UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
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Faculty

UCLA faculty who are currently members of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies are listed below by department with a summary of their academic interests and specialties. Faculty belonging to interdepartmental programs are cross-listed.

Architecture & Urban Design Art History Asian Languages & Culture
Classics Comparative Literature Design
English French Geography
Germanic Languages History Indo-European Studies
Italian Law Linguistics
Medicine Medical History/Neurobiology Musicology
Near Eastern Languages & Cultures Philosophy Political Science
Psychiatry Scandinavian Slavic Languages & Literatures
Sociology Spanish & Portuguese Theater
  World Arts & Culture  

UCLA faculty specializing in any aspect of Medieval and/or Renaissance Studies may request to be added to the Center's faculty roster. Such requests are directed to the Center Director and approved by the Center's Faculty Advisory Committee.

Architecture and Urban Design

Diane Favro: Architecture and topography of early medieval Rome; eleventh-century Armenian architecture; architecture and urbanism in fifteenth-century Italy; virtual reality modeling projects.

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Art History

Irene A. Bierman: Islamic architecture and art.

Charlene Villaseñor Black: Spanish and Mexican visual cultures, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Sharon E. J. Gerstel: Byzantine art and archaeology; late medieval peasantry; art and archaeology of the Crusades; ethnography of the Early Modern Balkans.

Cecelia Klein: Aztec art before, during, and after the Spanish Conquest of 1521.

David Kunzle: Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art in the Netherlands, England, and Germany; art and Reformation.

Donald McCallum: Medieval Japanese art.

Carlo Pedretti (Emeritus): Leonardo da Vinci and his context.

Joanna Woods-Marsden: Portraiture in Renaissance Italy; gender studies; Titian; Renaissance courts.

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Asian Languages and Cultures

William M. Bodiford: Japanese religious life and culture; East Asian Buddhism.

Robert E. Buswell: Buddhism in medieval East Asia; Buddhist mysticism; monastic culture.

John B. Duncan: medieval Korean institutional and intellectual history through the eighteenth century.

Stephanie W. Jamison: Vedic Sanskrit; Indo-European linguistics.

Peter H. Lee (Emeritus): Classical and medieval Korean literature; comparative East Asian literature.

Michael F. Marra: Japanese literature, aesthetics, and hermeneutics.

Herbert Plutschow (Emeritus): Classical Japanese literature and culture.

Gregory Schopen: Buddhist studies and Indology; social and religious history of south Asia.

Jonathan Silk: Indian Buddhism and its transmission to Central and East Asia (Tibet and China), 5th century BCE to 10th century CE; scriptural literatures of early and Mahayana Buddhism, and the textual traditions of these literatures; Chinese reception of Buddhism.

Richard E. Strassberg: Classical Chinese literature and culture.

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Classics

David Blank: Ancient philosophy; ancient medicine and rhetoric; transmission of classical texts.

Shane Butler: Latin literature (ancient to Renaissance); the Classical tradition; intellectual history; poetics.

Sander M. Goldberg: Drama, rhetoric, and oratory.

Michael W. Haslam: History of Greek texts.

Philip Levine (Emeritus): Paleography; late Latin literature.

Kathryn A. Morgan: Greek intellectual history and philosophy and its reception in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Jaan Puhvel (Emeritus): Comparative philology; comparative mythology.

Giulia Sissa: Culture and thought in ancient societies; the classical tradition in medieval and Renaissance political theory; also Political Science.

Brent Vine: Classical and Indo-European linguistics; transmission of classical texts; history of English.

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Comparative Literature

A. R. Braunmuller: Tudor and Stuart English drama; European drama and art; history of the book; also English.

Massimo Ciavolella: Boccaccio; Renaissance literature; Renaissance theories of love; also Italian.

Katherine C. King: Epic; tragedy; the Classical tradition; women's studies.

Efraín Kristal: Spanish-American colonial literature; the Spanish historical epic; also Spanish and Portuguese.

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Design

Lionel March (Emeritus): Euclidean geometry; Nicomachean arithmetic; architectonics of humanism.

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English

Michael J. B. Allen: Renaissance Platonism; Shakespeare; Spenser; also Italian and Philosophy.

Christopher Baswell: Chaucer; Classical traditions; codicology; high and late medieval culture.

A. R. Braunmuller: Tudor and Stuart English drama; European drama and art; history of the book.

King-Kok Cheung: Milton; Shakespeare; Marlowe.

Edward I. Condren: Old and Middle English poetry; Chaucer; The Pearl poet; numerical design in medieval literature; intellectual property.

Matthew Fisher: Historiography, hagiography, paleography, codicology; Old and Middle English; Anglo-Norman literature.

R. A. Foakes (Emeritus): Shakespeare and Renaissance drama.

Lowell Gallagher: Early modern cultural studies of England and France; Semiotics; Narratology; Spenser.

Eric Jager: Old English, Middle English, Latin, French, Italian; Augustine and patristics; the history of the book; law and ritual; literary theory.

Henry Ansgar Kelly (Emeritus): England, Italy, France, Spain; literature, canon law, common law, liturgy, theology, history of ideas (biblical, classical, medieval, early modern).

Gordon Kipling: Medieval and Tudor drama; theatrical spectacle; Shakespeare; Chaucer; Netherlandic-British cultural relations.

V. A. Kolve (Emeritus): Medieval drama; Chaucer; literature and visual arts; medieval anti-Semitism.

Richard A. Lanham (Emeritus): Medieval, Renaissance, and modern digital rhetoric.

Arthur Little: Nationalism and imperialism in early modern English culture; Shakespeare; race, gender, and sexuality in early modern culture.

Claire McEachern: Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature; historiography; national identity; history of gender; political theory; religion; editing of Shakespeare.

Donka Minkova: History of English; English historical phonology; metrics; syntax.

Joseph Falaky Nagy: Medieval Celtic literatures; Celtic folklore; comparative folklore and mythology.

Jonathan F. S. Post: Seventeenth-century poetry; Milton; Shakespeare.

Florence H. Ridley (Emerita): Chaucer; fourteenth-century English poetry; Middle English dialects; medieval Scots poetry.

David S. Rodes (Director Emeritus, UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts): Renaissance and Restoration theater and graphic arts; Shakespeare; Dryden; Wycherly; Molière.

Karen E. Rowe: Colonial American literature to 1800; Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature; women's literature.

Paul R. Sellin (Emeritus): Neo-Latin criticism (especially Heinsius, Vossius, Scaliger); English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Anglo-Dutch relations; Renaissance and Golden-Age Dutch literature, history, and art; Donne; Milton; seventeenth-century poetry; Raleigh and the Orinoco.

Debora Shuger: Neo-Latin; Renaissance Bible; intellectual history and political thought through the seventeenth century; European cultural studies.

Robert N. Watson: Shakespeare; Renaissance drama; Metaphysical poetry.

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French

Jean-Claude Carron: Humanism; French Renaissance; poetry, literature, and philosophy; history of food.

Zrinka Stahuljak: Medieval romance, historiography, and poetry; history of sexuality; Middle Ages and the nineteenth century; medieval translation theory; translation studies.

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Geography

Norman J.W. Thrower (Emeritus): Geographical discovery and exploration; history of cartography.

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Germanic Languages

Franz Bäuml (Emeritus): Medieval literacy; oral tradition.

Marianna D. Birnbaum (Emerita): Hungarian literature; Renaissance culture of Central Europe; Jews in Renaissance Europe.

James A. Schultz: Middle High German literature; history of sexuality; history of childhood; gender.

Christopher M. Stevens: Germanic linguistics and philology; historical linguistics; dialectology.

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History

Kees W. Bolle (Emeritus) : Myth; mysticism; methods in the history of religions; Hinduism; religion and politics; Editor, Hermeneutics: Studies in the History of Religions.

Robert I. Burns, S.J. (Emeritus): Western Mediterranean; medieval Spain and southern France, especially Catalan lands; Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations.

Brian P. Copenhaver: History of science; history of philosophy; late medieval and early modern Europe.

Patrick J. Geary: Early medieval social and cultural history; barbarian societies; history of memory; history of ethnicity.

Carlo Ginzburg (Emeritus): Popular culture; intellectual history; iconography.

Richard Hovannisian (Emeritus): History of Armenia and Caucasus.

Barisa Krekic (Emeritus): Medieval southeastern Europe; Medieval Russia; Byzantium; Dalmatian and Italian urban history in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

James Lockhart (Emeritus): History of Spanish America, 1492-1800; social history; ethnohistory and Indian language studies.

Lauro Martines (Emeritus): History and literature of Renaissance Italy and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

Muriel C. McClendon: Tudor and Stuart England; the Reformation; religion and society in early modern Europe.

Ronald Mellor: Roman history; religion and law.

Michael G. Morony: Early Islamic history.

Ynez Violé O'Neill (Emeritus) : History of medicine, especially anatomy, surgery, and neurology; medical images; also Medicine.

Anthony Pagden: The history of political and social theory with special reference to European overseas expansion and its aftermath; also Political Science.

Gabriel Piterberg: Ottoman history; historiography and historical consciousness; Orientalism and nationalism.

Claudia Rapp: Late Antiquity; Byzantine studies; hagiography.

Richard H. Rouse (Emeritus): Literacy; manuscript production; paleography.

Teofilo F. Ruiz (Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese): Late medieval social and cultural history; the kingdom of Castile; Iberian peninsula, late medieval and early modern.

Geoffrey Symcox (Emeritus): Urban history, architecture, and planning (Renaissance and Baroque); states and institutions in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, France and Italy; Columbus and the Columbian voyages.

Kevin Terraciano: History of Spanish America, 1492-1800; social history; ethnohistory.

Scott L. Waugh: (Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost): Social and political history of medieval England.

Dora B. Weiner: Social history of the health sciences, particularly in France; medical humanities; history of the hospital and of psychiatry; also Psychiatry.

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Indo-European Studies Program

Stephanie W. Jamison: Vedic Sanskrit; Indo-European linguistics; also Asian Languages and Cultures.

Vyacheslav V. Ivanov: Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian; Old Russian literature; Old Lithuanian literature; linguistic and cultural situation in the Great Duchy of Lithuania (14th-17th cenuturies); Baltic and Slavonic folklore and mythology; Tocharian medieval texts; Sogdian and Khotanese Sana medieval texts; also Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Joseph Falaky Nagy: Medieval Celtic literatures; Celtic folklore; comparative folklore and mythology; also English.

Christopher M. Stevens: Germanic linguistics and philology; historical linguistics; dialectology; also Germanic Languages.

Brent Vine: Classical and Indo-European linguistics; transmission of classical texts; history of English; also Classics.

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Italian

Michael J. B. Allen: Ficino, Pico, and the Quattrocento; Renaissance philosophy, especially Neo-Platonism; also English and Philosophy.

Luigi Ballerini: Medieval Italian poetry; Renaissance gastronomy.

Massimo Ciavolella: Boccaccio; Renaissance literature; Renaissance theories of love.

Marga Cottino-Jones (Emerita): Medieval, Renaissance, and seventeenth-century literature; Boccaccio.

Edward F. Tuttle: Italian philology; comparative Romance historical linguistics; socio-pragmatic and structural motives of language change; medieval Italian literature.

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Law

Khaled Abou El Fadl: Medieval Muslim law.

William M. McGovern (Emeritus): English legal history.

Stephen C. Yeazell: Medieval and Early Modern adjudicative procedure in Britain.

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Linguistics

Robert P. Stockwell (Emeritus): Old English; Middle English; history of English language; historical linguistics.

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Medicine

David Hayes-Bautista (General Internal Medicine): Pre-Columbian health and medicine; colonial medical practice; culture and health.

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Medical History/Neurobiology

Robert G. Frank, Jr.: History of medicine and disease in England. http://www.history.ucla.edu/frankr/

Ynez Violé O'Neill: History of medicine, especially anatomy, surgery, and neurology; medical images.

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Musicology

Murray C. Bradshaw (Emeritus): Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music and music theory, especially the falsobordone, the toccata, early sacred monody, and embellishment.

Frank A. D'Accone (Emeritus): Italian music of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries.

Marie Louise Göllner (Emerita): Music of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries and the late Renaissance.

Richard A. Hudson (Emerita): Renaissance instrumental music, especially dance-related forms; tempo rubato; falling-third cadences.

Susan McClary: Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music; cultural theory.

Mitchell Morris: Fourteenth- to sixteenth-century music; relationship between music and liturgical development in the late medieval mass.

Robert Stevenson (Emeritus): Medieval and sixteenth-century Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

Elizabeth Upton: Twelfth- through sixteenth-century music, especially the courtly chansons of the 14th and 15th centuries; musical paleography and manuscript source studies; medievalism and music.

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Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Carol Bakhos: Ancient and medieval rabbinic texts; comparative scriptural interpretation.

Amin Banani (Emeritus): Cultural history, literature of Persia in the Islamic era.

András J. E. Bodrogligeti: Central Asian Turkic languages and literatures.

Michael Cooperson: Classical Arabic literature, especially biography; the cultural history of Abbasid Baghdad.

S. Peter Cowe: Medieval East Christian theology and spirituality; Armenian language and literature.

Herbert A. Davidson (Emeritus): Medieval Hebrew literature; Rabbinic literature; medieval Jewish and Arabic philosophy.

Ismail K. Poonawala: Early intellectual and cultural history of Islam; Shi'ism, Isma'ilis/Fatimids; classical Arabic literature; contemporary Islamic thought.

Yona Sabar: Hebrew and Aramaic; Syriac; Modern Aramaic dialects; Jewish languages; folk and religious literature of Kurdistani Jews.

Hossein Ziai: Medieval Islamic philosophy; Persian classical literature; Post Avicennan logic and epistemology; impact of systematic philosophy on Persian poetic traditions; also Philosophy.

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Philosophy

Michael J.B. Allen: Renaissance philosophy, especilly Neo-Platonism; also English and Italian.

John Carriero: Medieval Aristotelian philosophy; seventeenth-century philosophy.

Brian Copenhaver: Renaissance philosophy; also History.

Calvin Normore: Medieval philosophy.

Terrance Parsons: Philosophy of language; metaphysics; history of logic.

Hossein Ziai: Medieval Islamic philosophy; Persian classical literature; Post Avicennan logic and epistemology; impact of systematic philosophy on Persian poetic traditions; also Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

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Political Science

Kirstie McClure: History and historiography of political thought; politics and literature; feminist theory.

Anthony Pagden: The history of political and social theory with special reference to European overseas expansion and its aftermath; see also History. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/menu/faculty_regular.htm#

Giulia Sissa: Culture and thought in ancient societies; the classical tradition in medieval and Renaissance political theory; also Classics.

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Psychiatry

Dora B. Weiner: Social history of the health sciences, particularly in France; medical humanities; history of the hospital and of psychiatry; also History.

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Scandinavian

Jesse L. Byock: Viking archaeology; Old Icelandic and Old Norse history, society, and sagas; feud and volence in the Viking world.

James R. Massengale (Emeritus): Scandinavian medieval ballads; Scandinavian folk tales.

Timothy R. Tangherlini: Folklore, oral traditions, ritual; Old Norse.

Kendra Willson:

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Slavic Languages and Literatures

Henning Andersen (Emeritus): Cultural contacts in the Baltic and Slavic lands; historical linguistics.

Vyacheslav V. Ivanov: Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian; Old Russian literature; Old Lithuanian literature; linguistic and cultural situation in the Great Duchy of Lithuania (14th-17th cenuturies); Baltic and Slavonic folklore and mythology; Tocharian medieval texts; Sogdian and Khotanese Sana medieval texts.

Emily Klenin: Slavic linguistics, languages, and literature.

Gail Lenhoff: Comparative hagiography and historiography of medieval Russia; Orthodox liturgics; Byzantine heritage versus regional literary traditions; theological legitimization of the tsars; textual transmission and redaction.

Dean S. Worth (Emeritus): Russian language history; Medieval Russian philology.

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Sociology

Rebecca Jean Emigh: Fifteenth-century Tuscan agriculture; historical demography; sociological theory.

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Spanish and Portuguese

Shirley Arora (Emerita): Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chronicles, travel literature, folklore.

Verónica Cortínez: Colonial and contemporary Latin American literature; literary theory; Chilean film.

John Dagenais: Medieval Castilian and Catalan literature; Hispano-Latin; manuscript culture.

Claude L. Hulet (Emeritus): Brazilian literature; Portuguese maritime discoveriesin the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

Efraín Kristal: Spanish-American colonial literature; the Spanish historical epic; also Comparative Literature.

Anna More: New World Spain; colonial baroque culture.

C. Brian Morris: Golden-Age Spanish poetry; the Picaresque novel.

Claudia Parodi: History of Spanish language (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries); Spanish dialectology; historiography of linguistics.

Enrique Rodríguez-Cepeda: Cervantes/Spanish Golden Age; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theater; popular culture and Spanish ballads.

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Theater

Henry Goodman (Emeritus): Renaissance and Baroque theater; Shakespeare.

Michael Hackett: Early Baroque theater; Shakespeare; the English masque.

Carl R. Mueller (Emeritus): Medieval and Renaissance theater; Shakespeare.

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World Arts and Cultures

Emma Lewis Thomas (Emerita): Renaissance and Baroque dance history; translation of Italian, French, German, English texts and notation.

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