Monday, March 17, 2025
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. EDT
Location: Online (3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. GMT)
March 17, 2025
Humanizing the Enemy: Don Quixote and the Moors
Event Series: Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference
In Don Quixote (1605), the unreliable narrator of the first volume names a Moor, Cide Hamete Benengeli, as a source for the story he is about to recount—although he warns readers that Moors are often untruthful. Throughout his wanderings, Don Quixote encounters men and women of different social and ethnic groups. His interactions with Moors are particularly notable, as they are almost always portrayed in a sympathetic, humane manner. By the second volume, Cide Hamete becomes the sole narrator of the story and the true authority on Don Quixote. In this talk, Bárbara Mujica will show how Cervantes challenges popular stereotypes of Moors in early modern Spain. In this context, Cervantes sees the otherness in others from a viewpoint which allows cultural encounters that recognize the humanity in all.
This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and the Georgetown Humanities Initiative at Georgetown University with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. It is part of the series Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Kevin Poh
Participants
Bárbara Mujica
Bárbara Mujica is a professor emerita at Georgetown University specializing in early modern Spanish literature. She has published extensively on the Spanish mystics, early modern Spanish theater, and Cervantes. In 2022, her study Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform (2020) won the GEMELA prize for best scholarly book of the year on early modern Hispanic women. Mujica’s novel Frida (2001) was an international bestseller and has been translated into in 18 languages. Her most recent novel, Miss del Río (2022), was named "one of the five best recent historical novels" in 2022 by the Washington Post.
Michael Scott
Michael Scott is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college advisor for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior advisor to the president of Georgetown University. Scott previously served as the pro-vice-chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice-chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University, where he is professor emeritus.