Foto von Prof. Dr. Alexandra Cuffel

Prof. Dr. Alexandra Cuffel

Professor*in

Lehrstuhl Religion des Judentums in Geschich­te und Gegenwart
Professorin für die Religion des Judentums in Geschichte und Gegenwart
Projektleiterin GIF-Projekt The Ten Lost Tribes

Forscherin ArmEn
KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2011

Alexandra Cuffel is Professor of Jewish Religion in Past and Present Times at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum. Until 2012 she has been Adjunct Professor of History at the College of New Jersey and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, NYC. From 2004 to 2008 she was Assistant Professor of pre-modern World History at Macalester College. Prior to that she was Assistant Professor of Medieval History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Visiting Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She received several fellowships, among them a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2007, the Women’s Studies in Religion Fellowship from Harvard Divinity School in 2006, and a fellowship from the Dorot Foundation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996.

Her research focuses on relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims during the Middle Ages, specifically on the intersections of religious polemic, medical theories and gender both in Western Europe and the Middle East. Further research interests are shared saints’ cults and festivals in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean and "racial" attitudes in the Middle Ages. She has recently completed a monograph (Shared Saints and Festivals among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean, ARC Humanities Press, 2024: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/88636/1/9781802701678.pdf), and has another monograph coming out with ARC Humanities Press soon (Religious Encounter and Environmental Crises: Shared Intercession and Disease in Premodern Afro-Eurasia). This book will examine the ways in which environmental attitudes and rituals affected relations based on religious affiliation, gender, age, and between human/non-human animals, rulers and the ruled, and fostered cross-religious and inter-species participation in the pre-modern Eastern Mediterranean, East Africa, and West Asia.  In conjunction with Prof. Dr. Adam Knobler, she is also working on a book which is forthcoming with Oxford University Press, entitled, Jewish Warriors and the Ten Lost Tribes in Jewish, Christian Muslim Encounters which is a study of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim imaginings about the ten lost tribes in conjunction with the development of expectations of the Messiah and an anti-Messiah from the early Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

Education

KHK Fellowship

Duration: May 2011 – April 2012
Project: Jewish Warriors in Distant Lands

Sprechstunden

Nach Vereinbahrung

Forschungsgebiete

Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Christen und Muslimen im Mittelalter

Jewish Warriors and the Ten Lost Tribes in Jewish, Christian Muslim Encounters. Co-authored with Adam Knobler of Ruhr Universität Bochum. (Oxford University Press) Forthcoming and in progress.

Religious Encounter and Environmental Crises: Shared Intercession and Disease in Premodern Afro-Eurasia (ARC Humanities Press) Forthcoming and in progress.

Eastern Encounters Beyond Byzantium: Patterns of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish-Christian Polemics from the Caucasus to the Indian Ocean, Forthcoming in Hebrew Union College Annual.
 

Professor*in von Centrum für Religionswissenschaftliche Studien , CERES Lehre und EMPATHIA³ Verbundforschungsprojekt

Forscher*in von Armenia Entangled

Mitglied des Research Departments von CERES RESEARCH DEPARTMENT

Ehemalige Projekte und Zugehörigkeiten

Principal Investigator von Jews and Christians in the East

Projektleitung von The Ten Lost Tribes. A Cross-Cultural Approach

Einzelforscher*in von Jewish Warriors in Distant Lands

Gastwissenschaftler*in von Käte Hamburger Kolleg

Kollegiat*in von Käte Hamburger Kolleg