In Conversation with David Nirenberg: 30 years “Communities of Violence”

We will be in conversation with Professor David Nirenberg (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) to mark the 30th anniversary of his seminal publication Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. The book examines specific attacks against minorities in fourteenth-century France and the Crown of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia). Challenging interpretations of violence against minorities as simply an expression of religious intolerance and a prelude to extermination, it demonstrated that violent actions often expressed complex beliefs about topics as diverse as divine history, kinship, sex, money, and disease, and that such acts were frequently contested by competing groups within their own society.

The evening will focus on the impact and legacy of Communities of Violence, historiographical developments over the last thirty years in Iberian studies and beyond, and the contemporary opportunities and challenges for the study of religious violence in the late medieval world. David Nirenberg will be joined by Rosa Vidal Doval (University of Oxford) and scholars from Queen Mary University of London and the German Historical Institute London.

David Nirenberg is Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. A historian and author, he is recognized for his wide-ranging scholarship on the interactions among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. His research provides insight into questions of racism, antisemitism, and the history of ideas.

Rosa Vidal Doval is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Oxford. A scholar of the culture and history of late medieval and Renaissance Iberia, she is particularly interested in the phenomenon of religious conversion and in the role of texts in fomenting and sustaining religious intolerance, especially with regard to converts from Judaism to Christianity (conversos).

The event is organised by Bert Carlstrom (QMUL), Ana Roda Sánchez (QMUL), and Thomas Kaal (GHIL).

This event will take place in person only at the Art Workers’ Guild (6 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AT).

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher German Historical Institute London