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Specialization:
I am a specialist in the cultural and
intellectual history of late medieval Europe, specifically the Iberian
Peninsula. I teach the survey course of medieval history, as well
as classes on medieval cultural history, apocalypticism, and late
medieval crisis and change.
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Biography:
I was born out East, in the suburbs of New York City, and
spent part of my childhood in New Jersey. My formative years, however,
were in sunny Tampa Bay, which is essentially my home town. In high
school, I loved my courses in the humanities, in foreign languages, in
literature, in social studies, and, naturally, in history. I enrolled
in the University of Florida as an undergraduate. My original major was
chemistry, but I found that my true passion was awakened because of my
history and language courses.
In my first semester, I decided to major in history. I
decided to focus on medieval studies during my second year, after taking
a class with a truly great medievalist, Dr. Patrick Geary. Dr. Geary
inspired me with his love of his subject, his devotion to his students,
and his passion for his work. Throughout the course of my undergraduate
education, I enrolled in as many medieval-themed courses that I could,
as well as embarked upon intensive foreign language study.
After graduating, I received an Academic Year Ambassadorial
Fellowship from the Rotary Foundation and lived in Barcelona for ten
months' time. It was there that I fell in love with the culture, the
language, the history, and the people of Catalonia. I returned to the
States and enrolled in a Master's program at Western Michigan
University, located in Kalamazoo. This university is also home to the
largest annual gathering of medievalists, the International Congress on
Medieval Studies.
I wrote a thesis on fugitive slaves from the Kingdom of
Valencia and then enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of
Minnesota, where I worked under the direction of Dr. William D.
Phillips, Jr. and Dr. Carla Rahn Phillips. I adored my period of
graduate study at Minnesota, during which I had the opportunity to study
with medievalists of the highest caliber in the Department of History,
as well as other departments, since Minnesota's graduate program in
history encouraged interdisciplinary approaches to historical inquiry.
I am currently revising my dissertation, which studied the notion of
how prophecy and divination represented medieval people's attempt to
access a body of privileged knowledge, into a book-length manuscript.
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