Mercedes
García-Arenal Rodríguez

Contratado Postdoctoral. Otras Convocatorias
Dpto. de Estudios Judíos e Islámicos
Historia Cultural del Mediterráneo
Despacho
1C10
Teléfono
916022422 / Extensión interna: 441367

Redes sociales

Curriculum Vitae
Biografía

Mercedes García-Arenal has received the Premio Nacional de Investigación "Ramón Menéndez Pidal" in Spain, 2019; and is member of the Scientific Council of the ERC.

Since 2019 she is coordinator of ERC Synergy Grant 2018 (2019-25) – “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150-1850.” ERC-2018-SyG / 810141 — EuQu.

She was Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant “Conversion, Overlapping Religiosities, Polemics, Interaction: Early Modern Iberia and Beyond,” the CORPI project (2013-19).

Banderola en el campus del CSIC

Mercedes García-Arenal has a PhD in Arabic and Islam from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid (1976). She was a post-doctoral fellow in the London School of Oriental and African Studies (1976-1978) on a British Council Scholarship. In 1981, she received tenure as a Junior Researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investiagaciones Científicas, where she has been a Research Professor since 1990. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1988-89), and Directeur d’ Etudes de l’ EHESS (Paris) in the Spring term of 1992.

She has been actively involved in service to her institution, mainly as Member of the Steering Committee, Junta de Gobierno, CSIC (2003-2008) and Member of the Comisión de Área de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC (2005-2008). She has also invested a lot of time and energy in being Directing Editor of the journal Al-Qantara. Revista de Estudios Árabes, from 1999 till 2013. She is also on the editorial board of several scholarly journals: The Maghreb Review (1999-present), Hésperis-Tamuda (2008-present) Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (2010-present), Mediterranean Historical Review (2009-present), and Journal of Early Modern History (2012-present).

Among the numerous invitations she has received to present her work worldwide, she has held the Stewart Professorship in the Humanities at Princeton University (April 2013) given the Cochrane Lecture, Department of History, University of Chicago (2010) and the Hamilton Gibb Lectures, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University (2008).

She has been PI of several research grants funded by the Spanish nacional government and has participated in international projects such as “Individual and Society in the Mediterranean Muslim World”, funded as an à la carte project by the European Science Foundation and directed by Robert Ilbert (1991-95) In this project she was team leader of Hub 6, “Religious activity and experience.” She was also PI of the Research Program “Islam y disidencia religiosa en la Europa protestante y en la católica,” CCHS-CSIC (2010-2013).

She has directed 10 PhD dissertations.

Her research focuses on the religious history of Iberia and the Muslim West, mainly on religious minorities: conversion, polemics, messianism, religious dissidence, and dissimulation. She has focused on the impulses of assimilation and rejection by mainstream societies of religious minorities such as Muslims and converted Muslims in Iberia and Jews in North Africa. Much of her research is based on Inquisition documentation. She has cultivated long-term research interest in the study of religious minorities and religious conversion from a new methodological vantage point. She has thus been increasingly drawn to the small-scale, singular study of individual experiences that suggest a process of gradual disengagement, involving closely entwined yet competing notions of religion and group belonging, in cases that illustrate how formal institutions of power function while handling people’s affairs. Among the latter she has been especially interested in individuals who walk away from groups, and in looking at groups through the eyes of the disaffected and the uncommitted.

Especialización
Muslim minorities in Christian Spain; Jewish minorities in Spain and in North Africa; Muslim minorities and Orientalism; Religious Polemics; Translating the Qur’an; Circulation of Manuscripts and Orientalism
Publicaciones

Among her main publications are:

    Datos tomados de la base de datos ConCiencia

    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2018). A Polyphony of Voices. Trials and Graffiti of the Prisons of the Inquisition in Palermo. Quaderni storici, 53, 39-70.
    García-Arenal, M.; Wiegers, G. (2018). Interreligious encounters in polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and beyond. Medieval Encounters, 24, 1-13.
    Giovanna Fiume; Mercedes García-Arenal (2018). Introducción. Graffiti: new perspectives from the inquisitorial prison in Palermo. Quaderni storici, 53, 3-13.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2021). Natalia Muchnick, Les prisons de la foi. L¿enfermement des minorités (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), Paris, PUF, 2019, 360 p.. Annales, 76, 596-598.
    García-Arenal, M. (2021). Reading Against the Grain, Readings of Substitution: Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia. Jewish History, 35, 241-263.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2017). Review of 281.Katrina B. Olds Forging the Past. Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain, Yale University Press, 2015, 422 pp. Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 2, 459-461.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). Cartas desde la prisión inquisitorial. En Mirando desde el puente. Estudios en homenaje al profesor James S. Amelang (pp. 163-177). Editorial: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM).
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2018). ¿Castilian and Arabic: The Debates about the Natural Languages of Spain¿. En Studying the Near and Middle East at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton 1935¿2018 (pp. 363-370). Editorial: Gorgias Press.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2016). ¿De la duda a la incredulidad en la España moderna: algunas propuestas.¿. En Identidades y fronteras culturales en el mundo ibérico de la edad moderna (pp. 51-67). Editorial: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) [Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona].
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2016). ¿De la duda a la incredulidad en la España moderna: algunas propuestas.¿. En Identidades y fronteras culturales en el mundo ibérico de la edad moderna (pp. 119-150). Editorial: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) [Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona].
    Pastore, Stefania; García-Arenal, Mercedes (2018). Introducción. En Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo mundo (pp. 9-32). Editorial: Abada.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). Introduction. En Polemical Encounters: Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (pp. 1-21). Editorial: Brill.
    García-Arenal. Mercedes (2016). Introduction. En After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity (pp. 1-19). Editorial: Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2021). Introduction a De sangre y leche. Raza y religión en el mundo ibérico moderno. En De sangre y leche. Raza y religión en el mundo ibérico moderno (pp. 11-33). Editorial: Marcial Pons.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2020). Introduction: Facing Uncertainty in Early Modern Iberia. En The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe: From Inquisition to Inquiry, 1550¿1700 (pp. 3-24). Editorial: University of Toronto Press (UTP).
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). Introduction: Forced Conversion and the Reshaping of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Tradition, Interpretation, History. En Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam (pp. 1-31). Editorial: Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). Introduction to From Doubt to Unbelief. En From Doubt to Un belief. Forms of Scepticism in the Iberian World (pp. 1-16). Editorial: Legenda.
    Fiume, Giovana; García-Arenal, Mercedes (2018). Introduzione. En Parole prigioniere. I graffiti delle carceri del Santo Uffizio di Palermo (pp. 9-22). Editorial: Istituto Poligrafico Europeo.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2016). ¿Mi padre moro, yo moro: The Inheritance of Belief in Early Modern Iberia¿. En After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity (pp. 304-335). Editorial: Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2018). MURI PARLANTI. PROCESSI INQUISITORIALI E IDENTITA RELIGIOSA NELLE CARCERI DEL SANTO UFFIZIO DI PALERMO (SECOLO XVII). En Parole prigioniere. I graffiti delle carceri del Santo Uffizio di Palermo (pp. 215-256). Editorial: Istituto Poligrafico Europeo.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2017). ¿On the Alumbrados: Confessionalism and Religious Dissidence in the Iberian World¿. En The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches (pp. 119-150). Editorial: Cambridge University Press.
    James S. Amelang; García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). Religious Conversion and Identities in the Iberian Peninsula. En The Iberian World: 1450-1820 (pp. 245-260). Editorial: Routledge / Taylor & Francis Group.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). The Double Polemic of Martin de Figuerola`s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán (1519). En Polemical Encounters: Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (pp. 155-178). Editorial: Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2022). The Iberian Qur¿an and the Qur¿an in Iberia: A Survey. En Mercedes García-Arenal y Gerard A. Wiegers (eds.), The Iberian Qur'an. From the Middle Ages to Modern Times (pp. 1-24). Editorial: De Gruyter Mouton / Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
    Mercedes García-Arenal (2022). The Inquisition and the Search for Qur¿ans. En Mercedes García-Arenal y Gerard A. Wiegers (eds.), The Iberian Qur'an. From the Middle Ages to Modern Times (pp. 245-281). Editorial: De Gruyter Mouton / Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). Theologies of Baptism and Forced Conversion: The Case of the Muslims of Valencia and Their Children. En Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam (pp. 354-385). Editorial: Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2019). ¿What Faith to Believe? Vacillation, Comparativism and Doubt¿. En From Doubt to Un belief. Forms of Scepticism in the Iberian World (pp. 53-72). Editorial: Legenda.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2016). After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity (pp. 454). Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2021). De sangre y leche. Raza y religión en el mundo ibérico moderno (pp. 630). Marcial Pons.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes; Yonatan Glazer-Eytan (2019). Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam: Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and Beyond Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercede; Stefania Pastore (2019). From Doubt to Unbelief: Forms of Skepticism in the Iberian World Legenda.
    Giovanna Fiume; García-Arenal, Mercedes (2018). ¿Graffiti: New Perspectives from the Inquisitorial Prison in Palermo¿. Número monográfico de la revista Quaderni storici, 157, no. 1 (2018) Mulino, Il.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes; Gerard A. Wlegers; Ryan Szpfech (2019). Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond (pp. 360). Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes; Fiume, Giovana (2018). Parole prigionere. I graffiti delle carceri del Santo Uffizio di Palermo (pp. 312). Istituto Poligrafico Europeo.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes; Wiegers, Gerard (2019). Polemical Encounters: Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (pp. 440). Penn State University Press.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2021). [Samuel Pallache, edición en hebreo] (pp. 273). Hebrew University Magnes Press.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes (2022). The Iberian Qur¿an: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times Akademie Verlag / Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes; Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, Rafael (2022). The Inquisition Trial of Jeronimo de Rojas, a Morisco of Toledo (1601-1603) (pp. 444). Brill.
    García-Arenal, Mercedes; Barbara Fuchs (2020). The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe: From Inquisition to Inquiry, 1550¿1700 University of Toronto Press (UTP).
    Pastore, Stefania; García-Arenal, Mercedes (2018). Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo Abada.