Emily Tai, Ph.D.

Office: M-413

Office Phone: 718-281-5081

Email: [email protected]

Emily Sohmer Tai received her B.A. from Queens Collge, CUNY, in history and classics (1982), and her A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in Western European Medieval History (1996). Her research focuses on the history of piracy in the medieval and Early modern Mediterranean, while her teaching has also taken her into the fields of world history, women's history, and the history of religion. She has been the recipeint of a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship (1989-1990), and, more recently, of grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation (2004), the PSC-CUNY Research Foundation (2001-2005), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (2004), for which she also served as a mentor in the development of curriculum in the history of Islam for an NEH/ Community College Humanities Association grant, Bridging Cultures: Strengthening the Humanities at Community Colleges, between 2012-2014.

Dr. Tai currently teaches HIST 111 (Introduction to Medieval and Early Modern Civilization), HIST 152 (Women in World History), HIST 212 (Pirates and the Sea), and HIST 295 (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).

Books:

Mapping Pre-Modern Sicily: Maritime Violence, Cultural Exchange, and Imagination in the Mediterranean, 800-1700, essay collection, co-edited with Kay Reyerson (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022; co-authored Introduction with Dr. Reyerson, and chapter 13, listed below).

Articles/Book Chapters:

“Ghosts of Admiral Roger: Piracy and Political Fantasy in Tirant lo Blanc,” in Mapping Pre-Modern Sicily: Maritime Violence, Cultural Exchange, and Imagination in the Mediterranean, 800-1700, essay collection, co-edited with Kay Reyerson (forthcoming from Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022), pp. 225-242.

 “Der rechtliche Status von Gewalt auf See im Mittelalter,” (“The Legal Status of Violence at Sea in the Middle Ages”), Catalogue article for exhibit at the Europäische Hansemuseum, Lubeck, Germany, Störtebecker und Konsorten: Piraten der Hansezeit? (Störtebecker and Company: Pirates of the Hanse Period?), September 27, 2019-April 19, 2020, pp. 15-22.

“Pirates on the Coast: Littoral Expansion and Maritime Predation in Liguria and Dalmatia, 1300-1600,” in Merchants, Pirates, and Smugglers: Criminalization, Economics and the Transformation of the Maritime World (1200-1600), ed. Thomas Heebøll-Holm, Philipp Höhn, and Gregor Rohmann (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2019), pp. 165-188.

“Held to Account: Medieval Scribes at Sea,” Mediterranean Studies vol. 25, no. 2 (2017): 164-188.

"The Legal Status of Piracy in Medieval Europe, " History Compass, vol. 10, no. 11 (2012): 838-851.

"Marking Water: Piracy and Property in the Pre-Modern West," in Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges, ed. Jerry Bentley, renate Bridenthal and Karen Wigen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 205-220.

"Restitution and the Definition of a Pirate: The Case of Sologrus de Nigro," Mediterranean Historical Review 19, no.2 (2004): 34-70.

"Piracy and Law in medieval Genoa: The Consilia of Batolomeo Bosco," Medieval Encounters, 9, no 2-3 (2003): 256-282.

Reviews:

Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), in Canadian Journal of History 52, no. 2 (2017): 409-411.

Daniel Williman and Karen Ann Corsano, eds., The Spoils of the Pope and the Pirates, 1357: The Complete Legal Dossier from  the Vatican Archives (Cambridge, Mass.: Ames Foundation, Harvard Law School, and Buffalo, New York: William S. Hein, 2014), in Speculum 91, no. 1 (2016): 270-272. 

Seeraub im Mittelmeerraum: Piraterie, Korsarentum und maritime Gewalt von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, ed. Nikolas  Jaspert and Sebastian Kolditz, The Medieval Review 15.06.12

Charles D Stanton, Norman Naval Operations in the Mediterranean (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2011), in H-France Review, vol 12, no. 56 (April 2012).

Susan Rose, The Medieval Sea (London and New York: Continuum, 2007) in American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain Newsletter (Winter 2009).

Hassan S. Khalilieh, Admiralty and maritime Laws in the Mediterranean (ca.800-1050): The Kitab Akriyat al-Sufun vis-a-vis the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos (Leiden: E.J. Brill Publishers, 2006), in Medieval Encounters 13 (2007): 602-612.

Salvatore Bono, Lumi e corsari:Europa e Maghreb nel Settecento  (Perugia: Morlacchi Editore, 2005) in Mediterranean Historical Review 21, no. 2 (2006): 282-287.