During the summer of 2021 Apoorba Misra ’22 worked with Professor Stacy Beckwith on a project investigating the history and the cinematic portrayal of Jewish-Muslim-Christian interactions in 14th century Spain. Apoorba shared her experience as an SRP with the Humanities Center
“This summer I had the privilege of working with Professor Beckwith investigating the history and the cinematic portrayal of Jewish-Muslim-Christian interactions in 14th century Spain. The Netflix show we focused on called, La Catedral del Mar (Cathedral of the Sea), is an eight-part series that is based on a best-selling novel of the same name by a very popular historical fiction writer, Ildefonso Falcones. Our research focused on the mise-en-scene and formal analysis of the show combined with in-depth historical investigation of inter-communal relations in medieval Spain. Our approach revealed disparities between Spain’s historical treatment of medieval Iberian Jews and Muslims, and how they appeared and interacted on screen for 21st century audiences. We also studied how SVODs (subscription video on demand services), such as Netflix have broken into global national cinemas like Spain’s, further enabling some distortions of the country’s multicultural past.
The remote nature of the research definitely was difficult to navigate at first but working with Stacy alone was a dream come true. She was so kind, generous, and understanding but above all, we were excited about the same things and experiences that made the research an absolute thrill. I was able to work in tandem with Stacy and despite the distance, we were able to collaborate in absolute harmony. I think no matter the distance, now I am comfortable in group projects and multi-disciplinary work that draws on different ways of thinking.
Working with Stacy was a complete joy. Even after the research ended, we kept in touch discussing ideas about the show and the project as we both developed expertise in the subject matter, and watching a professional work with such dexterity was more inspiring than anything else.”