Research Overview

The program in Medieval Studies at the University of Virginia provides an interdisciplinary and transhistorical network for the study, teaching, and learning of premodern world civilizations, from the first centuries of the Common Era through the fifteenth century. Affiliated faculty work across literature, history, art and architecture, archaeology, religion, music and language.

Areas of Research

Europe

Sixteenth-century French literature, Medieval and early modern English poetry, Early modern Italian music, Medieval English literature, Old English literature, Carolingian Europe

Byzantium and the Late Antique Mediterranean

Byzantine archaeology, Early and medieval Christianity, New Testament and early Christian literature

The Islamic World and the Middle East

Medieval Jewish intellectual history, North African and Mediterranean studies, Pre-modern Islamic learning, Islamic art and material culture, Medieval Arabic philosophy, Medieval Islamic history

East Asia and Tibet

Medieval Chinese literature, Mongol Empire, Premodern Japanese literature, Tibetan Buddhist literature, Chinese Buddhist art

Africa

Swahili archaeology and history

Recent Books

Joan of Arc: The Life of a French Cultural Icon

Deborah McGrady

Boydell & Brewer, 2025

The Unruly Tongue: Speech and Violence in Medieval Italy, 1250-1450

Melissa Vise

University of Pennsylvania Press (The Middle Ages Series), 2025

Poetry and the Built Environment: A Theory of the Flesh of Art

Elizabeth Fowler

Oxford University Press, 2024

Navigating Narratives: Tsurayuki’s Tosa Diary as History and Fiction

Gustav Heldt

Harvard Asia Center, 2024

Of Lost Cities: The Maghribī Poetic Imagination

Nizar F. Hermes

McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024

Marrakesh and the Mountains: Landscape, Urban Planning, and Identity in the Medieval Maghrib

Abby Stockstill

Pennsylvania State University Press (Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies series), 2024

Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano and other strange sounds

Bonnie Gordon

2023

El siglo VIII luso-hispanorrománico y su tipología sintáctica. Correlatos clausales y extraclausales

Omar Velázquez-Mendoza

Tirant Humanidades, 2023

Rural Communities in Late Byzantium, Resilience and Vulnerability in the Northern Aegean

Fotini Kondyli

2022

The Byzantine Neighbourhood. Urban Space and Political Action

Fotini Kondyli

2022

Dynamics of Interregional Exchange in East Asian Buddhist Art, 5th–13th Century

Dorothy Wong

2022