New Books in Iberian Studies

Feb 17 2025 286 ep. 59 mins 86
New Books in Iberian Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with scholars of Iberia about their new books

  Arts  History  Society & Culture
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Adelina Stefan, "Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco's Spain" (Cornell UP, 2024)

Feb 17 2025 65 mins  
Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco's Spain (Cornell UP, 2024) examines the political effects of international tourism in socialist Romania and Francoist Spain in the postwar era. Despite sharp economic and political differences between the two dictatorial regimes at the start of the Cold War, significant similarities existed as both

Josef Stern, "Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed" in Translation: A History from the Thirteenth Century to the Twentieth" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

Feb 09 2025 40 mins  
There is a common misconception that the Jewish religion does not believe in an afterlife. While it’s true that Judaism is focused on actions, intentions and thoughts in this life, it also believes in an afterlife, and has a variety of points of view about what happens after death. Today’s guest, Professor Joseph Stern, will discuss Maimonides’ unique understanding of the aft

Adam Franklin-Lyons, "Shortage and Famine in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon" (Penn State Press, 2022)

Jan 30 2025 61 mins  
Adam Franklin-Lyons joins Jana Byars to talk about Shortage and Famine in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon (Penn State Press, 2022). In the late fourteenth century, the medieval Crown of Aragon experienced a series of food crises that created conflict and led to widespread starvation. Adam Franklin-Lyons applies contemporary understandings of complex human disasters, vulnerability

Jorge Flores, "Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

Jan 29 2025 56 mins  
Portuguese India was tiny—a handful of trading posts and enclaves, centered on the colony of Goa. The Estado da Índia faced the Mughal Empire and the Deccan Sultanates, large Muslim and Persian-based societies that ruled the subcontinent. How did Portuguese India survive? Well, by spying. Jorge Flores in his book Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World

Elizabeth King and W. David Todd, "Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend" (Getty, 2023)

Jan 19 2025 50 mins  
Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend (Getty Publications, 2023) tells the singular story of an uncanny, rare object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as “the monk.” The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is among the earlie

Andrew Laird, "Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Jan 18 2025 43 mins  
Andrew Laird, of Brown University, discusses Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2024). In 1536, only fifteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire, Franciscan missionaries began teaching Latin, classical rhetoric, and Aristotelian philosophy to native youths in central Mexico. The remarkable linguistic and

Byron Ellsworth Hamann, "The Invention of the Colonial Americas: Data, Architecture, and the Archive of the Indies, 1781–1844" (Getty, 2022)

Jan 18 2025 52 mins  
The Invention of the Colonial Americas: Data, Architecture, and the Archive of the Indies, 1781–1844 (Getty, 2022) is an architectural history and media-archaeological study of changing theories and practices of government archives in Enlightenment Spain. It centers on an archive created in Seville for storing Spain's pre-1760 documents about the New World. To fill this new archi

Alec Goldstein, "Maimonides on the Book of Exodus" (Kodesh Press, 2019)

Jan 16 2025 37 mins  
Today I talked to Alec Goldstein about Maimonides on the Book of Exodus (Kodesh Press, 2019). Rabbi Moses son of Maimon, known in Hebrew as Rambam and in English as Maimonides, is one of Judaism’s most influential and enduring figures. His works have shaped Jewish thought for centuries, combining legal precision, philosophical brilliance, and profound spirituality. While Maimonid

Robert Wright, "Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de Los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain's Northern Frontier" (Texas Tech UP, 2023)

Jan 12 2025 51 mins  
Today I talked to Robert Wright about Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de Los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain's Northern Frontier (Texas Tech UP, 2023). The Indigenous nations of the valley of the Rio Grande that is now centered upon Ojinaga, Chihuahua, and Presidio, Texas―the La Junta valley in colonial times―had a long and unique history with Hispanics during

Edward Jones Corredera, "Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Jan 10 2025 48 mins  
What are fallen tyrants owed? What makes debt illegitimate? And when is bankruptcy moral? Drawing on new archival sources, this book shows how Latin American nations have wrestled with the morality of indebtedness and insolvency since their foundation, and outlines how their history can shed new light on contemporary global dilemmas. With a focus on the early modern Spanish Empire