Alexandra Cuffel

This project analyzes shared saint cults and festivals in the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean, namely Jewish, Christian, and Muslim participation in festivals or visiting graves with members of other faiths even when the holy days or "saints" were not traditionally part of both or all three religions. In particular, this study focuses on the polemical discourses that developed about the presence of the religious other, women, and "cross-dressers" (non-Sufis dressing as Sufis, or men and women dressing as the other) at festivals, holy gravesites, and study circles. The rhetorical uses of these practices, as much as the practices themselves become keys to understanding the formation and politics of religious and gender identity and boundaries among Jews, Christians and Muslims.