Professor Julian Weiss

After receiving his DPhil at Oxford (1984), Professor Weiss held positions at the Universities of Liverpool, Virginia, and Oregon (where he was Head of Romance Languages). He was appointed to King’s in 2001. Since 2007, he has been a member of the international research group Seminario de Estudios sobre el Renacimiento (https://sr.uab.cat/), based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He has served on the editorial or advisory boards of several international journals and publishers, and between 2007-10, he was Director of the Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, King’s College London (2007-10), and the general editor of the Centre’s publication series, King´s College London Medieval Studies (2007-2020).

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• the history of literary theory and poetics before 1700
• the history of the book, reading and censorship
• medieval and early modern lyric verse
• interfaith relations within Iberia and their historical impact, particularly the history and legacy of Sephardic Jews
• cultural materialism and theories of ideology and gender

Professor Weiss's current major project is a study of the early modern Hispanic reception of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (1st Century CE), which examines how the writings of Josephus were used by Christians, Jews and crypto-Jews to define individual and collective identities in the age of Iberian Empires. Spanish translations of Josephus's works shed light on the history of Jewish-Christian relations in Europe and the New World from 1492 to the later seventeenth century, among, for example, the Sephardic communities of Amsterdam.

Selected publications 

• The Poet’s Art: Literary Theory in Castile, c. 1400-60, Medium Aevum Monographs, n.s., 14 (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 1990).

• The ‘Mester de Clerecía’: Intellectuals and Ideologies in Thirteenth-Century Castile (Woodbridge: Tamesis Books, 2006).

• co-editor (with María José Vega & Cesc Esteve), Reading and Censorship in Early Modern Europe: Barcelona 11-13 de diciembre de 2007, Studia Aurea Monográfica, 2 (Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2010).

• co-editor (with Antonio Cortijo Ocaña), Hernán Núñez de Toledo, Glosa a las ‘Trezientas’ del famoso poeta Juan de Mena (Madrid: Polifemo, 2015).

• co-editor (with Rachel Scott and AbdoolKarim Vakil), Al Andalus in Motion: Travelling Concepts and Cross-Cultural Contexts, King's College London Medieval Studies, 28 (London: Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, King's College London, 2021). 

Teaching

My teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels is informed by my research interests, and my classes are a workshop where I test and develop ideas. Most of my modules cross periods and languages and recognise the multilingual and multicultural heritage of Iberia. I teach texts in Castilian, Catalan, Galician-Portuguese, Portuguese, Arabic and Hebrew (the last two in translation). A number of my courses are open to students in non-language programmes, such as Jewish Studies, Comparative Literature, English and Medieval Studies. Language is also at the heart of my literature and cultural modules, which include instruction in the rudiments of medieval and Renaissance Spanish and emphasise the value of close textual analysis.