To Christians the Iberian Peninsula was Hispania, to Muslims al-Andalus, and to Jews Sefarad. As much as these were all names given to the same real place, the names also constituted ideas, and like all ideas, they have histories of their own. To some, al-Andalus and Sefarad were the subjects of conventional expressions of attachment to and pride in homeland of the universal sort displayed in other Islamic lands and Jewish communities; but other Muslim and Jewish political, literary, and religious actors variously developed the notion that al-Andalus or Sefarad, its inhabitants, and their culture were exceptional and destined to play a central role in the history of their peoples. In Iberian Moorings Ross Brann traces how al-Andalus and Sefarad were invested with special political, cultural, and historical significance across the Middle Ages. This is the first work to analyze the tropes of Andalusi and Sefardi exceptionalism in comparative perspective. Brann focuses on the social power of these tropes in Andalusi Islamic and Sefardi Jewish cultures from the tenth through the twelfth century and reflects on their enduring influence and its expressions in scholarship, literature, and film down to the present day.

To Christians the Iberian Peninsula was Hispania, to Muslims al-Andalus, and to Jews Sefarad. As much as these were all names given to the same real place, the names also constituted ideas, and like all ideas, they have histories of their own. To some, al-Andalus and Sefarad were the subjects of conventional expressions of attachment to and pride in homeland of the universal sort displayed in other Islamic lands and Jewish communities; but other Muslim and Jewish political, literary, and religious actors variously developed the notion that al-Andalus or Sefarad, its inhabitants, and their culture were exceptional and destined to play a central role in the history of their peoples. In Iberian Moorings Ross Brann traces how al-Andalus and Sefarad were invested with special political, cultural, and historical significance across the Middle Ages. This is the first work to analyze the tropes of Andalusi and Sefardi exceptionalism in comparative perspective. Brann focuses on the social power of these tropes in Andalusi Islamic and Sefardi Jewish cultures from the tenth through the twelfth century and reflects on their enduring influence and its expressions in scholarship, literature, and film down to the present day.

This volume offers a thorough introduction to Jewish world literatures in Spanish and Portuguese, which not only addresses the coexistence of cultures, but also the functions of a literary and linguistic space of negotiation in this context. From the Middle Ages to present day, the compendium explores the main Jewish chapters within Spanish- and Portuguese-language world literature, whether from Europe, Latin America, or other parts of the world. No comprehensive survey of this area has been undertaken so far. Yet only a broad focus of this kind can show how diasporic Jewish literatures have been (and are ) – while closely tied to their own traditions – deeply intertwined with local and global literary developments; and how the aesthetic praxis they introduced played a decisive, formative role in the history of literature. With this epistemic claim, the volume aims at steering clear of isolationist approaches to Jewish literatures.

Of late the term Iberian Studies has been gaining academic currency, but its semantic scope still fluctuates. For some it is a convenient way of combining the official cultures of two states, Portugal and Spain; yet for others the term opens up disciplinary space, altering established routines. A relational approach to Iberian Studies shatters the state’s epistemological frame and complexifies the field through the emergence of lines of inquiry and bodies of knowledge hitherto written off as irrelevant. This timely volume brings together contributions from leading international scholars who demonstrate the cultural and linguistic complexity of the field by reflecting on the institutional challenges to the practice of Iberian Studies. As such, the book will be required reading for all those working in the field.

This book commemorates the 70th birthday of Eugene Morozov, the noted Russian observational oceanographer. It contains many contributions reflecting his fields of interest, including but not limited to tidal internal waves, ocean circulation, deep ocean currents, and Arctic oceanography. Special attention is paid to studies on internal waves and especially those on tidal internal waves in the Global Ocean. These papers describe the most important open problems concerning experimental studies of internal waves and their theoretical, numerical, and laboratory modeling. Further contributions investigate the physics of surface waves and their interaction with internal waves. Here, the focus is on describing interaction processes between internal waves and deep currents in the ocean, especially currents of Antarctic Bottom Water in abyssal fractures. They also touch on the problem of oceanic circulation and related processes in fjords, including those occurring under sea ice. Given its breadth of coverage, the book will appeal to anyone interested in a survey of ocean dynamics, ranging from historic perspectives to modern research topics.

Volume 2 of A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula brings to an end this collective work that aims at surveying the network of interliterary relations in the Iberian Peninsula. No attempt at such a comparative history of literatures in the Iberian Peninsula has been made until now. In this volume, the focus is placed on images (Section 1), genres (Section 2), forms of mediation (Section 3), and cultural studies and literary repertoires (Section 4). To these four sections an epilogue is added, in which specialists in literatures in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as in the (sub)disciplines of comparative history and comparative literary history, search for links between Volumes 1 and 2 from the point of view of general contributions to the field of Iberian comparative studies, and assess the entire project that now reaches completion with contributions from almost one hundred scholars.