Seth Kimmel
Assistant Professor
Seth Kimmel studies the literatures and cultures of medieval and early modern Iberia. He earned his B.A. in Comparative Literature and Religion here at Columbia and his Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. Before joining Columbia’s Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures in 2012, Seth spent two years as a member of Stanford University’s Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities, where he taught classes on theories of secularism and religion, the history of reading, and cultural exchange and conflict among Iberian Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
Seth’s current book project is an intellectual history of New Christian assimilation. The book argues that canon law, Oriental Studies, and history writing were all transformed by hotly contested debates over eradicating Islam and Judaism from the Iberian Peninsula and converting non-Christians elsewhere in the Spanish empire. Other research and teaching interests include the history of cartography and Mediterranean and Transatlantic Studies. Seth’s work has appeared in the Journal of Medieval and Early Studies and the Hispanic Issues book series, and he is currently completing two new essays, one on early modern secular discourse and inquisitorial discipline and the other on the relationship between local print economies and peninsular representations of Ottoman Turks.
Casa Hispánica 408
srk29@columbia.edu
(212) 854-6238
(212) 854-5322