VANCOUVER SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
fall/winter 2011/12 volume 2, number 2
Iona Pacific Centre Presents Professor of Arabic & Islamic Thought from Spain
Professor Emilio González Ferrín
Submitted by Dr. Robert Daum
Emilio González Ferrín, professor of Arabic and Islamic Thought at the University of Seville (Spain) visited British Columbia from November 7–10. He presented a series of lectures and workshops for the university and local communities in Kelowna, Burnaby, and Vancouver on the history of Islam and Muslim cultures. His visit as a 2011 Iona Pacific Visiting Scholar was part of Vancouver School of Theology’s “Critical Conversations about Religion” series. The events were sponsored by Iona Pacific Inter-religious Centre at Vancouver School of Theology, along with co-sponsors: the Department of Critical Studies, FCCS, UBC (Okanagan), Green College, UBC, and the Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures, SFU.
Prof. González Ferrín, who holds the Al-Andalus Chair and is president of the Gordion Foundation, is the author of nine major books, including Islamic Ethics and Politics (Seville, 2001), A General History of Al-Andalus (Cordoba, 2006), and Qur’an: The Inflected Word (Oviedo, 2002), which won the Jovellanos International Prize. His research investigates the origins of medieval Spain; the history of the religious culture and politics of medieval Spain; “Euro-Arab” cultural cooperation; early Islam and comparative religious cultures; Al-Andalus as a paradigm for examining the notion of “continuity” in history, and aspects of western Europe’s cultural sources preserved in Arabic and Hebrew traditions from the Middle East. cont. on page 2
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