Noel Blanco Mourelle, Assistant Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, works at the intersection of epistemology, theology, and politics, with particular focus on the “Art” of Ramon Llull. His PhD is from Columbia, where his scholarship was supported by several writing fellowships. His MA is from École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and his BA is from Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He was previously on the faculty at William and Mary and his first book is tentatively titled “Learning Machines.”
In his “Art,” Llull sought to document a system containing all the world’s knowledge, using logical techniques that have led many to consider him the progenitor of contemporary computation. This thirteenth-century text had a significant impact on the creation of new institutions of knowledge throughout medieval and early modern Europe. In his current book project, Blanco Mourelle traces the “Art”'s influence, particularly in the Spanish royal court, where it was used to justify programs of imperialist expansion and conversion to Christianity. More broadly, his research examines religious conversion, political theology, and the history of the book, as these issues played out in the religiously and culturally diverse region surrounding the Mediterranean.
Read the full article at: http://tableau.uchicago.edu/articles/2019/09/new-faculty-fall-2019.
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