Jeffrey A. Bowman joined the history department in 1997. He teaches courses related to Europe and the Mediterranean between 300 and 1500 C.E., the history of Spain and Portugal, medieval travel narratives, and food. His research interests lie in three areas: (1) Iberia and the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to around the year 1200 C.E., (2) law and conflict in the premodern world, and (3) sanctity, hagiography, and the cult of saints. He is currently pursuing two research projects. The first examines women who administered justice (mostly countesses and viscountesses) in Europe between 800 and 1200 C.E.. The second, cult and community in early medieval Spain, explores the interpenetration of ritual and politics. Relying on diplomatic, archaeological, and hagiographic evidence, he is examining how saints' cults provide a valuable window onto the articulation of communities and the exercise of power. From the poet Prudentius' account of how the blood of martyrs remade late antique cities like Tarragona and Mérida, to the administrative sanctity of eleventh-century bishops, who opened markets and minted coins, saints' cults on the Iberian peninsula followed a distinctive logic. Understandings of holy and earthly power implicit in sources like these allow us to understand how people created and maintained communities.

Education

Ph. D., M. Phil., M. A., Yale University
B. A. cum laude, Carleton College

Selected Publications

"From Galicia to the Rhone : A Paradigm Reconsidered, " in Medieval Galicia, ed. James d'Emilio (forthcoming).

"From Written Record to History: Narrating the Past in Medieval Iberian Charters," in Representing History, 1000-1300, ed. Robert Maxwell (Penn State Press, 2010), 173-80.

"Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie," in French Historians 1900-2000: New Historical Writing in Twentieth-century France, ed. Philip Daileader and Philip Whalen (Blackwell, 2010), 394-416.

"L'alchimie de la preuve," Annales du Midi 118 (2006), 333-51.

"Beauty and Passion in Tenth-Century Córdoba," in The Boswell Thesis: Essays for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, edited by Mathew Kuefler (University of Chicago Press, 2006), 236-53.

Shifting Landmarks: Property, Proof, and Dispute in Catalonia around the Year 1000 Cornell University Press, 2004 Winner of the 2005 American Historical Association Premio del Rey Book Prize

"Infamy and Proof in Medieval Spain," in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in the Middle Ages, ed. Daniel Smail and Thelma Fenster (Cornell U. P., 2003), 95-117.