Rate My Professor Antonio Zaldivar

Antonio M. Zaldívar is an Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Marcos, where he has been a faculty member since Fall 2014. He specializes in the Iberian Peninsula during the High and Late Middle Ages, focusing on language use, diplomatic strategies, codeswitching, and religious patronage in medieval Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the broader world. Zaldívar completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2014, with a dissertation entitled Language and Power in the Medieval Crown of Aragon: The Rise of Vernacular Writing and Codeswitching Strategies in the Royal Chancery, directed by Teofilo F. Ruiz. He previously earned an M.A. from Western Michigan University and a B.A. from Florida State University. During his doctoral program, he was awarded the George T. and Margaret W. Romani Fellowship from UCLA's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He is currently preparing a book manuscript tentatively titled The Power of Language Choice in the Lands of the Crown of Aragon, 1000-1291.

Zaldívar's publications include the co-edited special issue Iberia, the Mediterranean, & the World in the Medieval & Early Modern Periods (Pedralbes, vol. 40, 2020) with Thomas W. Barton and Marie A. Kelleher; “La lengua como instrumento de diplomacia en la correspondencia entre las cancillerías reales de Aragón y Mallorca, 1341-1349” in Diplomacia y desarrollo del Estado en la Corona de Aragón (2020); “Emphasizing Urgency in the Romance: An Example of Strategic Codeswitching in the Crown of Aragon's Thirteenth-Century Royal Chancery” in Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (2017); “James I and the Rise of Codeswitching Diplomacy in Thirteenth-Century Catalonia” (Viator 47:3, 2016); “Patricians’ Embrace of the Dominican Convent of St. Catherine in Thirteenth-Century Barcelona” (Medieval Encounters 18, 2012); and contributions such as the introduction to Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700 (2022) and “Reconsidering the Shift from Latin to Romance in the Castilian Chancery” (2022). He has presented papers, including on language as a diplomatic instrument between Aragonese and Majorcan royal chanceries. Zaldívar teaches undergraduate and graduate courses such as HIST 101: World History to 1500, HIST 301: Historical Methods, HIST 313A: Early Medieval Europe, HIST 313B: Late Medieval Europe, HIST 314: The Crusades, HIST 315: Church Reform, Heresy, and Witchcraft in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, HIST 317: Renaissance and Reformation Europe, HIST 400: Medieval Spain: A Land of Three Religions, HIST 512: Teaching History: Theory and Practice, and HIST 699C: Independent Study. He serves on the CHABSS College Governance Council and the CSUSM Academic Senate.