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Joel Anderson

Associate Professor of History
History

I am a historian of medieval Europe with broad interests in cultural history, religious history, and the Norse world. I received my bachelor’s degree from Bates College and subsequently studied at the University of Oslo, the University of Iceland, and Cornell University, where I completed my PhD.

My research revolves around issues of communication, imagination, and authority, particularly in the high and late medieval church. In my first book, , I examined how clerics on the northern fringes of Europe refashioned and repurposed the legal principles and official documents of the Roman church for their own ends. In the process, these churchmen constructed visions of ecclesiastical order that underscore the diversity and dynamism of Christendom as a whole. My articles have appeared in SpeculumViking and Medieval Scandinavia, and elsewhere.

I regularly teach the History of Medieval Europe (HTY 105). I also offer courses on heresy and witchcraft (HTY 235), the Vikings (HTY 427), and a number of other subjects in European history. My recent upper-level seminars have examined the medieval papacy, the history of the book, and medieval historiography.

Book

 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023).

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

“,”&Բ;Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 95:3 (July 2020): 657–88.

“,”&Բ;Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 15 (2019): 1–27.

,” in: Vernacular Aesthetics in the Later Middle Ages: Politics, Performativity, and Reception from Literature to Music, ed. Katharine Jager (Palgrave, 2019), 23–45.

Recent Book Reviews

Review of New Perspectives on the ‘Civil Wars’ in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. Hans Jacob Orning, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, and Kim Esmark, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024). In:  25.10.35.

Review of Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, (New York: Basic Books, 2020). In: , 49:2 (March 2021): 44–45.

Review of Eleanor Parker, Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England, (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). In , 48:6 (November 2020): 157–58.

Review of Ann Christys, Vikings in the South: Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean, (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). In The Journal of Military History, 80:4 (October 2016): 1186–87.

Major Grants and Fellowships

Summer Faculty Research Award, Office of Research Development (2020)

Pre-tenure Faculty Research and Creative Activity Fellowship, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2018)

Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, Rare Book School, University of Virginia (2014–16)

Andrew W. Mellon / ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2014–15)

Fulbright Grantee, Norwegian Fulbright Foundation (2006–07)

Areas of Expertise

Medieval History
Nordic History
Religious History
Portrait of Joel Anderson
Associate Professor of History