CONTACT INFO
Abigail Krasner Balbale
Lown 300a
(781)736-2981
abalbale@brandeis.edu
Additional Information:
Brandeis University
Faculty Guide
Abigail Krasner Balbale
Abigail Krasner Balbale is a Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis. She is also a PhD Candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where she focuses on the political and cultural history of al-Andalus. Her dissertation, "Culture and Authority in the Medieval Mediterranean: Islamic Murcia, 1147-1262," examines a succession of Muslim rulers who legitimated their authority using wide-ranging cultural, legal and military tools. More generally, she is interested in the interaction of different ethnic and religious groups in the medieval Islamic world and in the diffusion of cultural production that accompanied the dissolution of the caliphate.
Abigail graduated from Yale University with degrees in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Humanities and holds an AM in History from Harvard University. Her first book, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, which she co-authored with María Rosa Menocal and Jerrilynn Dodds, was published by Yale University Press in 2008.