Assistant Professor of pre-modern World History, Macalester College
Alexandra Cuffel received her MPhil from the University of Cambridge in 1990, and her Ph.D. in Medieval History from New York University in 2002. Her dissertation topic was "Filthy Words/Filthy Bodies: Gendering Disgust in Twefth- and Thirteenth-century Jewish-Christian Polemic". Alexandra Cuffel was also a Berlin-Kiel Scholar in Arabic and Religious Studies at Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel in Germany (1998 - 1999), and participated in a summer graduate study program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1995 - 1996). At Macalester, Professor Cuffel teaches courses on Medieval Islam, Pre-Modern Medicine, and Gender and the Divinity in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Her research interests center around medieval interfaith relations and cultural exchanges, particularly in the realms of religious polemic, the history of medieval medicine, and gender.
"Does this smell okay to you? Hygiene and Invented Illness in medieval and early modern Christian-Muslim tavelogues, " in progress
"Henceforth All Generations Will Call Me Blessed": Medieval Christian Tales of Non-Christian Marian Veneration, in Mediterranean Studies 12 (2003)
"Call and Response: European Jewish Emigration to Egypt and Palestine in the Middle Ages," Jewish Quarterly Review, XC, nos. 1-2 (July - October 1999)