Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. A historian who studies medieval studies is called a medievalist.
Anonymous IV is the designation given to the writer of an important treatise of medieval music theory. He was probably an English student working at Notre Dame de Paris, most likely in the 1270s or 1280s. Nothing is known about his life. His writings survive in two partial copies from Bury St Edmunds; one from the 13th century, and one from the 14th.
Jacques Le Goff was a French historian and prolific author specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries.
Medievalism is a system of belief and practice inspired by the Middle Ages of Europe, or by devotion to elements of that period, which have been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture. Since the 17th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the pre-Raphaelite and arts and crafts movements, and neo-medievalism . Historians have attempted to conceptualize the history of non-European countries in terms of medievalisms, but the approach has been controversial among scholars of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Paul Harris Freedman is an American historian and medievalist who serves as the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale University; he is a recipient of the Haskins Medal for his work regarding Medieval Europe. Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the history of Catalonia, the study of medieval peasantry, and the history of American cuisine. Freedman is the author of more than 10 books and 40 academic papers having been published by Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University, Cambridge University, University of Toronto, and the University of Bologna, among others. He wrote extensively on the history of the Middle Ages during his career as a historian though he has recently shifted to culinary history.
Heinrich von Fichtenau was an Austrian medievalist best known for his studies of medieval diplomatics, social, and intellectual history. He spent his academic career at the University of Vienna and from 1962 to 1983 served as director of the Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung. Many of Fichtenau's books were translated into English and he remains one of the few Austrian medievalists of the postwar period whose work has enjoyed a broad and influential reception in Anglophone scholarship.
Caroline Walker Bynum, FBA is a Medieval scholar from the United States. She is a University Professor emerita at Columbia University and Professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was the first woman to be appointed University Professor at Columbia. She is former Dean of Columbia's School of General Studies, served as president of the American Historical Association in 1996, and President of the Medieval Academy of America in 1997–1998.
Walter Andre Goffart is a German-born American historian who specializes in Late Antiquity and the European Middle Ages. He taught for many years in the history department and Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto (1960–1999), and is currently a senior research scholar at Yale University. He is the author of monographs on a ninth-century forgery, late Roman taxation, four "barbarian" historians, and historical atlases.
William Chester Jordan is an American medievalist who serves as the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University; he is a recipient of the Haskins Medal for his work concerning the Great Famine of 1315–1317. He is also a former Director of the Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton. Jordan has studied and published on the Crusades, English constitutional history, gender, economics, Judaism, and, most recently, church-state relations in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Roberto Sabatino Lopez was an Italian-born American historian of medieval European economic history. He taught for many years at Yale University as a Sterling Professor of History.
Durant Waite Robertson Jr. was a scholar of medieval English literature and especially Geoffrey Chaucer. He taught at Princeton University from 1946 until his retirement in 1980 as the Murray Professor of English, and was "widely regarded as this [the twentieth] century's most influential Chaucer scholar".
Richard William Kaeuper is an American medievalist historian. He was a student of, and mentored by, Joseph Strayer, the noted Princeton scholar. Kaeuper grew up in Richmond, Indiana.
The medieval renaissances were periods of cultural renewal across medieval Western Europe. These are effectively seen as occurring in three phases - the Carolingian Renaissance, Ottonian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century.
Jan Ziolkowski occupies the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professorship of Medieval Latin at Harvard University. From 2007 to 2020 he served as Director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. His scholarship has focused on the literature, especially in Latin, of the Middle Ages.
Robert E. Lerner is an American medieval historian and professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University.
The Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies is a $10,000 book prize sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The Laura Shannon Prize is awarded annually to the author of the "best book in European studies that transcends a focus on any one country, state, or people to stimulate new ways of thinking about contemporary Europe as a whole." "Contemporary" is construed broadly, and books about particular countries or regions have done well in the process so long as there are implications for the remainder of Europe. The prize alternates between the humanities and history/social sciences. Nominations are typically due at the end of January each year and may be made by either authors or publishers. The final jury selects one book as the winner each year and has the discretion to award honorable mentions.
Giles Constable was an English historian of the Middle Ages. Constable was mainly interested in the religion and culture of the 11th and 12th centuries, in particular the abbey of Cluny and its abbot Peter the Venerable.
Joëlle Rollo-Koster is a French medievalist working as a professor of medieval history at the University of Rhode Island.
Nigel Smith is a literature professor and scholar of the early modern world. He is William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature and Professor of English at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1999. He is best known for his interdisciplinary work, bridging literature and history, on 17th-century political and religious radicalism and the literature of the English Revolution, including the poetry and prose of John Milton and Andrew Marvell.
Elisheva Baumgarten is the Yitzchak Becker Professor of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is an expert on the social and religious history of the Jews of medieval northern Europe (1000-1400). Her research includes those who did not write the sources that have been transmitted, focusing particularly on women and gender hierarchies.
