Professor Thomas Burman

Thomas Burman, Director of the Medieval Institute, has recently been recognized as an Medieval Academy of America Fellow, an award honoring researchers for their "major long-term scholarly achievement within the field of Medieval Studies." To celebrate this milestone, the Medieval Institute communications team sat down with our director to hear more about his time in Medieval Studies.

How long have you been involved in Medieval Studies in general and with the Medieval Academy of America?

My Ph.D. was in Medieval Studies so it's been more than 40 years that I have been involved with interdisciplinary Medieval Studies, and my association with the MAA goes back almost as far: I first attended its annual meeting in 1987 when it met in Toronto when I was a grad student there. Over the years, I have served on MAA committees and gone to its annual meetings periodically. For the last 10 years in particular, I have gone nearly every year, and last year was the co-chair of the program committee of annual meeting that was held here at Notre Dame.

Throughout your time as a scholar of Medieval Studies, have your research interests shifted, narrowed or expanded? If so, how?

In at least one way my interests have stayed the same: I am an historian of how medieval Christian scholars who knew Islam and Judaism best interacted with their texts, beliefs, and ideas. The scholars I write about typically knew Arabic and/or Hebrew and Aramaic and had immersed themselves in Islamic or Jewish books. My interests have also shifted over time: my work for the first twenty years or so was entirely about Christian engagement with Islam, but has shifted so that now I'm as interested in Christian engagement with Judaism in the Middle Ages. I've also expanded the geographical scope of my work beyond medieval Iberia to the whole of the Mediterranean basin.

What has been one of the most interesting or memorable topics you have researched during your time as a Medievalist?

The two most enduring and interesting topics to me have been (1) how medieval Latin Christians read the Qur'an and depended when doing so on Muslim traditions of Qur'an interpretation; and (2) the astoundingly learned and unstinting anti-Jewish polemicist Ramon Martí (fl. 1250–84) who knew Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic expertly and wrote at vast length against Islam. I have in each case spent more than a decade studying these topics.

Congratulations once more to our director, Professor Burman, on this achievement!

Originally published by Medieval Institute at medieval.nd.edu on February 03, 2025.