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
2024
Carson Koepke, Medieval Studies Ph.D.
Dissertation: “The Hagiographical Tradition of St. Eustace Placidas in the Early Middle Ages”
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
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”
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 Illustrations of the Early Thirteenth Century Bibles Moralisée”
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
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 Emerita of History, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario;
Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto
Dissertation: “Greek Learning in the Medieval 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
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”