Eric Calderwood | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (original) (raw)

Books by Eric Calderwood

Winner of the 2019 L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize in North African Studies; Honorable Mention for... more Winner of the 2019 L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize in North African Studies;
Honorable Mention for the Nikki Keddie Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association;
Silver Medal for the Laura Shannon Prize in European studies from the Nanovic Institute

Selected Reviews of On Earth or in Poems (2023) by Eric Calderwood

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2024

The Journal of North African Studies, 2024

Alexander Elinson's review of my book, "On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus" (Harv... more Alexander Elinson's review of my book, "On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus" (Harvard University Press, 2023).

Comedia Performance, 2024

Literature & History, 2024

Selected Reviews of Colonial al-Andalus (2018) by Eric Calderwood

American Historical Review, 2024

The Mediterranean Seminar Review, 2022

Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2021

Comparative Literature, 2020

Quaderns de l’Institut Català d’Antropologia, 2020

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2020

The Journal of North African Studies, 2020

Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 2019

Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 2019

Cordópolis, 2019

My interview with Marta Jiménez about the Spanish translation of my book, Al Ándalus en Marruecos... more My interview with Marta Jiménez about the Spanish translation of my book, Al Ándalus en Marruecos (Almuzara 2019).

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2024

The Journal of North African Studies, 2024

Comedia Performance, 2024

Literature & History, 2024

American Historical Review, 2024

The Mediterranean Seminar Review, 2022

Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2021

Comparative Literature, 2020

Quaderns de l’Institut Català d’Antropologia, 2020

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2020

The Journal of North African Studies, 2020

Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 2019

Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 2019

Cordópolis, 2019

Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2019

Published in the journal History in February 2019.

PMLA, 2022

This article explores code-switching and multilingualism in hip hop from the Strait of Gibraltar ... more This article explores code-switching and multilingualism in hip hop from the Strait of Gibraltar region.

Al-Andalus fi al-liqaʾ al-istiʿmari al-isbani al-maghribi, 2023

The author's preface to the Arabic translation of Colonial al-Andalus (Harvard University Press, ... more The author's preface to the Arabic translation of Colonial al-Andalus (Harvard University Press, 2018).

Journal of Arabic Literature, 2021

What is Moroccan literature, where and when does it happen, and in what languages? In this essay,... more What is Moroccan literature, where and when does it happen, and in what languages? In this essay, we tackle these questions by tracing the evolution of the definition of "Moroccan literature" from the first half of the twentieth century until the present. The earliest works of Moroccan literary historiography, such as ʿAbd Allah Kannūn's al-Nubūgh al-maghribī fī al-adab al-ʿarabī (1937), situated Moroccan literature within the Arabic literary tradition and treated Moroccan literature as an important element in the "Arab-Islamic" identity promoted by the Moroccan nationalist movement. Since Moroccan independence in 1956, this definition of Moroccan literature has come under increasing pressure, as the languages and imaginative geographies of Moroccan literature have expanded to include new voices. In what follows, we consider these debates through a survey of a diverse corpus of literary-historical works that throw into question the linguistic, temporal, and spatial borders of Moroccan literature (and of Morocco itself).

Journal of Arabic Literature, 2021

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2019

This essay explores the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the Global Hispanophone by placin... more This essay explores the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the Global Hispanophone by placing this emergent category in dialogue with recent developments in Hispanic studies and with ongoing debates in comparative literature about the status of the globe (or the world) as an analytic framework. Drawing on these debates, the essay examines the politics, hermeneutics and aesthetics of multilingual hip-hop, focusing on Khaled, a Spanish rapper of Moroccan descent, whose work weaves between languages (most notably, Spanish and Moroccan Arabic) and musical idioms. Khaled’s multilingual performances challenge hegemonic positions of race, class, religion and place of origin. They also highlight transnational networks of solidarity between marginalized groups in Europe and the United States. Using Khaled’s music as an illustrative example, this essay outlines a tentative vision of the Global Hispanophone, one that focuses on language practices rather than on geography. In what follows, the Global Hispanophone describes the tension between Spanish as a language of imperial power and Spanish as a language that spawns creative responses to power, often through nonstandard uses that throw into question the borders (geographic, cultural and even linguistic) of the language.

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2020

PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 2017

Journey to Mecca (; al-Rihla al-Makkiyya; 1941), by the distinguished Moroccan historian and lega... more Journey to Mecca (; al-Rihla al-Makkiyya; 1941), by the distinguished Moroccan historian and legal scholar Ahmad al-Rahuni, recounts a hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, sponsored by the fascist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1937. Franco's support for the hajj was part of a vast propaganda effort to cast Franco's Spain as a friend of Islam and a defender of the cultural heritage of al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Iberia). Al-Rahuni's travel narrative blurs the line between Mecca and Spain by casting Spain's Islamic heritage sites as a metaphoric Mecca to which Muslims should make pilgrimage. The account thus highlights the collaboration between Spanish fascists and Moroccan elites. It also complicates the dominant scholarly narratives about modern Arabic literature, which have tended to focus on Egypt, the novel, and secular epistemologies. Al-Rahuni's text speaks, instead, to the persistence of Arabic prose genres that do not conform to a Eurocentric notion of lit...

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2019

ABSTRACT This essay explores the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the Global Hispanophone ... more ABSTRACT This essay explores the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the Global Hispanophone by placing this emergent category in dialogue with recent developments in Hispanic studies and with ongoing debates in comparative literature about the status of the globe (or the world) as an analytic framework. Drawing on these debates, the essay examines the politics, hermeneutics and aesthetics of multilingual hip-hop, focusing on Khaled, a Spanish rapper of Moroccan descent, whose work weaves between languages (most notably, Spanish and Moroccan Arabic) and musical idioms. Khaled's multilingual performances challenge hegemonic positions of race, class, religion and place of origin. They also highlight transnational networks of solidarity between marginalized groups in Europe and the United States. Using Khaled's music as an illustrative example, this essay outlines a tentative vision of the Global Hispanophone, one that focuses on language practices rather than on geography. In what follows, the Global Hispanophone describes the tension between Spanish as a language of imperial power and Spanish as a language that spawns creative responses to power, often through nonstandard uses that throw into question the borders (geographic, cultural and even linguistic) of the language.

The Journal of North African Studies, 2018

Colonial al-Andalus, 2018

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2014

This article explores the ideological legacy of Blas Infante (1885–1936), hailed today as the “Pa... more This article explores the ideological legacy of Blas Infante (1885–1936), hailed today as the “Padre de la Patria Andaluza.” In post-Franco Spain, Infante's legacy of political andalucismo (Andalusian nationalism) has become inexorably linked with the myth of Andalusi convivencia: the supposedly harmonious coexistence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval Iberia. Yet Infante's posthumous fame as an avatar of intercultural tolerance masks two understudied aspects of his work and its afterlife: his repudiation of Catalan nationalism and his influence on the discourse of Spanish colonialism in Morocco. In this article, I develop the concept of the “transperipheral” to analyze Andalusian nationalism's evolving debate with Catalan nationalism — and, more broadly, to propose a new model for the study of Iberian peripheral nationalisms. My notion of the transperipheral aims to revise the center–periphery binary that has dominated the study of Iberian peripheral nationalisms. Blas Infante was assassinated by Rebel troops in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. His writings, nonetheless, exerted significant influence over the discourse of Spanish colonialism in Morocco in the 1940s and 1950s. In the last section of the article, I show how Infante's andalucista ideology migrated into the work of Rodolfo Gil Benumeya (1901–1975), a leading theoretician of Spanish colonialism under Franco. My article therefore traces the uneven trajectory of Andalusian nationalism from transperipheral critique to colonial apology.

The Journal of North African Studies, 2014

In a 2008 survey by the Pew Research Centre, 52% of Spaniards confessed to having negative views ... more In a 2008 survey by the Pew Research Centre, 52% of Spaniards confessed to having negative views of Muslims. Yet, one of the most profitable segments of Spain's tourism industry is built on marketing the concept of convivencia, the supposedly harmonious coexistence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the medieval Iberian Peninsula. This article examines Granada's tourism industry as a site for mapping Spain's contradictory relationship with the Islamic world and with its own Islamic past. Granada is a privileged site for this examination: the former Naṣrid capital not only boasts the most famous of Andalusi travel destinations, the Alhambra, but also hosts a large population of Moroccan immigrants and of Spanish converts to Islam. Building on the polysemy of the word ‘invention’ – which can mean both ‘discovery’ and ‘creation’ – this article investigates three different inventions of al-Andalus in Granada's tourism industry. First, I explore the nineteenth-century Romantic ‘re-discovery’ of Andalucía's ‘Oriental’ past. Second, I analyse one of the most visible tourist initiatives in contemporary Granada related to the promotion of the Andalusi past: the Legado Andalusí Foundation. My analysis demonstrates how the work of the Legado Andalusí Foundation has been shaped by the Romantic ‘discovery’ of al-Andalus, as well as by Andalusian nationalist thought and by the discourse of Spanish colonialism in Morocco. In the concluding section, I consider the debates surrounding Islam and Moroccan immigration in Granada's Albayzín neighbourhood, a ‘traditional’ Arab area where the Islamic Community in Spain (Comunidad Islámica en España) recently inaugurated the first mosque to be built in Granada since 1492.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2012

This article analyzes two accounts of the Hispano-Moroccan War of 1859–60 in light of scholarly d... more This article analyzes two accounts of the Hispano-Moroccan War of 1859–60 in light of scholarly debates about historiography, translation, and modernity in the colonial context. The first text is Ahmad b. Khalid al-Nasiri'sKitab al-Istiqsa(1895), which explores the organization of the Spanish army in an effort to understand the military technology and state apparatus behind colonial domination. The second text, Clemente Cerdeira'sVersión árabe de la Guerra de África(1917), is framed as an annotated Spanish translation of al-Nasiri's text, but Cerdeira suppresses key passages from al-Nasiri's account in order to undermine any hint that the Moroccan historian's thinking is reformist or modern. By comparing these two accounts of the same war, the article aims to situate al-Nasiri's text within the reform movements that spread through the Muslim Mediterranean in the 19th century and to use al-Nasiri's historical thinking as a model for theorizing Moroccan mod...

Journal of Arabic Literature, 2021

What is Moroccan literature, where and when does it happen, and in what languages? In this essay,... more What is Moroccan literature, where and when does it happen, and in what languages? In this essay, we tackle these questions by tracing the evolution of the definition of “Moroccan literature” from the first half of the twentieth century until the present. The earliest works of Moroccan literary historiography, such as ʿAbd Allah Kannūn’s al-Nubūgh al-maghribī fī al-adab al-ʿarabī (1937), situated Moroccan literature within the Arabic literary tradition and treated Moroccan literature as an important element in the “Arab-Islamic” identity promoted by the Moroccan nationalist movement. Since Moroccan independence in 1956, this definition of Moroccan literature has come under increasing pressure, as the languages and imaginative geographies of Moroccan literature have expanded to include new voices. In what follows, we consider these debates through a survey of a diverse corpus of literary-historical works that throw into question the linguistic, temporal, and spatial borders of Morocc...

Journal of Arabic Literature , 2021

What is Moroccan literature, where and when does it happen, and in what languages? In this essay,... more What is Moroccan literature, where and when does it happen, and in what languages? In this essay, we tackle these questions by tracing the evolution of the definition of “Moroccan literature” from the first half of the twentieth century until the present. The earliest works of Moroccan literary historiography, such as ʿAbd Allah Gannūn’s al-Nubūgh al-maghribī fī al-adab al-ʿarabī (1937), situated Moroccan literature within the Arabic literary tradition and treated Moroccan literature as an important element in the “Arab-Islamic” identity promoted by the Moroccan nationalist movement. Since Moroccan independence in 1956, this definition of Moroccan literature has come under increasing pressure, as the languages and imaginative geographies of Moroccan literature have expanded to include new voices. In what follows, we consider these debates through a survey of a diverse corpus of literary-historical works that throw into question the linguistic, temporal, and spatial borders of Moroccan literature (and of Morocco itself).