The Medieval Academy of America Recognizes the Work of Princeton’s Marina Rustow

Marina Rustow, the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and professor of Near Eastern studies and history at Princeton University in New Jersey, has been awarded the 2022 Haskins Medal by the Medieval Academy of America. The Haskins Medal is awarded annually by the academy for a distinguished book in the field of medieval studies. It is the organization’s most prestigious award.

Professor Rustow was honored for her book The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton University Press, 2020). Dr. Rustow’s work focuses on texts from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of more than 400,000 folio pages and fragments of legal documents, letters, and literary materials going back to about the year 870, that were consigned to a hiding place or storeroom in the medieval Ben Ezra Synagogue in the old city of Cairo.

The citation for the Haskins Medal states that the book “transforms key paradigms not just within medieval studies but also in the fields of Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Mediterranean Studies, and Near and Middle Eastern Studies. The book is alive with the joys of intense scholarly endeavor. The Lost Archive excels on multiple levels, makes important contributions to several fields, and speaks to a wide range of readers.”

Dr. Rustow is a graduate of Yale University, where she majored in literature. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University.