Sharon Kinoshita is a professor of medieval literature, and co-director of the UCSC Center for Mediterranean Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
[1] In 2016, she published a new translation of Marco Polo's 'Description of the World', from the Franco-Italian 'F' version of the text.
[3] Kinoshita has published extensively on a range of Mediterranean medieval topics, including medieval French literature, Marie de France,[4] the values of feudal society,[5] the mid-12th century chanson de geste 'Prise d'Orange', the crusades, feminist criticism, Chrétien de Troyes, courtly love, and the writing and life of Marco Polo.
[6][7] The book explores representations of cultural contact between “France” and the Islamic and Byzantine worlds.
[8] In 2021, Kinoshita delivered the Medieval Academy of America plenary at the International Congress on Medieval Studies Kalamazoo virtual conference, on “Marco Polo and the Diversity of the Global Middle Ages”.