Reclaiming al-Andalus focuses on the construction of the scholarly discipline of Orientalist studies in Spain. Special attention is paid to the impact that the elaboration of a series of historical interpretations of the legacy left by Muslim and Jewish culture in Spain had over the writing of national history in the period of the Bourbon Restoration. A historiographical account of Spains Orientalism tackles the problematized issues that both Arabist and Hebraist scholars sought to address. Orientalist scholarship thereby became inextricably linked to different interpretations of the historical shaping of Spanish national identity. Political circumstances of the day impacted on the approach these scholars took as they engaged with the Iberian Semitic past. And this at a critical moment in the crystallization of modern Spanish nationalism. A common thread running through the work of these Orientalist scholars was the tendency to nationalize or Hispanicize cultural activity of the Semitic populations that lived on the Iberian Peninsula in medieval times. This Hispanizication was instrumentalized in diverse ways in order to serve nation-building efforts. Hence Orientalist scholarship became integrated into the national debates that were shaping Spanish cultural and political life at the turn of the century. Reclaiming al-Andalus explains how regenerationist projects taking form after the national crisis of 1898, and different polemical discussions around religion-state affairs, deeply influenced the writings of academic Orientalism. The intertwined connection between Orientalist scholarship and nationalist debates in Spain has hitherto been understudied. This book not only contributes to the general debate on modern Orientalism, but most importantly presents a profound new viewpoint to the ongoing debate on the conflictive history of Spanish nationalism.

First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.

The last of the Spanish Romantics, composer, conductor, and impresario Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982) left his mark on virtually every aspect of Spanish musical culture during a career which spanned six decades, and saw tremendous political and cultural upheavals. Federico Moreno Torroba: A Musical Life in Three Acts explores not only his life and work, but also the relationship of his music to the cultural milieu in which he moved.

This book reconstructs the early circulation of penicillin in Spain, a country exhausted by civil war (1936–1939), and oppressed by Franco’s dictatorship. Embedded in the post-war recovery, penicillin’s voyages through time and across geographies – professional, political and social – were both material and symbolic. This powerful antimicrobial captivated the imagination of the general public, medical practice, science and industry, creating high expectations among patients, who at times experienced little or no effect. Penicillin’s lack of efficacy against some microbes fueled the search for new wonder drugs and sustained a decades-long research agenda built on the post-war concept of development through scientific and technological achievements. This historical reconstruction of the social life of penicillin between the 1940s and 1980s – through the dictatorship to democratic transition – explores political, public, medical, experimental and gender issues, and the rise of antibiotic resistance.

Architectural Temperance examines relations between Bourbon Spain and papal Rome (1700-1759) through the lens of cultural politics. With a focus on key Spanish architects sent to study in Rome by the Bourbon Kings, the book also discusses the establishment of a program of architectural education at the newly founded Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. Victor Deupi explores why a powerful nation like Spain would temper its own building traditions with the more cosmopolitan trends associated with Rome; often at the expense of its own national and regional traditions. Through the inclusion of previously unpublished documents and images that shed light on the theoretical debates which shaped eighteenth-century architecture in Rome and Madrid, Architectural Temperance provides readers with new insights into the cultural history of early modern Spain.