Eugene Smelyansky contributed to the recently published edited volume Law, Justice, and Society in the Medieval World: An Introduction through Film (Fordham University Press, 2025). This collection examines 20 films set in the Middle Ages and explores the depictions of “medieval” laws, customs, and norms in them. Since films remain one of the most popular and most accessible public venues for learning about the past, this edited volume—aimed primarily at college students—provides a guide to how these norms are represented or misrepresented by the creators of each film. Eugene’s contribution, “Medieval Science, the Spanish Inquisition, and Religious Violence in
1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992),” analyzes Ridley Scott’s famous biopic and the film’s attempts to whitewash Columbus as a “harbinger of modernity” in medieval Spain.