Tag: podcast

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Making Waves in the Medieval Mediterranean Sea with Dr. Thomas Burman

A few years ago, Ben and Will sat down with Dr. Thomas E. Burman, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and former Director of the Medieval Institute. Dr. Burman’s work focuses on the cultural and intellectual exchange between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean world. He is the author of Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs: c. 1050-1200 (1994), Reading the Qur’ān in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560 (2007), and most recently, he co-authored, with Brian A. Catlos and Mark D. Meyerson, The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650 (2022), which retells the history of the medieval west by foregrounding the Mediterranean Sea as a site of religious and cultural cross-pollination.

Dr. Burman discusses with Ben and Will how he and his co-authors came upon the idea for this book, how they decided on the date range of 650 to 1650, the actual process of co-authoring, what they hope it can be used for in the classroom, and more. Building on Burman’s insistence that we come to see the Middle Ages as a time of intersecting religious and cultural influences (not unlike the modern world), they conclude by discussing the future possibilities of narrating a Eurasian or even global history of the medieval world.

Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for more!

Transcript – Burman (04_23).docxDownload
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Preaching without Permission? Women Preachers in Medieval Islam with Dr. Linda G. Jones

A few months ago, Ben and Will sat down with Dr. Linda Jones, Professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where she teaches medieval history. Dr. Jones is an expert in religious and cultural history of medieval al-Andalus and the Maghreb, especially on topics such as gender dynamics , Islam-Christendom encounters, and oratory practices. She is the author of The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge University Press, 2012), the first monograph to consider the significance of preaching in the medieval Islamic world.

We typically imagine women as having been entirely subordinated to men in the medieval world, especially in those contexts which were explicitly religious. However, Dr. Jones offers to us a striking counterexample. In the medieval Islamic world, she explains that women were allowed to preach, not in formal contexts, but informally. Even despite the lack of formality, their preaching still carried authoritative weight, one that was often expressed in exhortative form—encouraging listeners to undertake ascetic practices or to pray more fervently.

In addition to fascinating topics of cultural and religious practices in the medieval Islamic world, Ben and Will speak with Dr. Jones about the differences of teaching college students in the US versus Spain, the challenges of interpreting medieval manuscript handwriting, and the enduring importance of the humanities today.

Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for more!

Transcript – Jones (12_24)Download
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Hunting for Teresa of Avila with Dana Delibovi

A few months ago, Ben and Will sat down with poet, essayist, and translator, Dana Delibovi, to discuss her life and work. After dropping out of the doctoral program in Philosophy at Columbia University—subsequently earning a terminal master’s at New York University—Delibovi spent 45 years as an advertising copywriter while also working as an adjunct instructor of philosophy at Lindenwood University. In 2019, following the decision to retire, she began translating the poems of St. Teresa of Ávila—a longtime inspiration of hers—and didn’t look back. This culminated in the publication of Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila (2024).

For St. Teresa, the sharp disciplinary boundaries we draw today between philosophy, theology, spirituality, and poetry were far less rigid. Her work weaves together theological reflection, spiritual practice, and personal experience, so that the search for truth cannot be separated from interior transformation. True knowledge is knowledge of self and of God, which is arrived at not through detached inquiry but through an inward journey—one must venture the soul’s many “mansions.”

It is quite fitting, then, that her poems have found a translator whose encounter with Teresa’s work has itself been inseparable from her own life journey. Delibovi here conveys not only the riches of Teresa’s thought, but does so with the spirit in which Teresa surely would’ve wanted to be read, in a deeply serious and personal way. 

In addition to St. Teresa’s work and Delibovi’s own life story, Ben and Will chat with Delibovi about a range of topics, including the art of translation, how we relate to the same texts differently throughout our lives, and more. 

Thanks for listening, and be sure to stay tuned for more!

Delibovi – TranscriptDownload