David Spielman
Assistant Professor
dsb9004@nyu.edu
(212) 992-9826
416 - 1 Wash Pl
Office Hours
Tuesday 9:15-11:15
Thursday 9:15-11:15
M.A., African Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
Ph.D., History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2021
David B. Spielman is a historian of the Horn of Africa, with a focus on early modern Christian Ethiopia. His research draws upon literary and archival materials in Ge'ez, Amharic, Italian, and more to examine the processes by which the Ethiopian Orthodox Church integrated a Coptic-Arabic legal text into its corpus and applied it across a society where multiple legal orders coexisted. Spielman has a wide range of research interest that include Ethiopian/Eritrean Ge'ez literature, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Horn of Africa manuscript cultures, law, African history, Global history and more. He earned a BA in African-American Studies from UCLA, his MA in African Studies from UCLA, and his PhD in History from UCLA. His research has been funded by the Fulbright-Hays and the James S. Coleman African Studies Center at UCLA among others.
Teaching and Research Interests
Interests African History Horn of Africa History Ethiopian/Eritrean History Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church GeÕez (Ethiopic) Ethiopian/Eritrean Manuscript Cultures Law Canon Law GeÕez Literature Christianity in the Horn of Africa.
Courses
2024 Spring
Wrong Prester John, Wrong Indies: Ethiopian and European Encounter in Early-Modern Ethiopia
2023 Spring
Wrong Prester John, Wrong Indies: Ethiopian and European Encounter in Early-Modern Ethiopia
2023 Fall
Queens, Saints, and Warriors: Women and/in Power in Christian Ethiopian History
Religion and Power in the Horn of Africa (13th-17th Century)
2022 Spring
