The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Department of Religion, and Jewish Studies Program present
The hidden linguistic and written evidence of Christopher Columbus as a Spanish Jew by Professor Warren Bratter Wednesday, October 11, 2017 4:30-5:55pm Breslin 106
On this day around midnight 525 years ago, sailors on the Pinta, one of the three ships in Christopher Columbus’ Atlantic Ocean expedition, detected land. My talk on this anniversary day is about detective work of another kind: research related to The Admiral of the Sea himself. Using only the corpus of Columbus’ written words as the inflection point of my studies, I wish to suggest an alternative to the generally accepted biographical accounts of Columbus as an Italian Catholic of Genoese birth. The other Columbus, the one who emerges unconsciously in his written word and in his purposefully enigmatic self, is Jewish and Ibicen (Island of Ibiza).