Dr. Soifer Irish works on the history of interfaith relations in medieval Spain and the Mediterranean. Her first book, Jews and Christians in Medieval Castile: Tradition, Coexistence, and Change, was published in 2016 by The Catholic University of America Press. It explores the changes in Jewish-Christian relations in the Iberian kingdom of Castile during the pivotal period of the reconquest and the hundred years that followed the end of its most active phase (eleventh to mid-fourteenth century). Focusing especially on the Christian heartland north of the Duero River, known as Old Castile, the book offers a detailed investigation of the Jews' changing relations with the monarchy, the church, and the towns. Her next project, Between Splendor and Tragedy: Seville in the Calamitous Fourteenth Century will seek to explain how and why Seville changed from a city tolerant of non-Christian influences, a city where the king of Castile built a magnificent palace in Moorish style (the Alcázar), to a city whose Jewish population was almost wiped out during the massacre of 1391.

See her faculty profile in the Department of History here.

Specialization:

Medieval Europe; Medieval Iberia; Kingdom of Castile in the High to Late Middle Ages; Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim Relations in Pre-Modern Europe and the Mediterranean; Inter-religious Polemics; Medieval Borderlands

Academic History:

Ph.D. Princeton University, 2007

M.A. University of Colorado, 2000