Ross Brann
Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow
Cornell University

Ross Brann studied at the University of California, Berkeley, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, New York University, and the American University in Cairo. He has taught at Cornell since 1986 and served nineteen years as Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Brann is the author or editor of books and essays on the intersection of Jewish and Islamic culture, including The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain (Johns Hopkins U Press, 1991) [recipient of the 1992 Maurice Amado Foundation National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Studies], Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Muslims and Jews in Eleventh- and Twelfth Century Islamic Spain (Princeton U Press, 2002) Iberian Moorings: al-Andalus and Sefarad and the Tropes of Exceptionalism (U Penn Press, 2020) and Maimonides; Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2024). He serves as a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Medieval Academy of America and has been a visiting fellow at the University of Michigan Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies and the University of Pennsylvania Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.

Selected Publications

Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Muslims and Jews in Eleventh- and Twelfth- Century Islamic Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 208 pp.

The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 228 pp.

“Andalusi “Exceptionalism”,” in A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, ed. Karla Mallette and Suzanne Akbari (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 119-134.

“Competing Tropes of Eleventh Century Andalusi Jewish Culture,” in Ot LeTova: Essays in Honor of Professor Tova Rosen, ed. Eli Yassif, Haviva Ishay, Uriah Kfir [Mikan 11/El Prezente 6] (Be’er Sheba: Heksherim Research Center and the Department of Hebrew Literature, Ben-Gurion University and the Gaon Center for Ladino Culture, 2012), 7-26.

“The Moors?” Medieval Encounters 15 (2009): 307-318.

“He Said, She Said: Re-inscribing the Andalusi Arabic Love Lyric,” in Raymond P. Scheindlin Festschrift, ed. Michael. Rand and Jonathan Decter (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2007), 7-15.