Assistant Professor - Medieval Studies - Comparative Literature and Spanish & Portuguese

The Departments of Spanish & Portuguese and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley seek applications for an Assistant Professor specializing in Medieval Literature and Culture. The successful candidate will have a rigorous grounding in Medieval Studies, with specialized training in Spanish and another language and the ability to work across languages and traditions.

This broad, interdisciplinary field can include the study of literary history, social history, intellectual history, religious history, or linguistic history. Additional areas of specialization that would be welcome are Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Catalan, Occitan, Mediterranean Studies, gender studies, race studies, and material culture studies.

The successful candidate will teach a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses that are central, both to the majors and to general education in the Division. The appointee will also advise undergraduates and graduates and supervise student research, develop a successful and original research program, and provide service contributions.

The appointee will be encouraged to contribute to the department’s diverse and inclusive community through their research, teaching, and/or service. In addition to a strong grounding in literary and/or cultural history, we would welcome secondary training in areas such as gender studies, historical linguistics, critical race studies, material culture studies, classical reception studies, or Mediterranean Studies.

The Iberian peninsula in the Middle Ages was characterized by a rich and fascinating intersection of cultures using Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic. Work that takes this complexity and diversity into account would be of special interest to us. Beyond that, we are looking for creativity, rigor and distinction in the candidates’ written work and oral presentations—and, not least, their ability to develop new strands of research that will continue to shape the field going forward.

About the Departments: The departments of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese provide faculty with the opportunity to teach and mentor both graduate and undergraduate students. Faculty members teach on a wide variety of topics and approaches. UC Berkeley values the family needs of faculty, including dual career couples, single parents, or those who may have taken time off for family reasons.

For information about potential relocation to Berkeley, or career needs of accompanying partners and spouses, please visit the Office for Faculty Equity and Welfare's website . The UC Berkeley Department of Comparative Literature is dedicated to comparative literary study that is both historical and theoretical, covering literary traditions from several inter-related regions and traditions.

This combination of intensity and breadth is reflected in the composition of our faculty, seventeen of whom are jointly appointed with national literature departments. Faculty are actively involved in various programs on campus, such as the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis, Film Studies, Medieval Studies and the Early Modern Studies Designated Emphasis.

Our signature combination of teaching and research on literature, film, and other media is based on knowledge of original languages, an understanding of historical context and production, and theoretically innovative perspectives. Texts read in research seminars include both authors from a global range of literary and cultural traditions, and theoretical interventions that question the how and why of cultural production.

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese studies the literary, cultural, and linguistic products of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, and aims to legitimize, support and empower the Hispanic and Lusophone-speaking and -studying students that we serve. We offer students an abundance of opportunities to achieve mastery of the languages and cultures we study, which include Catalan, Nahuatl, Portuguese, Romance Studies, and Spanish.

Our programs are designed for highly motivated students with a passion for other languages, literatures, and cultures, linguistics, as well as for approaches that carefully cross traditionally defined geographic, linguistic and disciplinary borders. Faculty are formally involved with many departments or units on campus: for example, Applied Data Science, Latin American Studies, European Studies, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Rhetoric.

For more than a decade, the placement record for tenure-track jobs in both departments is among the very best in the country. This remarkable record speaks not only to the intellectual culture of the departments but also to our faculty’s consistent devotion to teaching and mentoring. Both undergraduate programs are flourishing.

Given California’s Hispanic heritage and demographics, the intersection of Comparative Literature and Spanish/Portuguese offers remarkable opportunities for teaching across languages, genres, and media. Both departments deeply value multilingualism and international engagement.