Introduction to the Humanities

Maya Soifer was born and raised in the Soviet Union, and never imagined she would leave her native Moscow and move across the ocean at the age of 18, to live in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. When she recovered from the shock, she promptly enrolled in the undergraduate program at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Having received her B.A. in History, she had nothing better to do than to go for an M.A. in the same subject. When that was not enough, she knocked on the doors of a few elite graduate schools, only to be shocked again, this time by a letter of admission from Princeton. Once there, Maya indulged her interest in medieval history, Jewish-Christian religious controversies, and Spain. The resulting Ph.D. dissertation (defended in September, 2007) is an outgrowth of these intellectual passions. Entitled “The Jews of the ‘Milky Way’: Jewish-Christian Relations and Royal Power in Northern Castile-León,” it explores the socio-political foundations for Jewish-Christian coexistence (convivencia) in the kingdom of Castile between the eleventh and the fourteenth century. Besides preparing a book manuscript, Maya is currently working on a journal article about the future of Jewish-Iberian studies. When not poring over esoteric medieval manuscripts or grading papers, Maya spends her time reading Proust, cooking her favorite dishes, playing the piano, and getting ready for the next big surprise.