Home Jewish Studies The Converso's Return
book: The Converso's Return
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The Converso's Return

Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture
  • Dalia Kandiyoti
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2020
View content
View more publications by Stanford University Press
To Publisher Page

About this book

Five centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso's Return explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past.

Dalia Kandiyoti offers nuanced interpretations of contemporary fictional and autobiographical texts about crypto-Jews in Cuba, Mexico, New Mexico, Spain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. These works not only imagine what might be missing from the historical archive but also suggest an alternative historical consciousness that underscores uncommon convergences of and solidarities within Sephardi, Christian, Muslim, converso, and Sabbatean histories. Steeped in diaspora, Sephardi, transamerican, Iberian, and world literature studies, The Converso's Return illuminates how the converso narrative can enrich our understanding of history, genealogy, and collective memory.

Author / Editor information

Dalia Kandiyoti is Associate Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

Reviews

"Embedded in a sophisticated theoretical framework and a wide range of historical reference, The Converso's Return brilliantly explores and confronts questions of memory's use and representation. In creating a new literary map based on seemingly disparate texts that actually belong together, Dalia Kandiyoti is ever vigilant to the political implications of all forms of return."—Ammiel Alcalay, author of After Jews and Arabs --- "Dalia Kandiyoti lucidly traces the history and memory of crypto-Jewishness across historical periods, languages, and nations. Theoretically sophisticated, historically rigorous, and superbly written, The Converso's Return is a stimulating read for anyone interested in how literature makes it possible to reimagine a past fraught with contradictions, absences, and silences."—Tabea Alexa Linhard, author of Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean History

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    CONTENTS

    v
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    Preface

    vii
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    Acknowledgments

    xi
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Introduction. Lost and Found? The Afterlives of Conversion

    1
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Chapter 1. Doubles, Disguises, Splits: Conversos in Modern Literature and Thought

    49
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Chapter 2. Latinx Sephardism and the Absent Archive: Crypto-Jews and the Transamerican Latinx Imagination

    85
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Chapter 3. Return to Sepharad: Blood, Convergences, and Embodied Remnants

    124
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Chapter 4. Sephardis’ Converso Pasts: The Critical Genealogical Imagination

    170
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Chapter 5. Ottoman-Spanish and Jewish-Muslim Entanglements: Conversos in Contemporary Turkish Fiction

    209
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    CODA

    257
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Notes

    263
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Bibliography

    271
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Index

    297
    Download PDF

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 26, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9781503612440
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
336
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503612440
eBook ISBN: 9781503612440
Keywords for this book
Conversos; crypto-Jews; Sephardi history; returns in literature; historical fiction; historical consciousness; critical genealogy; the production of remnants; missing archives; world literature
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2026 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 27.2.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781503612440/html
Scroll to top button