Personal Website
Education
BA University of Vermont, 1994
MA University of Vermont, 1998
MA Stanford University, 2000
PhD Stanford University, 2005
Research Interests
Brett Edward Whalen works on Christian intellectual and cultural history during the European Middle Ages, mainly focusing on the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. He has published works on the crusades, apocalypticism, pilgrimage, and the medieval papacy. His first book, Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Harvard, 2009), explores the medieval belief that Christianity would spread to every corner of the earth before the end of time. His most recent book, The Two Powers: The Papacy, the Empire, and the Struggle for Sovereignty in the Thirteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), reappraises the epoch-making clashes between two popes, Gregory IX and Innocent IV, and the Hohenstaufen emperor, Frederick II. He has published articles in journals including The American Historical Review, Traditio, and Viator. Whalen also serves as the series editor for Trivent publishing’s new book series The Papacy and Medieval Christendom: Critical Perspectives. He is currently in the early stages of a research for a new book, Medieval Jesus: The Son of God from the Middle Ages to the Present.
Some Notable Publications
- “Political Theology and the Metamorphoses of The King’s Two Bodies.” The American Historical Review 125 (2020): 132-45.
- The Two Powers: The Papacy, the Empire, and the Struggle for Sovereignty in the Thirteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
- The Medieval Papacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
- Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press, 2011)
- “Corresponding with Infidels: Rome, the Almohads, and the Christians of Thirteenth-Century Morocco,” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 41 (2011): 487–513
- Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Harvard University Press, 2009)
Graduate Students
Courses Taught (as schedule allows)
For current information about course offerings, click here.
- HIST 50 (FYS)—Time and the Medieval Cosmos (co-taught with Chris Clemens)
- HIST 107—Introduction to Medieval History
- HIST 177H—The Apocalypse in the Christian Middle Ages (Honors Seminar)
- HIST 228—The Medieval Expansion of Europe
- HIST 398—The Crusades (Research Seminar)
- HIST 431—The Medieval Church
- HIST 432—The Crusades
- HIST 701—Medieval Studies (Graduate Seminar)