2026-04-21 - In 2025, our Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired an extraordinarily rare manuscript fragment: a leaf from an administrative book made at one of the oldest medieval monasteries, the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours in Merovingian Gaul (France) and dating to the 7th century. It was later reinforced...
2026-02-27 - On Thursday, February 26th, we welcomed Prof. Craig Perry (Emory University) to campus, where his presentation drew a large, attentive crowd to learn about his new book: a global history of the slave trade, the lives of enslaved people, and the role of slavery in the formation of Jewish...
2026-01-19 - This fall, Illinois will welcome Keidrick Roy, an assistant professor of Government at Dartmouth College and author of American Dark...
2025-11-19 - The shortlist for the 2026 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies has been named. The Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs administers this...
2025-11-09 - Visiting scholar Ryan Low (University of North Dakota) drew a large audience to his fascinating talk on the records produced by public notaries in late-medieval Provence. As he showed, virtually all social and economic relations could be guaranteed by a notarial act by the end of the fourteenth...
2025-10-08 - Our medieval acting troupe of Illinois students, faculty, staff, and alumni restaged The Road to Calvary on Saturday, October 4th: a black comedy about bumbling soldiers tasked with bringing Jesus and the cross to Calvary, as part of the Humanities Open House. This was...
2025-10-04 - On Friday, October 3rd, Professor Xin Wen enthralled a large audience with an overview of his recent book and then presented a new case study to buttress its argument. That book,...
2025-09-29 - Our awesome new sticker!
2025-09-18 - For centuries, syphilis and other treponemal diseases (bejel and yaws) were understood as “New World” exports, brought to Afro-Eurasia as part of the Columbian Exchange after 1492. But recent paleopathology and aDNA studies have demonstrated the presence of these diseases in the “Old...
2025-09-01 - Our medieval acting troupe of Illinois students, faculty, staff, and alumni participated in an epic production of...
2025-09-01 - We are delighted that Kalani Craig has joined us as a faculty affiliate in Medieval Studies! Professor Craig's research and teaching specialties converge at the intersection of digital methodologies and medieval history. She uses digital methods like text mining, spatial...
2025-05-14 - Xin Wen (文欣) is an historian of medieval China and Inner Asia (PhD Harvard University) and an associate professor in the Departments of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University. His first book, the prizewinning The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the...
2024-12-17 - The newest issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies *Volume 100, Number 1* (January 2025), marks the Medieval Academy of America's Centennial with a spotlight on "Medieval Studies and Its Institutions." The lead article is a collaboration among three scholars representing the...
2024-10-15 - This fall, we are thrilled to have added thirteen new faculty to the Program in Medieval Studies: scholars from...