Room 100 on the first floor
This talk will explore how Spanish Jews responded to the surge in Jewish conversions in the fifteenth century and analyze the ways in which reality and fantasy both informed inquisitorial anxieties about Jews.
Professor Paola Tartakoff is a social and cultural historian of medieval West European Jewry whose work primarily explores Jewish-Christian relations in Iberia, with a focus on religious conversion and the inquisitorial prosecution of Jews and converts. Her publications include Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (forthcoming); “Jewish Women and Apostasy in the Medieval Crown of Aragon,” (2010); “Christian Kings and Jewish Conversion in the Medieval Crown of Aragon,” (forthcoming); and “The Toledot Yeshu and the Jewish-Christian Controversy in the Medieval Crown of Aragon,” in Toledot Yeshu Reconsidered (forthcoming).
Since her arrival at Rutgers in 2007, Dr. Tartakoff has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she developed her project, “Conversion and the Jewish-Christian Confrontation in Medieval Iberia.” At Rutgers, she teaches courses on Jewish-Christian relations through the ages, the medieval and Spanish inquisitions, Jewish identities in the medieval Mediterranean, and ancient and medieval Jewish society and culture.
Offered in conjunction with Reunion weekend.
