 | Maria Rosa Menocal |
Maria Rosa Menocal, who has been appointed Sterling Professor of the Humanities, is a noted scholar and historian of medieval culture and literature.
Menocal, who also serves as director of the Whitney Humanities Center and of Special Programs in the Humanities, is interested specifically in the lyric traditions of the Middle Ages, and in the various religious and cultural groups in medieval Spain and the ways in which they interacted. Her 2002 book "The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain," which has been published in numerous languages, describes the cross-fertilization that took place among those flourishing religious groups. A documentary for public television based on the book is in development.
Her other books are "Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric," "Writing in Dante's Cult of Truth from Borges to Boccaccio" and "The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage." She is the co-editor (with Raymond Scheindlin and Michael Sells Cambridge) of "The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Al-Andalus," a volume that places the Arabic literature of Islamic Spain in the context of the other languages and cultures of the Iberian peninsula.
Menocal is also currently completing a book titled "Out of Arabic: Conversion, Translation, and Memory in the Invention of Castilian Culture," to be published by Yale University Press. This illuminated history explores the many facets of creative translation that lie at the heart of the earliest centuries of Castilian culture.
Since becoming director of the Whitney Humanities Center (WHC) in 2001, Menocal has introduced several new programs to enhance the center's role in the life of the humanities on campus. These include the Cinema at Whitney (free Friday night 35 mm film offerings), a series of readings by major poets and the newly endowed Franke Lectures in the Humanities, which bring notable scholars and writers to campus for public talks and classroom meetings with students.
Menocal has held several administrative positions in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, serving as director of graduate studies (1988-1992), acting chair (fall semester 1994 and spring semester 2000) and chair (1996-1999). She was appointed director of Special Programs in the Humanities in 1999. She has also served on numerous University committees.
A native of Havana, Cuba, Menocal earned a B.A. in medieval Romance languages, an M.A. in French and a Ph.D. in Romance philology, all at the University of Pennsylvania. She became an assistant professor of Romance languages there in 1980, and also served as acting director of its Center for Italian Studies. She came to Yale in 1986 as a visiting associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, was named an associate professor the following year and was appointed a full professor in 1992. In 1993, she was named the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese.
An invited lecturer at universities and conferences throughout the nation and in Europe and the Middle East, Menocal has been a visiting professor at Bryn Mawr College and has held distinguished visiting professorships or lectureships at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the American University in Cairo, among others.
T H I S
Maria Rosa Menocal named
Sterling Professor of Humanities
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