Regular Faculty

Camilo Gómez-Rivas
  • Title
    • Associate Professor of Mediterranean Studies
  • Division Humanities Division
  • Department
    • Literature Department
  • Affiliations Legal Studies
  • Phone
    831-459-5223
  • Email
  • Office Location
    • Humanities Building 1, Room 642
  • Office Hours Fall 2023 Thursdays 1:15-2:15 pm or by appointment
  • Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Middle Ages, Mediterranean Studies, Middle East Studies, Legal Studies

Summary of Expertise

Medieval Mediterranean; Spain and North Africa; Arabic Literature; Islamic Law and Society

Biography, Education and Training

I specialize in the cultures, history, and literatures of the medieval and early modern western Mediterranean. My book, Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids: the Fatwās of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib, analyzes a group of legal consultative texts between Cordoba and the Far Maghrib (what is today Morocco) and argues that legal institutions developed in the latter in response to the social needs of growing urban spaces and the administrative needs of the first Berber-Islamic empire. I am currently working on a second book-length project on the social and cultural history of the reception of displaced populations in the medieval and early modern western Mediterranean: a history of the refugees of the "reconquista." I also translate modern Arabic literature and have written on modern topics including legal reform in Morocco and Egypt.

I received my PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale in 2009. After a two-year dissertation writing fellowship at Willamette University in, Salem, Oregon, I spent five years teaching in the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo.

Selected Publications