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Linda G. Jones specializes in the religious and cultural history of medieval al-Andalus and the Maghreb (12th to 15th centuries). Her research interests focus on textual representations of gender dynamics and masculinity in medieval Islam; (trans)cultural encounters between Islam and Christendom in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean reflected in Almohad, Nasrid, Mudejar, and Castilian texts; medieval Islamic oratory and comparative medieval sermon studies. She has explored these topics as the PI of two competitive research projects funded by the Spanish government and the European Union, “Writing Religious, Transcultural, Gendered Identities and Alterities in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean,” FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades/ Agencia Estatal de Investigación (PGC2018-093472-B-C32 (2019-2022) and, previously, “Interdisciplinary and Comparative Studies in Religious, (Trans)cultural, and Gendered Identities in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia and the Mediterranean,” Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FEDER (FFI2015-63659-C2-2-P) (2016-2019).

 

Dr. Jones received her Ph.D. from the Department of Religious Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2004. Her doctoral dissertation comparing Muslim and Christian preaching in medieval Iberia won the USA national Malcolm H. Kerr Award for best dissertation in Middle Eastern Studies in the Humanities. She was awarded two competitive post-doctoral research contracts: a Ramón y Cajal research professorship (UPF, 2014-2018) and a Juan de la Cierva post-doctoral research position in the Department of Medieval History of the Milà i Fontanals-CSIC in Barcelona (2007-2010). She has received numerous grants from competitive funding agencies in the United States to conduct her doctoral and postdoctoral research, including Fulbright Hays, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jones’ extensive scholarship on medieval Islamic preaching includes her first monograph, The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge University Press, 2012), numerous book chapters, and journal articles. She has coordinated three collective volumes on comparative religions and sermons studies in the Anuario de Estudios Medievales 42 no. 1 (2012), L.G. Jones/A. Dupont-Hamy, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Preaching in the Medieval Mediterranean and Europe: Identities and Interfaith Encounters. Series, SERMO 15, Turhout: Brepols Press, 2019), and A. Coello de la Rosa/L.G. Jones, Saints and Sanctity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Striving for Remembrance (14th to 20th centuries). (London: Routledge Press/ T&F. 2020), as well as numerous chapters and articles on gender and masculinity in medieval Islam, including “Representations of Hegemonic Masculinities in Medieval Leonese-Castilian and Almohad Chronicles,” Speculum 97 no. 3 (July 2022): 737-774 and "Constructing Gender Identities and Relations in a Mudejar Hortatory Sermon Addressed to Women," Medieval Sophia 24 (gennaio-dicembre, 2022)

 

Dr. Jones has organized numerous international conferences, including, the 22nd International Symposium of the International Medieval Sermon Studies (IMSSS) (online, July 2021) and theInternational Workshop “Intersections of Gender and Genres in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” (Barcelona, 2022). She has recently served as Vice-President of the Society (IMSSS), Co-chair of the Steering Committee of the Men, Masculinities, and Religion Unit of the American Academy of Religion, and as a member of the Executive Committee of the American academic association, the Spain-North Africa Project. She currently serves  on the editorial board of the new scholarly journal, Sermon Studies, published by Marshall University in West Virginia..