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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. 

David Spielman