“Lucidly written, Eric Calderwood’s On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of Al-
Andalus deftly traces the stories associated with al-Andalus across centuries to explore
how interracial and interreligious harmony was shaped across the Middle East, North
Africa, and Europe. Through a multilingual reading, Calderwood demonstrates how the
richness and elasticity of al-Andalus in the Arabic, English, and Spanish versions of this
legend inspire and influence political imaginations of the past and the politics of colonial
and regional identities of the present. Calderwood smoothly moves back and forth across
genres and disciplines, making his expansive study and multidirectional approach
decidedly comparative. Thinking beyond the universalism of al-Andalus, On Earth or in
Poems foregrounds frictions and demonstrates the best of comparative literary studies in
working with divergence, unevenness, and past and present.”