I entered the UCSB English Department graduate program planning to specialize in medieval literature. I anticipated extra coursework in Latin, Old English, maybe Old French, but Arabic…why would I be interested in a language and a culture so far away from England? However, four years of Arabic study, two summers abroad in the Middle East, and one dissertation later, I have discovered that during the Middle Ages, England and the Middle East cross paths on more than one occasion.

After several years of graduate coursework in medieval literature, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the occidental focus of the period and its scholarship. I began taking Arabic as a way to expand my own linguistic and cultural parameters, and after my first year of Arabic study, I was awarded a U.S. Department of Education’s summer Foreign Language and Area Study Scholarship (FLAS) to study Arabic in Cairo, Egypt during summer 2005. I stayed for a month after the program was over, traveling with my husband in Syria and Jordan.

Upon my return from the Middle East, I began scheming about how I could go back again, and last summer, I got my chance. I received a U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Tangiers, Morocco during the summer of 2007. My language program demanded most of my attention, but after the program was over, I traveled extensively in Morocco and spent several weeks in Tunisia.

The differences between North African, Egyptian, and Levantine colloquial Arabic, culture, and geography have taught me so much about the heterogeneity of Middle Eastern countries. Moreover, the people I have met while traveling have been exceptional, and although my colloquial skills are basic, I am always thrilled to be able to have small conversations in Arabic.

My travels to these countries have had a dramatic impact on my research interests, my understanding of the field of Medieval Studies, and my awareness of the long-standing intersections—religious, commercial, and marital—between England and the Middle East.

One part of my dissertation, entitled "A Death so Sublime: Theorizing Death and Dying in Medieval England," explores Latin and Arabic Crusade histories that describe the siege of Ma’arrat al-Numan, Syria in relation to the Middle English romance, Richard Coer de Lyon.

Latin histories claim that Frankish Crusaders cannibalized the inhabitants of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man, Syria, while Arabic histories cite Syrian death counts to over 100,000, yet fail to mention whether or not these bodies were consumed post-mortem. What really happened at Ma’arrat? My project does not set out to uncover the historical truths of the siege but attempts to register how Latin and Arabic sources articulated the trauma of Ma'arrat differently.

I then examine these historical narratives in relation to Richard Coer de Lyon, a late medieval poem in which Richard I cannibalizes Arab POWs while fighting Saladin in Acre. As Richard eats Arab flesh, he falls into a trance, an act that the poem interprets as a Eucharistic moment. I argue that the heretical, Muslim bodies that sanctify Richard and his Crusaders posthumously rewind, replay, and traumatically reenact the Latin and Arabic narratives of Ma'arrat.

My research interests in medieval English literature have taken me, ironically, far away from England. However, the further I stray, the more excited I am by my field and its increasingly global scope.