Debra Blumenthal

Associate Professor of History

Office Location

HSSB 3256

Specialization

Medieval/Early Modern Spain, Premodern Mediterranean, Comparative Slavery, Gender History, History of Medicine

Education

Ph.D., University of Toronto, 2000

Bio

I am an historian of late medieval and early modern Iberia whose research interests include Muslim, Christian and Jewish relations; the history of slavery and race in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean world; gender history; and the history of medicine and women’s health.  My current research projects explore, respectively, the role of slavery in the production of medical (particularly gynecological) knowledge and constructions of maternity in the late medieval Mediterranean world.  My current book project, entitled “Comares. Mothering in Uncertain Times,” exposes the complex interactions between midwives, wet nurses and birth mothers (not to mention physicians, surgeons and fathers) in a period characterized by male anxiety over female control of reproduction.

Publications