Toby Liang’s books and articles focus on the vivid world of the Mediterranean, a region where cultures, religions, and empires intersect. He wrote Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm about a clan of knights that conquered Muslim Córdoba, Granada, and Algeria and then incorporated these lands and their peoples into a global empire. The Fernández de Córdoba’s history also reveals how a family deeply rooted to a local community rapidly internationalized amid the expansion of the realm, and how these transformations changed childhoods, friends, marriages, careers, properties, and even deaths in the family. The book innovatively argues that families served as the means for the development of imperial administration and for the very reproduction of the empire.
Collaborations with scholars also enable Liang to help develop the fields of Spanish, North African, and Mediterranean histories. He has co-edited Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, a volume of essays on the power of celebrations, performance, ceremonies, rituals, and language in Spain and Europe. He also co-edited Spanning the Strait: Studies in Unity in the Western Mediterranean and A Forgotten Empire: The Spanish-North African Borderlands on the enduring connections between Spain and North Africa.
Liang’s continuing research concentrates on the Mediterranean as well as on the practice of history in the digital age.
Known by his friends as Toby, he publishes under his formal name Yuen-Gen Liang.
Collaborations with scholars also enable Liang to help develop the fields of Spanish, North African, and Mediterranean histories. He has co-edited Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, a volume of essays on the power of celebrations, performance, ceremonies, rituals, and language in Spain and Europe. He also co-edited Spanning the Strait: Studies in Unity in the Western Mediterranean and A Forgotten Empire: The Spanish-North African Borderlands on the enduring connections between Spain and North Africa.
Liang’s continuing research concentrates on the Mediterranean as well as on the practice of history in the digital age.
Known by his friends as Toby, he publishes under his formal name Yuen-Gen Liang.
Books
- Author, Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
- Co-editor with Barbara Fuchs, A Forgotten Empire: The Early Modern Spanish-North African Borderlands, a monographic issue of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 12, no. 3 (September 2011).
- Co-editor with Andrew Devereux, Abigail Krasner Balbale, and Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Spanning the Strait: Studies in Unity in the Western Mediterranean (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2013).
- Co-editor with Jarbel Rodriguez, Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017).
Articles
- With Jarbel Rodriguez, “Authority and Spectacle: Teofilo F. Ruiz and the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” in Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Teofilo Ruiz (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017).
- With Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Andrew Devereux, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, “The Spain-North Africa Project and the Study of the Western Mediterranean,” in Spanning the Strait: Studies in Unity in the Western Mediterranean, a special issue of Medieval Encounters 19, no. 1-2 (2013), 1-40.
- With Barbara Fuchs, “A Forgotten Empire: The Early Modern Spanish-North African Borderlands,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 12, no. 3 (September 2011): 261-271.
- With Touba Ghadessi, “The Interdisciplinary Humanities: A Platform for Experiential Learning of Workplace Skills,” Perspectives on History 51, no. 4 (April 2013).