The impetus for this volume of scholarly articles on Medieval Iberia came from the interdisciplinary symposium held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on 18–19 November 2004, co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Medieval Studies Program. Thirteen Madison colleagues from the departments of History, Art History, Comparative Literature, Hebrew and Semitic Studies, and Spanish and Portuguese, with the participation of two scholars from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and Miami University (Ohio), presented papers on a wide range of topics dealing with the culture, history and letters of the medieval Iberian Peninsula. The list of participants included: Stanley G. Payne, María Esperanza Alfonso, William J. Courtenay, Kristin Neumayer, Matthew L. Juge, Ray Harris-Northall, Thomas D. Cravens, Thomas E. A. Dale, Karl Blaine Shoemaker, Barbara Weissberger, María Dolores Bollo-Panadero, Nhora Lucía Serrano, Pablo Ancos, Gabriela Cerghedean and Ivy A. Corfis. Since many of the participants were eager to continue the lines of investigation presented at the symposium, they and scholars from across the U.S. were invited to contribute essays related to the cultural history of the Peninsula from a historical, linguistic or literary perspective. In all, six of the volume contributors are original symposium participants from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with another seven scholars contributing from other universities. The contributors represent some of the finest established scholars working on the fascinating complexity of Medieval Iberia, in addition to younger scholars just making their mark on the field.