Hello, World!

This is the class blog for HIST 329: “High and Late Medieval Europe, 1000-1500”, an upper-level history course at Mississippi University for Women. Watch this space as we seek out and explore the world of medieval Europe over the course of the spring 2013 semester.

With any luck this is one of the very few posts which I will write as this blog is meant to be a place for the students to share their thoughts, reflections, and research, rather than another platform for their overly-talkative professor. However, since everyone else is required to write a brief biographical post I thought that I would do the same.

I got hooked on studying the Middle Ages during my own undergraduate days.* While my own research focus is on the early medieval period (before 1000), it is still fun to read about the worlds of those pesky years with four digits in the date from time to time and I look forward to exploring them with you this semester. When not teaching about medieval history (or pre-modern history in general, to be more precise), I enjoy working on my own research on early medieval Ireland and its connections with the rest of western Europe. I also enjoy baking, torturing students with semester-long assignments like building wikis and blogs, and serving as a patient servant to my feline overlords.

*Any student who dares to point out how long it has been since my undergraduate days will be forced to undergo trial by ordeal to prove their outrageous claims. You have been warned.