Debra Blumenthal – Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Advisor to:

Research and Teaching Interests:

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.

Selected Publications:

Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).
- Winner of the 2011 Premio del Rey, American Historical Association
- Honorable Mention, 2010 Best Book Prize, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.
“As [Healthy] Women Should”: Enslaved Women, Medical Experts, and ‘Hidden’ Menstrual Orders in Late Medieval Mediterranean Slave Markets, The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 4, December 2023, pp. 1558-1586.
- Winner of the 2024 Nursing Clio Best Article Prize
“Services for which I expect to be compensated”: Mothering as Salaried Labor in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon” in Early Modern Maternities in the Iberian Atlantic, edited by Emily Colbert Cairns and Nieves Romero-Diaz (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).
“Jugaven per plaher: L’oci dels esclaus a la València baixmedieval” in Ser y vivir esclavo, edited by Fabienne P. Guillén, Roser Salicrú i Lluch (Casa de Velázquez, 2021).
“Domestic medicine: slaves, servants, and female medical expertise in late medieval Valencia” in Renaissance Studies volume 28, issue 4 (September, 2014).
- Winner of the Best Essay Prize given annually by the Society for Renaissance Studies.
“Masters, Slave Women, and their children: A child custody dispute in 15th century Valencia” in Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500-1800) – Neue Perspektiven auf mediterrane Sklaverei (500–1800), Stefan Hans and Juliane Schiel, eds. (Chronos, 2014).
“‘With My Daughter’s Milk’: Wet Nurses and the Rhetoric of Lactation in Fifteenth-Century Valencian Court Records” in Medieval and Renaissance Lactations. Images, Rhetorics and Practices, edited by Jutta Gisela Sperling (Ashgate, 2013).
“La Casa dels Negres: Black African solidarity in late-medieval Valencia”in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, edited by K.P. Lowe and Thomas Earl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
“Demandes de libertat: Demandas de esclavos en el medievo tardío valenciano” in Debates y Perspectivas (Madrid, 2004).
“Defending their Masters’ Honour: Slaves as Violent Offenders in Fifteenth-Century Valencia”in A Great Effusion of Blood?: Interpreting Medieval Violence, edited by Mark Meyerson, Oren Falk, and Daniel Thierry (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2004).
“Sclaves molt fortes, senyors invalts: Sex, lies, and paternity suits in late medieval Spain” in Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World, edited by Marta Vicente and Luis Corteguera (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Press, 2003).

Honors and Professional Activities:

Sargent-Faull Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2003-2004)
National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend (2003)
NEH Summer Seminar: “Disease in the Middle Ages” at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, UK (2009)
Evelyn S. Nation and Elizabeth Crahan Fellow at the Huntington Library (2010-2011)
2011 Premio del Rey, American Historical Association
Award given biennially to the best book on Spain’s early history and culture, 500-1516 A.D., published in the last two years.
2014 Best Essay Prize, Society for Renaissance Studies
Award given annually for the best essay published in Renaissance Studies.
2024 Nursing Clio Best Article Prize The Nursing Clio Prize is awarded annually for the best peer-reviewed academic journal article on the intersection of gender and medical histories in English.

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