Madrid Trip Justification - AKA "Dear History Department Please Give Me Money Here's Why KTHXBYE!!!"
I spent so much time writing this up (and turned it in today!) that I figured I should post it here - WHY I want to work out of the SLU Madrid campus in the Spring! This was for a grant in the history department. This trip is not going to be cheap - keep your fingers crossed that they find it worth funding!
Trip Reasons and Justifications
Throughout my time at SLU, I have been working towards an understanding of inter-faith relations between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval Spain. Now that I am on the verge of moving into the prospectus and dissertation phase of my graduate career, it is necessary for me to develop a mature understanding of my topic and its historical context, rooted in extensive primary and secondary source research and situated within the historiographical framework of the works and arguments of fellow medievalist scholars. It is for this reason that I am applying for assistance from the 1818 fund for a trip to Spain during a portion of the spring semester 2013, to conduct dissertation research and attend an academic conference hosted on the SLU Madrid campus.
Dissertation Research
My dissertation research is primarily focused on Ramon Martí, a thirteenth century Spanish Dominican scholar. Martí was a master of Oriental languages including Hebrew and Arabic, an active missionary to the Jews and Muslims, an author of polemical Christian texts, an advocate of philosophy in service to theology, and at times, a diplomat serving the courts of Aragon and France. He traveled widely and interacted with an influential circle of medieval intellectuals and leaders, including Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Ramon de Penyafort, Ramon Llull, James I of Aragon, St. Louis IX of France, and Caliph Muhammad I al-Mustansir of Tunis. Yet despite his many accomplishments and important associates, there is only a small amount of scholarship devoted specifically to this fascinating figure. Too often individual aspects of his career are mentioned in tangential side discussions or footnotes of larger narratives on the history of the mendicant orders in Europe, the history of the Jews in Spain, the development of medieval philosophy and theology, the Spanish attitudes and actions towards Muslims during the Reconquista, the failed tales of Louis IX's north African crusades, and the course of missionary history. I believe that exploring Martí's significant role as a multifaceted individual operating at the center of these related issues, rather than a side character on the fringe of disparate narratives, would enhance scholarly understanding of the interconnected nature of religious, intellectual, military, and political history in the thirteenth century.
In order to understand Martí's place in the larger narrative history of medieval Spain and France, it will be necessary to conduct primary source research in European archives. I particularly look forward to exploring the resources on Spanish history and extensive manuscript collections at the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial (particularly to view Ms K. II. 19, a copy of Martí's Pugio Fidei, his most important polemical work) and the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, both located in Madrid.
There are at least fifteen extant manuscripts of Martí's polemical works, and only three of them (MS 270 in Coimbra, Portugal; MS 89 in Tarragona, Spain; and Ms CLM 24158 Munich, Germany) are available in their entirety to view online. Aside from two outlying texts in Italy, the rest of the known extant Martí manuscripts not available for viewing online are in Spain and France, and are within reasonable traveling distance from Madrid. While ideally I would like to take short day trips to see each of the Spanish manuscripts, my main priority outside the country would be, if possible, to visit Paris, where five of the extant manuscripts are located. These include MSS 3356, 3357, and 3642 at the Bibliothèque Nationale; MS 796 at Bibliothèque Mazarine; and MS 1405 at Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (Outside of those held in Madrid, this is the most important text to view, as it is the oldest and most complete extant version of the Pugio Fidei.)
Working out of the SLU Madrid campus in particular would allow me to consult with the Madrid history faculty on the progress and nature of my research. I particularly look forward to meeting and working with Dr. Francisco J. García-Serrano and Dr. Kevin Ingram. Dr. García-Serrano specializes in medieval Iberia and the mendicant orders, and his expertise and assistance would be invaluable to me as I develop my understanding the medieval Spanish Dominicans and Ramon Martí's place in their broad intellectual network. Dr. Kevin Ingram focuses on early modern Spain, and the history of the Jews in Spain. He also sponsors SLU Madrid's focus and publication on Converso and Morisco Studies. His insight would greatly help me to understand Martí's significant anti-Jewish polemic and the changing nature of religious relations between the Christians, Jews, and Muslims in late medieval and early modern Spain. I hope that discussions with him might also help me better contextualize the research I have done during my early modern minor field coursework on the efforts to convert Spanish Muslims and the ultimate expulsions of the Jews and Moriscos from Spain, and integrate this into a larger narrative with my major field research on inter-faith relations and missionary work in medieval Spain. I am confident that consultation with these professors as I conduct dissertation research will greatly enrich my contextual understanding of my findings.
Conference
This year I am working as a graduate research assistant for my advisor, Dr. Damian Smith. One of my tasks has been to help him organize "The Friars and their Influence in Medieval Spain," an academic conference to be held on the SLU Madrid campus on April 12-13, 2013. The conference is sponsored by Saint Louis University's Department of History, SLU Madrid, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Department of International Studies at SLU, and will host about fifteen speakers specializing in the medieval Spanish Dominicans and Franciscans.
Because my dissertation work focuses on thirteenth-century Spanish Dominican intellectual and polemical activity, participating in this conference and hearing the papers presented will be invaluable to my developing understanding of Dominican history. Additionally, this would be a unique opportunity to meet with many of the professors in attendance whose books and articles have informed and inspired my own research. The esteemed scholars gathered in Madrid for this conference may prove to be helpful contacts for my dissertation and throughout my scholarly career.
Beyond attending and helping to organize the friars conference, I will also be presenting a paper, tentatively titled "The Friars and the Three Faiths: The Development of Mendicant Missionary Strategy in Late Medieval Spain." In this presentation I hope to synthesize much of the research conducted during my coursework at SLU, building upon this foundation with research conducted from the Madrid campus in the early spring. In this paper I intend to explain the history of an innovative missionary strategy developed in late medieval Spain and employed by the Franciscans and Dominicans in their efforts to convert the Jews and Muslims. Rather than preaching the Christian gospel at religious others via a translator, in Spain they began to take a different approach. Friars endeavored to learn Arabic and Hebrew, to preach, communicate, and debate more effectively, and to investigate the religious texts of their opponents, including rabbinic theological writings, the Jewish Talmud, the Qur'an, and Islamic Hadith collections. The friars sought to exploit that knowledge to demonstrate persuasively the logical, scientific, moral, and spiritual superiority of Christianity, in hopes to effect sincere conversions. During the course of my research in preparing this paper I intend explore the following lines of inquiry - how and why this strategy develops in Spain specifically, how the Franciscan and Dominican friars each employ it in their own ways, how this contrasts with approaches to the Muslims and Jews taken in the rest of Europe, how these mendicant ideas were spread from Spain into Europe and employed there. This paper will provide a more complete picture of this period in Spanish missionary history, showing the birth and life of this innovative (if ultimately unsuccessful) mendicant strategy in the late medieval period, up until the death of it Spain, last employed there as a potential alternative to the forced mass conversions and expulsions of the Spanish Jewish, Muslim, and Morisco populations.
It is my understanding that after the conclusion of the conference, Dr. Smith intends that the presented papers be collected, edited, and published, perhaps in the series Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West, for which he is a series editor. Should my research come together successfully, this conference will not only allow me a chance to present my work and confer with specialists in my field, but potentially provide an opportunity to publish as well.
Teaching and Language Learning
The faculty and staff at the SLU Madrid campus have been very attentive and accommodating while helping me plan my trip. They discussed the possibility of me teaching a section of History 111 or 112 there in the Spring semester. Although my contract as a graduate research assistant this year does not allow me to accept such a position, the opportunity to gain additional teaching experience on the Madrid campus remains a very attractive prospect. Other less formal opportunities exist, and faculty members there have suggested that as a visiting scholar I might give guest lectures in some of the spring history courses. Additionally, by visiting these classes I would also have the opportunity to observe the ways in which SLU Madrid professors adapt their teaching styles to meet the needs of such an international student body. I have a passion for teaching, and lecturing and observing teaching on this diverse campus would contribute greatly to my understanding of pedagogy, and help me be more effective in addressing the specific needs of foreign exchange, ESL, and EFL students in the future.
Time spent living and learning in the city of Madrid will also serve as a language immersion experience, helping me improve my conversational Spanish skills. As a student of medieval Spain, I frequently engage research materials written in academic Spanish, and am quite proficient at reading Spanish. But with no need or opportunity to speak or listen to the language in my daily academic life in Saint Louis, my conversational skills are less developed. Improving my communication and aural understanding of Spanish would be extremely beneficial, especially in academic contexts like international conferences.
Departmental Relations
In a faculty meeting in September, it was mentioned that the history department at Saint Louis University is working to formalize its relationship with the historians at the SLU Madrid campus in an effort to encourage more interaction between the historians at the two campuses. I feel that my trip as a visiting graduate student to SLU Madrid, conducting dissertation research and working with the Madrid history faculty, has the potential not only to benefit me, but serve the program at large as an important and experimental precedent for future campus interaction. Considering the strength of Saint Louis University's graduate program in Medieval and Early Modern European history, utilizing the resources of SLU's European campus and its history faculty for the expertise they have to share seems a logical and beneficial extension of the relationship between the campuses for our graduate program. Such opportunities would be directly beneficial any graduate students whose work deals with Spain, and may help foster an emphasis on Spanish history as a specialty of the program. I would enjoy an opportunity to represent the SLU history graduate students to the SLU faculty and staff in Madrid.
Trip Reasons and Justifications
Throughout my time at SLU, I have been working towards an understanding of inter-faith relations between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval Spain. Now that I am on the verge of moving into the prospectus and dissertation phase of my graduate career, it is necessary for me to develop a mature understanding of my topic and its historical context, rooted in extensive primary and secondary source research and situated within the historiographical framework of the works and arguments of fellow medievalist scholars. It is for this reason that I am applying for assistance from the 1818 fund for a trip to Spain during a portion of the spring semester 2013, to conduct dissertation research and attend an academic conference hosted on the SLU Madrid campus.
Dissertation Research
My dissertation research is primarily focused on Ramon Martí, a thirteenth century Spanish Dominican scholar. Martí was a master of Oriental languages including Hebrew and Arabic, an active missionary to the Jews and Muslims, an author of polemical Christian texts, an advocate of philosophy in service to theology, and at times, a diplomat serving the courts of Aragon and France. He traveled widely and interacted with an influential circle of medieval intellectuals and leaders, including Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Ramon de Penyafort, Ramon Llull, James I of Aragon, St. Louis IX of France, and Caliph Muhammad I al-Mustansir of Tunis. Yet despite his many accomplishments and important associates, there is only a small amount of scholarship devoted specifically to this fascinating figure. Too often individual aspects of his career are mentioned in tangential side discussions or footnotes of larger narratives on the history of the mendicant orders in Europe, the history of the Jews in Spain, the development of medieval philosophy and theology, the Spanish attitudes and actions towards Muslims during the Reconquista, the failed tales of Louis IX's north African crusades, and the course of missionary history. I believe that exploring Martí's significant role as a multifaceted individual operating at the center of these related issues, rather than a side character on the fringe of disparate narratives, would enhance scholarly understanding of the interconnected nature of religious, intellectual, military, and political history in the thirteenth century.
In order to understand Martí's place in the larger narrative history of medieval Spain and France, it will be necessary to conduct primary source research in European archives. I particularly look forward to exploring the resources on Spanish history and extensive manuscript collections at the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial (particularly to view Ms K. II. 19, a copy of Martí's Pugio Fidei, his most important polemical work) and the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, both located in Madrid.
There are at least fifteen extant manuscripts of Martí's polemical works, and only three of them (MS 270 in Coimbra, Portugal; MS 89 in Tarragona, Spain; and Ms CLM 24158 Munich, Germany) are available in their entirety to view online. Aside from two outlying texts in Italy, the rest of the known extant Martí manuscripts not available for viewing online are in Spain and France, and are within reasonable traveling distance from Madrid. While ideally I would like to take short day trips to see each of the Spanish manuscripts, my main priority outside the country would be, if possible, to visit Paris, where five of the extant manuscripts are located. These include MSS 3356, 3357, and 3642 at the Bibliothèque Nationale; MS 796 at Bibliothèque Mazarine; and MS 1405 at Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (Outside of those held in Madrid, this is the most important text to view, as it is the oldest and most complete extant version of the Pugio Fidei.)
Working out of the SLU Madrid campus in particular would allow me to consult with the Madrid history faculty on the progress and nature of my research. I particularly look forward to meeting and working with Dr. Francisco J. García-Serrano and Dr. Kevin Ingram. Dr. García-Serrano specializes in medieval Iberia and the mendicant orders, and his expertise and assistance would be invaluable to me as I develop my understanding the medieval Spanish Dominicans and Ramon Martí's place in their broad intellectual network. Dr. Kevin Ingram focuses on early modern Spain, and the history of the Jews in Spain. He also sponsors SLU Madrid's focus and publication on Converso and Morisco Studies. His insight would greatly help me to understand Martí's significant anti-Jewish polemic and the changing nature of religious relations between the Christians, Jews, and Muslims in late medieval and early modern Spain. I hope that discussions with him might also help me better contextualize the research I have done during my early modern minor field coursework on the efforts to convert Spanish Muslims and the ultimate expulsions of the Jews and Moriscos from Spain, and integrate this into a larger narrative with my major field research on inter-faith relations and missionary work in medieval Spain. I am confident that consultation with these professors as I conduct dissertation research will greatly enrich my contextual understanding of my findings.
Conference
This year I am working as a graduate research assistant for my advisor, Dr. Damian Smith. One of my tasks has been to help him organize "The Friars and their Influence in Medieval Spain," an academic conference to be held on the SLU Madrid campus on April 12-13, 2013. The conference is sponsored by Saint Louis University's Department of History, SLU Madrid, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Department of International Studies at SLU, and will host about fifteen speakers specializing in the medieval Spanish Dominicans and Franciscans.
Because my dissertation work focuses on thirteenth-century Spanish Dominican intellectual and polemical activity, participating in this conference and hearing the papers presented will be invaluable to my developing understanding of Dominican history. Additionally, this would be a unique opportunity to meet with many of the professors in attendance whose books and articles have informed and inspired my own research. The esteemed scholars gathered in Madrid for this conference may prove to be helpful contacts for my dissertation and throughout my scholarly career.
Beyond attending and helping to organize the friars conference, I will also be presenting a paper, tentatively titled "The Friars and the Three Faiths: The Development of Mendicant Missionary Strategy in Late Medieval Spain." In this presentation I hope to synthesize much of the research conducted during my coursework at SLU, building upon this foundation with research conducted from the Madrid campus in the early spring. In this paper I intend to explain the history of an innovative missionary strategy developed in late medieval Spain and employed by the Franciscans and Dominicans in their efforts to convert the Jews and Muslims. Rather than preaching the Christian gospel at religious others via a translator, in Spain they began to take a different approach. Friars endeavored to learn Arabic and Hebrew, to preach, communicate, and debate more effectively, and to investigate the religious texts of their opponents, including rabbinic theological writings, the Jewish Talmud, the Qur'an, and Islamic Hadith collections. The friars sought to exploit that knowledge to demonstrate persuasively the logical, scientific, moral, and spiritual superiority of Christianity, in hopes to effect sincere conversions. During the course of my research in preparing this paper I intend explore the following lines of inquiry - how and why this strategy develops in Spain specifically, how the Franciscan and Dominican friars each employ it in their own ways, how this contrasts with approaches to the Muslims and Jews taken in the rest of Europe, how these mendicant ideas were spread from Spain into Europe and employed there. This paper will provide a more complete picture of this period in Spanish missionary history, showing the birth and life of this innovative (if ultimately unsuccessful) mendicant strategy in the late medieval period, up until the death of it Spain, last employed there as a potential alternative to the forced mass conversions and expulsions of the Spanish Jewish, Muslim, and Morisco populations.
It is my understanding that after the conclusion of the conference, Dr. Smith intends that the presented papers be collected, edited, and published, perhaps in the series Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West, for which he is a series editor. Should my research come together successfully, this conference will not only allow me a chance to present my work and confer with specialists in my field, but potentially provide an opportunity to publish as well.
Teaching and Language Learning
The faculty and staff at the SLU Madrid campus have been very attentive and accommodating while helping me plan my trip. They discussed the possibility of me teaching a section of History 111 or 112 there in the Spring semester. Although my contract as a graduate research assistant this year does not allow me to accept such a position, the opportunity to gain additional teaching experience on the Madrid campus remains a very attractive prospect. Other less formal opportunities exist, and faculty members there have suggested that as a visiting scholar I might give guest lectures in some of the spring history courses. Additionally, by visiting these classes I would also have the opportunity to observe the ways in which SLU Madrid professors adapt their teaching styles to meet the needs of such an international student body. I have a passion for teaching, and lecturing and observing teaching on this diverse campus would contribute greatly to my understanding of pedagogy, and help me be more effective in addressing the specific needs of foreign exchange, ESL, and EFL students in the future.
Time spent living and learning in the city of Madrid will also serve as a language immersion experience, helping me improve my conversational Spanish skills. As a student of medieval Spain, I frequently engage research materials written in academic Spanish, and am quite proficient at reading Spanish. But with no need or opportunity to speak or listen to the language in my daily academic life in Saint Louis, my conversational skills are less developed. Improving my communication and aural understanding of Spanish would be extremely beneficial, especially in academic contexts like international conferences.
Departmental Relations
In a faculty meeting in September, it was mentioned that the history department at Saint Louis University is working to formalize its relationship with the historians at the SLU Madrid campus in an effort to encourage more interaction between the historians at the two campuses. I feel that my trip as a visiting graduate student to SLU Madrid, conducting dissertation research and working with the Madrid history faculty, has the potential not only to benefit me, but serve the program at large as an important and experimental precedent for future campus interaction. Considering the strength of Saint Louis University's graduate program in Medieval and Early Modern European history, utilizing the resources of SLU's European campus and its history faculty for the expertise they have to share seems a logical and beneficial extension of the relationship between the campuses for our graduate program. Such opportunities would be directly beneficial any graduate students whose work deals with Spain, and may help foster an emphasis on Spanish history as a specialty of the program. I would enjoy an opportunity to represent the SLU history graduate students to the SLU faculty and staff in Madrid.