Directory

Research Interests

• Medieval Europe
• Medieval Religious and Cultural History
• Medieval Education and Intellectual History
• Manuscript Studies
• Renaissance and Reformation Europe

Courses Taught

• Western Civilization to 1648 (HY101)
• Honors Western Civilization to 1648 (HY 105)
• The Crusades (HY 300)
• The Reel Middle Ages (HY 300)
• Peer Mentoring Leadership Seminar (HY 301)
• Monks, Masters, Mystics and Heretics (HY 400)
• Medieval Biography and its Discontents (HY 430)
• The Middle Ages (HY 442)
• Proseminar in Medieval and Early Modern European History (HY 631)

Awards and Honors

• National Alumni Association Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award (2016)
• The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences Leadership Board, Outstanding Commitment to Students Award (2011)
• The University of Alabama Research Advisory Committee Grant (2005; 2010)
• Heckman Research Fellowship, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (2005)
• D.A.A.D. Research Grant, Munich, Germany (2004)
• Fulbright Fellowship (1997-8)
• Bavarian Cultural Ministry Fellowship (1997-8)

Monographs

• Poverty’s Proprietors: Ownership and Mortal Sin at the Origins of the Observant Movement (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

Journal Articles and Essays

• “Writing, Reading, and Remembering Belgrade: Two New Crusade Narratives for the Crusade of 1456” (in progress).
• “Religious Life, Elites, and Medieval Culture: An Outline of a Theme and its Possibilities.” Religious Life, Elites, and Medieval Culture,” in Religious Life, Elites, and Medieval Culture. Berlin: LIT, forthcoming.
• “Bernardino’s Rotting Corpse? A Skeptic’s Tale of Capistrano’s Preaching North of the Alps.” Franciscan Studies 75 (2017), 73-88.
• “The Poor Monk and the Proprietors: Observant Reform of Community as Conflict,” Saeculum 66 (2016): 93-110.
• “Introduction,” in Religious Life between Jerusalem, the Desert and the World: Selected Essays of Kaspar Elm, trans. James D. Mixson (Leiden: Brill, 2016): 1-27.
• “Introduction,” in Observant Reform in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond, eds. James D. Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015): 1-20.
• “Observant Reform’s Conceptual Frameworks between Principle and Practice,” in Observant Reform in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond, eds. James D. Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015): 60-84.
• “Religious Life and Religious Orders,” in The Routledge History of Medieval Christianity 1050-1500, ed. R. N. Swanson (London: Routledge, 2015): 45-57.
• “Giovanni Dominici’s Firefly Reconsidered,” in Christianity and Culture in the Middle Ages: A Volume in Honor of John Van Engen, eds. David Mengel and Lisa Wolverton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014): 387-418.
• “Religious Life and Observant Reform in the Fifteenth Century,” History Compass 11:3 (March, 2013): 201–214.
• “Giovanni Dominici’s Firefly Reconsidered,” in Christianity and Culture in the Middle Ages: Essays to Honor John Van Engen, eds. David Mengel and Lisa Wolverton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015).
• “Contesting Authority and Community: Models and Practices of Monastic Reform in Late Medieval Central Europe,” Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010): 30-47.
• “John Nider’s Reformation of Religion,” in Kirchenbild und Spiritualität: Ekklesiologie aus dem Anspruch des mendikantischen Ordensideals, eds. Thomas Prügl and Marianne Schlosser (Schöningh, 2006).

Edited Volumes

• The Grand Tour of John of Capistrano in Central and Eastern Europe (1451-1456). Transfer of Ideas and Strategies of Communication in the Late Middle Ages. Ed. Paweł Kras and James Mixson (Lublin: Catholic University of Lublin, 2018).
• A Companion to Observant Reform in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James D. Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

Translations

• The Crusade of 1456 (Source translation volume under contract with the University of Toronto press, forthcoming 2020).
• The World of Medieval Monasticism, by Gert Melville (St. Johns: Liturgical Press, 2016).
• Religious Life Between Jerusalem, the Desert and the World: Selected Essays of Kaspar Elm (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
• The Dominicans and the Pope. The Papal Teaching Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Thomist Tradition, by Ulrich Horst (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).

Recent Project Collaboration

• 2013-17: Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1420-1620. Peter Raedts, Bert Roest (Radboud University).
• 2017-21: Observer l’Observance. Diffusion, réseaux et influences des réformes régulières en Europe (fin XIVe – première moitié du XVIe siècle). Sylvie Duval (Fondation Thiers/ Ciham), Haude Morvan (Université Bordeaux Montaigne/ UMR Ausonius), Ludovic Viallet (Université Clermont Auvergne/ CHEC).
• 2017-20: Digital Capistrano Project. Marco Bartoli (U Roma LUMSA), Filippo Sedda (San Francesco a Ripa), Centro Studi San Giovanni da Capestrano, Daniel Gullo (Hill Monastic Manuscript Library).
• 2013-20: Corpus Epistolarum Capistrani. Letizia Pellegrini (Macerata)