Former Graduate Students

Yale’s Medieval Studies doctoral program has produced some of the most important North American medievalists. We also have a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ fellow among our ranks (Noel Swerdlow, who is probably the only medievalist to hold a chair in an Astrophysics department), along with a recipient of the MAA’s John Nicholas Brown Prize, the Vice President of Israel’s Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the first woman to receive a chair at the London School of Economics, distinguished librarians, and several prominent scholars of early medieval England.

ALUMNI

2023

Alexander Peña, Medieval Studies Ph.D.

Dissertation: “Foreign Knowledge and Shared Histories: Islam and Historical Thought in Medieval Latin Christendom”

Chihiro Tsukamoto, Medieval Studies Ph.D.

Dissertation: “Apollon’s Gift: Musical Therapy from Asklepieia to Bīmāristāns”

2022

Christopher West, Medieval Studies Ph.D., Religious Studies Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, 

Dissertation: “The Fall of the Angels in Western Patristic Thought”

Clara Wild, Medieval Studies Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor, Literature, Department of English Wake Forest University

Dissertation: “The Book of Forgetting: Oblivion and Erasure in Late Medieval England”

2020

Gina Marie Hurley, Medieval Studies PhD. 

Assistant Director of Graduate and Postdoctoral Development, Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Yale University

Dissertation: ”Confession and the Creation of Reputation in Middle English Romance”

Sebastian Rider-Bezerra, Medieval Studies PhD. 

Graduate Alumni Fellow; Lecturer, Department of History, Yale University

Dissertation: ”A House Between the Leopard and the Lily: The Use and Abuse of the Law in English Gascony”

Emily Ulrich, Medieval Studies PhD.

Graduate Alumni Fellow; Lecturer, Department of English, Yale University

Dissertation: “Reading the Nuneaton Codex in Trilingual England”

2018

Aaron Vanides Medieval Studies Phd

Assistant Profesor of Medieval History, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany

Christopher Platts Medieval Studies MPhil, History of Art Phd

Curator and Director, Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art, UCONN

Visiting Assistant Professor, Art and Art History Department, UCONN

2017

Katherine Hindley Medieval Studies Phd

Assistant Professor of English, Nanyang Technical University, Singapore

Anya Adair English Phd, Medieval Studies MPhil

Assistant Professor of English, University of Hong Kong

2016

Anne Schindel  Medieval Studies Phd

Lecturer, University of Southern CA

Elizabeth Walgenbach Medieval Studies Phd

Arni Magnusson Research Fellow, Arni Magnusson Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavik, Iceland

2015

Gregory Bryda (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in Art History)

Post-doc Fellow at the Universitat Hambourg, Germany

2014

Eric Weiskott (Medieval Studies MPhil,  Phd in English)

Assistant Professor of English, Boston College

2013

Colleen Farrell Medieval Studies Phd

Family M.D. Roslindale, MA

Nienke Venderbosch (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in English)

Employed by the Government of the Netherlands

Joseph Stadolnik (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in English)

Lecturer, English Dept, Yale University

E-Ching Ng (Medieval Studies MPhil, Linguistics Phd)

Lecturer, English Dept, National Univ. of Singapore

Hadi Jorati (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in Near Eastern Languages & Civs)

Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages, Ohio State University

Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

2012

Samantha Katz Seal Medieval Studies Phd

Assistant Professor of English, University of New Hampshire

Laura Miles (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in English)

Associate Professor Dept of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Norway

Madeleine Saraceni (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in English)

Adjunct Lecturer English Dept Queens College, CUNY

2011

Andrew Kraebel (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in English)

Assistant Professor English Trinity University San Antonio, TX

2010

Jonathan Cayer (Medieval Studies MPhil, Phd in French)

Language Lecturer of French New York University

(Further research will be undergoing to update the alumni listed below.)

2009

Juan Camilo Gomez-Rivas
Assistant Professor of History
American University in Cairo

Dissertation: “Muslim Jurists under the Almoravids”

Eric Knibbs
Assistant Professor of History
Williams College

Dissertation: “The Origins of the Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen”

Bobbie Sue Sutherland
Assistant Professor of History
Dordt College

Dissertation: “Making a Home: The Menagier of Paris as a Social and Cultural Document”

2006

Brian Robert Noell
Instructor, English Department
Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT
Dissertation: “Applied Science: Academic Learning and the Cistercian Enterprise in the Central Middle Ages”

2005

Iris Mueller
Artist

Dissertation: “Konrad von Ammenhausen’s Chess Book: A Case Study of Late Medieval Book Production and Readership”

2004

Thomas McKenna
Associate Professor of History and Philosophy
Concord University

Dissertation: “Delight in the Cross: The Beautiful, the Agreeable, and the Good in St. Bonaventure’s Spiritual Treatises”

Ryan Szpiech (Medieval Studies MPhil, PhD in Spanish and Portuguese (2006))
Associate Professor in the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures and Judaic Studies
University of Michigan

2003

Candace Gregory
Associate Professor of History
Sacramento State University

Dissertation: “The Geography of Dissent: Lollardy, Popular Religion, and Church Reform in Late Medieval York”

Howard Miller

Dissertation: “According to Christian Sunna: Mozarabic Notarial Culture in Toledo, 1085-1300”

Laura Lee Williams

Dissertation: “Carolingian Script at Luxeuil in the Ninth Century”

2002

Nicola Masciandaro

Associate Professor of English
Brooklyn College

Dissertation: “The Voice of the Hammer: Work in Medieval English Literature”

1999

Sharon Koren
Associate Professor of History
Hebrew Union College

Dissertation: “The Woman from Whom God Wanders: the Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism”

David Lopez

Dissertation: “Killing Sisara: Salvation, Apocalypse, and the Apologetic in Pre-Constantinian Christianity (AD 135-312)”

Emily Steiner
Associate Professor of English
University of Pennsylvania

Dissertation: “Piers Plowman and Medieval Documentary Politics”

1998

Mary Ramsey

Dissertation: “Englishing the Faith: Translation and Belief in Old English Homilies”

1997

Jeffrey Bowman
Professor of History
Kenyon College

Dissertation: “Law, Conflict, and Community around the Year 1000: The Settlement of Disputes in the Province of Narbonne, 985-1060”

Ronald Fisher

Dissertation: “Jean Gerson’s Meditation on Glory: A Study in the Semiotics of Medieval Negative Theology”

1996

Mark Rabuck
History Teacher
Germantown Academy

Dissertation: “The Imagined Boundary: Borders and Frontiers in Anglo-Saxon England”

Philip Rusche
Associate Professor of English
University of Nevada

Dissertation: “The Cleopatra Glossaries: An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses and their Sources”

Yasmin Tambiah

Dissertation: “Gendered Boundaries: Women, Ethno-Religious Communities, and the Aragonese Crown in the Fourteenth Century”

1995

Heather Barkley
Instructor
Amarillo College

Dissertation: “Exchange and Ritualized Violence: Cattle Raiding and the Spoils of Battle in Early Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Literature”

1994

Melissa Conway
Head of Special Collections
University of California, Riverside

Dissertation: “The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli: Commentary and Transcription”

Rebecca Turner

Dissertation: “Capella Beatae Mariae: The Lady Chapel in Medieval English Churches”

1993

Richard Armstrong
Associate Professor of Modern and Classical Languages

Dissertation: “Shame and Negativity: Critical Prolegomena to the Study of the Ugly in Late Antiquity”

Lisa Fagin Davis

Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America
Dissertation: “Epiphany at Lambach: the Evidence of the Gottshalk Antiphonary”

Kevin Echart

Dissertation: “Birgitta of Sweden and Late Medieval Prophecy”

1992

Duncan Fisher

Dissertation: “The Blickling and Vercelli Homilies and the Ethos of Revival”

1991

Jessica Finney

Dissertation: “Townsmen as Herdsmen: The Citizen Herders of Medieval Zaragoza and Teruel, 1118-1348”

Andrew Jotishky

Dissertation: “The Breath of the Dove: Hermits and Eremitical Monasticism in the Holy Land, 1095-1291”

Sara Lipton
Associate Professor of History
SUNY, Stony Brook

Dissertation: “Jews in the Commentary Text and Illustratoins of the Early Thirteenth Century Bibles Moralisee” (Advisor: )

Eric Perl

Dissertation: “Methexis: Creation, Incarnation, Deification in Saint Maximus the Confessor”

Jonathan Rotondo-McCord

Dissertation: “The Allod in the Medieval Rhineland”

1990

Marshall Grant

Dissertation: “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Quest for the Grail: Chretien de Troye’s Perceval, the First Continuation, Diu Krone, and the Perlesvaus”

Valerie Hotchkiss
Professor of Medieval Studies and Religion, Head of Rare Book and Manuscript Library
University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana

Diana Vacca

Dissertation: “Boccaccio’s Captive Women: Other Voices in the Decameron

1989

Elaine Beretz

Research Associate, Center for Visual Culture Bryn Mawr College

Visiting Associate Professor of Religion Haverford College

Dissertation:  “Fortune Denied:  The Theology against Chance at Saint-Étienne, Beauvais”

1988

Roy Liuzza
Professor of English
University of Tennessee

Dissertation: “New Wine in Old Bottles: The Twelfth Century Texts of the West-Saxon Gospels”

Judith Tarr
Fiction Writer

Dissertation: “Holy Virgins and Wanton Women: Hrotsvitha’s Terence and Anti-Terence”

Robert Moynihan
Editor, Random House

Dissertation: “Joachim of Fiore and the Early Franciscans: A Study of the Commentary Super Hieremiam

1986

Daniel Donoghue
John P. Marquand Professor of English
Harvard University

Dissertation: “Auxiliaries and Modals as a Test of Style in Old English Poetry”

Robin Chapman Stacey
Professor of History
University of Washington

Dissertation: “Lawbooks and Legal Enforcement in Medieval Ireland and Wales”

1985

Celia Chazelle
Professor of History
College of New Jersey

Dissertation: “The Cross, the Image, and the Passion in Carolingian Thought and Art”

Anne Higgins
Associate Professor of English
Simon Fraser University

Dissertation: “Time and the English Corpus Christi Drama”

Michael Hollas

Dissertation: “Lucas of Tuy and Thirteenth Century Laon”

1984

Elizabeth Archibald
Professor, Department of English Studies

Durham University, UK
 

Dissertation: “Apollonius of Tyre in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance”

Mary Blockley
Professor of English
University of Texas, Austin

Dissertation: “Linguistic and Stylistic Differences between Old English Verse and Old English Prose”

1983

Margaret J. Cormack
Professor of Religious Studies
College of Charleston

Dissertation: “The Saints in Iceland: Evidence for Cults before 1400”

Barbara Hurwitz

Dissertation: “Fidei Causa et Tui Amore: The Role of Petrus Alphonsi’s Dialogues in the History of the Jewish-Christian Debate”

1981

Rosemarie McGerr
Professor of Comparative Literature
Indiana University

Dissertation: “The Judgement of the Soul: A Critical Edition of the Middle English Pilgrimage of the Soul

Barbara Newman
Professor of English, Religion, and Classics, John Evans Professor of Latin
Northwestern University

Dissertation: “O Feminea Forma: God and Woman in the Works of St. Hildegard (1098-1179)”

1979

Laurence Stearns Creider
Special Collections Librarian
New Mexico State University

Dissertation: “Bede’s Understanding of the Miraculous”

John Lowell Leland

Dissertation: “Richard II and the Counter-Appelants: Royal Patronage and Royalist Politics”

1978

Peter Baker
Professor of English
University of Virginia

Dissertation: “Studies in the Old English Canon of Byrhtferth of Ramsey”

M. Teresa Tavormina
Professor of English
Michigan State University

Dissertation: “A Ful Greet Sacrement: Liturgical Backgrounds of Nuptial Themes in Middle English Literature”

1977

Victoria Ann Baum Bjorkland
Partner at Simpson Thatcher
Dissertation: “The Art of Translation in Ipomadon: From Anglo-Norman to Middle English”

Elizabeth Gregg

Dissertation: “Urban Finance and Defense Spending at Nantes during the Fifteenth Century”

Frederick Stein

Dissertation: “The Religious Women of Cologne: 1120-1320”

1976

Judith Baskin
Knight Professor in Humanities
University of Oregon

Dissertation: “Reflections of Attitudes towards the Gentiles in Jewish and Christian Exegesis of Jethro, Balaam, and Job”

Stuart Jenks

Dissertation: “The Black Death and Würzburg: Michael de Leone’s Reaction in Context”

1975

Tamar Frank

Dissertation: “Al-Kindi’s Book of Definitions: Its Place in Arabic Definition Literature”

Warren Ginsberg
Professor of English
University of Oregon

Dissertation: “Grant Translateur: Chaucer and his Sources”

Bernice M. Kaczynski
Professor of History
Macmaster University

Dissertation: “Greek Learning in theMedieval West: A Study of St. Gall, 816-1022”

1974

William Joseph Connery

Dissertation: “The Poet and the Clerk: A Study of the Narrative Poetry of Guillaume de Machaut”

William Gordon East
Priest, St Joseph’s Church, Pickering, N. Yorkshire, UK

Dissertation: “De Contemptu Britonum: A History of Prejudice”

Patrick Geary
Professor of Western Medieval History
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Dissertation: “Furta Sacra: The Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, 800-1100”

Amelia Anne Rutledge
Professor of English
George Mason University

Dissertation: “Narrative Structures in the Old French Prose Lancelot”

Kathryn Reyerson
Professor of History
University of Minnesota

Dissertation: “Commerce and Society in Montpellier, 1250-1350”

1973

Gerald A. Bond
Professor Emeritus of French and German
University of Rochester

Dissertation: “The Uncourtly Poetry of the Count of Poitiers, William VII”

Susan Emily Mehrtens

Dissertation: “Commerce and Productivity in England, 973-1086”

Richard Barton Palmer

Dissertation: “The Moral Portrait of the Hero: A Study of Ethical Questions in Beowulf

1972

Joseph Bernard

Dissertation: “San Bernardino of Siena: His Relation to the Humanist World of the Early Italian Renaissance”

James Mellon Park

Dissertation: “Patience: The Story of Jonah in a Middle English Poem”

1971

Jane Kahn Alper

Dissertation: “Pride in Germanic Heroic Poetry”

1970

//www2.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/j.coleman@lse.ac.uk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Janet Coleman
Professor of Ancient and Medieval Political Thought (Emerita)
London School of Economics

Dissertation: “Sublimes et Litterati: The Audience for the Themes of Grace, Justification, and Predestination traced from the Disputes of the 14th cent. Moderni to the Vernacular Piers Plowman

1969

Benjamin Z. Kedar
Professor of History (Emeritus)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dissertation: “Merchant Communities in Crisis: Changes in the Mood of Genoese and Venetian Merchants and Citizens, 1270-1400”

1968

Noel Swerdlow
Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Emeritus)
University of Chicago

Dissertation: “Ptolemy’s Theory of the Distances and Sizes of Planets: A Study of the Scientific Foundations of Medieval Cosmology”

1967

Edward Peters
Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History (Emeritus)
University of Pennsylvania

Dissertation: “Rex inutilis: Aspects of Royal Inadequacies in Medieval Law and Literature, 751-1400”