Brann elected as Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America

Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, has been elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in recognition of his distinguished scholarly contributions to medieval studies.

Brann will be inducted during the academy’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 25.

The Medieval Academy of America is a scholarly community committed to deepening, broadening and sharing knowledge of the medieval past in an inclusive and equitable way.

Brann has taught at Cornell since 1986 and served nineteen years as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies (A&S).

In his most recent book, “Iberian Moorings: Al-Andalus, Sefarad and the Tropes of Exceptionalism,” Brann compares the histories of the Jewish and Muslim traditions in the Iberian Peninsula between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, tracing how Islamic al-Andalus and Jewish Sefarad were invested with special political, cultural and historical significance across the Middle Ages.

He is also the author of “The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain” and “Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Muslims and Jews in Islamic Spain.”  He is also the editor of four volumes and author of essays on the intersection of medieval Jewish and Islamic cultures.

Brann has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.

Brann recently completed “Moses Maimonides: A Very Short Introduction” for Oxford University Press. Maimonides, a Sephardic Jewish philosopher, rabbi, astronomer, and physician, was one of the most prolific and influential scholars of the Middle Ages.