Between Dung and Blood

Manuela Ceballos's Between Dung and Blood analyzes the lives and legacies of two sixteenth-century saints—Teresa de Jesús (Teresa of Avila) and the Moroccan Sufi Sidi Ridwan al-Januwi—to explore how blood, dung, and other bodily substances operated as material and metaphorical instruments of purity, sainthood, and power across the early modern Western Mediterranean.

Drawing on Arabic and Spanish sources, the book traces how descendants of converts navigated contested genealogies and how discourses of impurity were mobilized differently in Christian and Muslim contexts.

Ceballos argues these bodily tropes were neither stable nor universal, revealing shifting boundaries around religion, race, gender, and authority.

The study connects embodied practices, material culture, and mystical traditions to show how marginal substances became central to claims of holiness and political legitimacy.

Richly interdisciplinary, the book engages history, religious studies, and the material turn to rethink embodiment and power between Morocco and Iberia.