Description:

Jews And Muslims As Legal Fictions In Premodern Spain: A Legacy Of Racial Discrimination

Rodrigo García-Velasco,

Sava Ranisavljevic Postdoctoral Fellow

May 10th, 3:30pm, Hagstrum Room, 201 University Hall

Medieval Spain was a site of both cultural hybridity and religious intolerance, and
saw the development of forms of racial discrimination whose echoes still
reverberate in the twenty-first century. This talk explores why Iberian “law,” or
written codified legislation, became a focal point for anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim
discourses in medieval Christian lands. Reading legal texts as literary artifacts,
Jews and Muslims emerge within as fictitious or “hermeneutical” groups. As
such, they helped to reconcile the theological aspirations of Christian kingship
with the realities of a politically and socially pluralistic world.