Specialization:
Classical Receptions; Late Antiquity; The Twelfth Century; Medieval Historiography; Cartography in the Middle Ages.
Education:
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (Comparative LIterature: Medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, Old French/Old Provençal)
M.A., University of California, Berkeley (Comparative Literature: Latin/German)
B.A., College of Wooster - (Latin / Greek)
Bio:
My degrees are in Latin and Greek (B.A., College of Wooster) and Comparative Literature (M.A. and Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley), with an emphasis on classical and medieval literatures. After teaching briefly in Hawaii and longer in Boston, I came to UC Davis in 1995, where my home is in Classics. Here we primarily serve undergraduates, though we also offer a post-baccalaureate certificate program for students who need more coursework in Greek and Latin before moving on to graduate study (sometimes in the field of late antiquity). In the fall semesters 2014, 2016, and 2018, I’m teaching in the Classics Department at the University of Virginia.
The study of late antiquity nearly always informs my research, often in critical ways. This is especially true for my recent book, The Medieval Peutinger Map: Imperial Roman Revival in a German Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which attempts to trace some of the map’s sources in late Roman itineraries and texts and suggests the continuing ties to the Roman imperium, embraced by Carolingians and Hohenstaufen. Colleagues in the CCLA offered invaluable advice throughout all the years of research on this project, and our 2007 conference at Chateau La Bretesche let me test ideas in a formative stage.
Research:
Since completing my book, I’ve been able to return to the Normans, subject of my 2001 monograph. Two articles are now in press, on “Antioch and the Normans” and on the tone in the twelfth-century Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis. My friend Natalia Lozovsky and I are completing an English translation and commentary on an eleventh-century monastic chronicle, the Casus Sancti Galli by Ekkehard I. Ekkehard had a keen interest in the distinctive characters, monks and others, who lived in and around his monastery, and the chronicle makes lively and edifying reading, often upsetting commonplace views of medieval people and their world.
Publications:
Books
2014: The Medieval Peutinger Map: Imperial Roman Revival in a German Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
2006: Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices, ed. H.A. Drake and eo-ed. Emily Albu, Susanna Elm, Michael Maas, Claudia Rapp, Michele Salzman (Hampshire, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate).
2001: The Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth, and Subversion (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell and Brewer).
1998: Christianity: A Social and Cultural History, 2nd ed., with Howard Clark Kee, Carter Lindberg, J. William Frost, and Dana Robert. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998; 113-202. (6 chapters slightly revised from the 1991 Macmillan edition).
1994: Through the Eye of a Needle: Judeo-Christian Roots of Social Welfare, ed. with Carter Lindberg. Kirksville, Missouri: Thomas Jefferson University Press.
1991: Christianity: A Social and Cultural History, with Howard Clark Kee, Carter Lindberg, Jean-Loup Seban, and Mark A. Noll. New York: Macmillan; 145-255. (6 chapters, from 324 through the eleventh century).
Courses:
My teaching is far-ranging, including advanced classes in Latin literature (and very occasionally Greek), undergraduate courses in film and the classical world, a senior seminar in late antiquity, and a graduate seminar, Approaches to the Classical Past. I’ve very much enjoyed participating in the inter-campus video-conferenced late antique seminars with colleagues throughout California. Every year I team-teach large classes – to nearly 1,000 students in 2015 – on Greek and Latin elements in English vocabulary. Whenever I reasonably can, I introduce late antique and medieval mapping or Byzantine and Norman historiography into my classes.