Professor Bárbara Boloix Gallardo, from the University of Granada, presents “The Alhambra and Women: Essence and Presence,” the final lecture in the series “Seven Women Speak of al-Andalus.” It will take place on Wednesday, June 17, at 7:00 p.m., at the Córdoba headquarters of Casa Árabe (9 Samuel de los Santos Gener Street). Free admission until capacity is reached. In Spanish.
The Alhambra, as the ultimate expression of the Nasrid dynasty’s passage through history, was an enclave where both men and women were present during the trajectory of the Kingdom of Granada (13th-15th centuries). Despite their deliberate historiographical “observation,” women came to have considerable influence on the political and diplomatic development, as well as on the spatial and aesthetic configuration of this palace and the development of its poetic metaphor, whose analysis and reconstruction are not possible today without the application of a gender perspective.
Throughout this presentation, Professor Boloix Gallardo will explore the presence of women within the Alhambra complex in its political, architectural, pictorial, and symbolic spheres, aiming to contribute to a deeper understanding of the importance and impact of Nasrid women on this monument.
Bárbara Boloix Gallardo holds a European PhD in Arabic Philology from the University of Granada and the University of London (2007) and is currently a tenured professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada. From 2010 to 2012, she completed her postdoctoral research at Washington University in St. Louis (Missouri, USA), where she also taught in the Department of History and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and led a year-long course on the History of al-Andalus.
Both her teaching and research focus on the history of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, and especially on the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, which she approaches from a gender and interdisciplinary perspective. She has dedicated numerous publications, lectures, and presentations to these areas, both nationally and internationally.
For several years now, she has been studying Andalusian and Maghrebi women, resulting in various publications, including several scholarly articles, book chapters, and, most notably, the monograph entitled “The Sultanas of the Alhambra: The Great Unknowns of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (13th-15th Centuries)” (Comares-Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife, 2013). She has been the Principal Investigator of several research projects, including the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness’s R&D&I Excellence Project on “Nasrid and Marinid Women in the Islamic Societies of the Medieval Mediterranean (13th-15th Centuries): Power, Identity, and Social Dynamics” (NAZAMER), and the Ministry of Science and Innovation’s R&D&I Knowledge Generation Project “From Nasrid to Morisco Women: Daily Lives, Influences, and Socio-Cultural (Dis)continuities in the ‘Intrahistory’ of the Iberian Peninsula (13th-16th Centuries),” through which she develops her research on these women’s issues.
She is currently a member of the University Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Granada and Vice-Secretary for Cultural and Institutional Cooperation at the Euro-Arab Foundation, where she also directs the Chair of Gender Studies.