 Joan Ullman
Tonight my office is the Meson del Cid Restaurant, in Burgos, Spain--overlooking
the Cathedral, which in turn overlooks the vast Castilian plains. If for
Proust ruminations on a madeleine could conjure up a world of associations,
for me it's the lamb chop--the perfect dinner with a hearty Duero wine.
The chop puts me in mind of the Mesta, the medieval sheepherders'
guild...which in turn recalls Professor Joan Ullman's Spanish history lectures,
which indirectly set me on the road I now follow.
Start with geography, she said--Iberia as outstretched bull's hide with
its mighty rivers uniting and dividing the country, its mountain ranges
walling in distinct regions. Phoenicians, Romans, Goths, Arabs--we considered
all their contributions. It was the 1960s, and the knowledge that once three
dissimilar cultures lived in peace and cooperation -- Jewish-Arab-Christian
culture in medieval Iberia -- was seductive. Professor Ullman did not allow
the romance of this convivencia to blind us to the power of institutions
and their intolerance, which in time undermined that great and rich society.
Enter the lamb chop. Today, as I crisscross Spain I often think of the
sheepherders' guild and their control, wealth and power, with its lasting
effects on Spain, and intriguingly and indirectly on Latin America. Add
the Mesta, the army and the church, and you have the institutions
that have shaped so much of Iberia's human geography.
In the 1960s, Professor Ullman's lectures on the 20th century Spanish
Civil War seemed particularly meaningful and poignant. Now in Spain, I regularly
meet Spaniards too young to remember the post-Civil War dictatorship. In
a noisy café, I sometimes conjure up a Joan Ullman lecture on the
post-Socialist government, on the effects of youth unemployment on the social
fabric. So much of the meat of her teaching has stayed with me--like a satisfying
Castilian stew; I am much in her debt. And there is still so much to enjoy--from
the rolling plains with their great pilgrimage history in the north, to
the purple bougainvillea cascading down the ruins of a hill top castle somewhere
in sunny Andalucia. Like Proust's madeleine, my first bite of Castilian
lamb released a whole history.
Sarah Banks, '71
Seattle
Photo courtesy Dept. of History. |
