Writing Without Footnotes: The Role of the Medievalist in Contemporary Intellectual Life

Maria Rosa Menocal received her PhD in Romance Philology in 1979 from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also taught before joining the faculty at Yale University. She is the author of a number of books on a range of comparative medieval literary and cultural topics, and the editor of the recent The Literature of Al-Andalus volume in the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature series. Currently she is the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of Special Programs in the Humanities at Yale University.