Eric Calderwood – What Does al-Andalus Do? Engaging with the Past in Contemporary Music

Eric Calderwood is Associate Professor of Comparative and World Literature in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research explores the political uses of the past in modern Mediterranean culture, with special reference to the cultural memory of al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Iberia). He is the author of Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture (Harvard University Press, 2018) and On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus (Harvard University Press, 2023).