the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese.