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.

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.

ART HISTORY
Lamia Balafrej: Islamic art and aesthetic theory; Persian manuscript painting; the Mediterranean; art, labor, and ecology; iconoclasm.
Charlene Villaseñor Black: Early modern Iberian world, 16th-18th centuries; early modern art, trade, and materiality; early modern art and science; Catholic art and gender politics.
Meredith Cohen: Art, architecture, and urban development of high medieval Europe; digital reconstruction.
Kristopher Kersey: The histories of art, material culture, and design in Japan, with particular attention to narrative, gender, materiality, and historiography.
Sharon E. J. Gerstel: Byzantine art and archaeology; late medieval peasantry; art and archaeology of the Crusades; ethnography of the early modern Balkans; cultural exchange in the Americas, construction technology, material culture studies, spatial theory.
Stella Nair: Andean art, architecture, and urbanism; cross cultural exchange in the Americas, construction technology, material culture studies, spatial theory.
Bronwen Wilson: the history of art, visual culture, and urbanism of Venice and the Mediterranean world (1400-1700), print culture, portraiture and physiognomy, cartography, travel imagery, and early modern globalization.
ASIAN LANGUAGES & 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.
Torquil Duthie: Early Japanese poetry, mythology, and historical writing.
Stephanie W. Jamison: Vedic Sanskrit; Indo-European linguistics.
Gregory Schopen: Buddhist studies and Indology; social and religious history of south Asia.
CLASSICS
Sarah Beckmann: Late antiquity, domestic archaeology, Roman sculpture and statuary collection, the Roman provinces
David Blank: Ancient philosophy; ancient medicine and rhetoric; transmission of classical texts.
Francesca Martelli: Latin literature, especially Ovid and Cicero; the reception of classics in the Medieval and Renaissance worlds.
Kathryn A. Morgan: Greek intellectual history and philosophy and its reception in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Giulia Sissa: Culture and thought in ancient societies; the classical tradition in medieval and Renaissance political theory; also Political Science.
Lydia Spielberg: Historiography; classical rhetorical tradition; Roman political thought and reception, especially of Tacitus.
Adriana Vazquez: Latin literature of the Augustan period; the reception of Classics in Lusophone and Hispanophone literature of the early modern period, with a special focus on the Americas.
Brent Vine: Classical and Indo-European linguistics; Vulgar Latin; history of English.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Massimo Ciavolella (CMRS Director): Boccaccio; Renaissance literature; Renaissance theories of love; see also Italian.
Efraín Kristal: Spanish-American colonial literature; the Spanish historical epic; see also Spanish and Portuguese.
Kirstie McClure: History and historiography of political thought; politics and literature; feminist theory; see also Political Science.
Zrinka Stahuljak: Continental French, Anglo-French, and Outremer literature, historiography, and culture; Mediterranean studies; manuscript studies; medievalism; history of sexuality; translation studies; see also French and Francophone Studies.
ENGLISH
A. R. Braunmuller (Distinguished Professor): Tudor and Stuart English drama; European drama and art; history of the book.
King-Kok Cheung: Milton; Shakespeare; Marlowe.
Christine Chism: Old and Middle English literature, drama, and culture; theories of history, society, and cultural encounter; medieval Islam and Arabic; gender and sexuality.
Matthew Fisher: Historiography, hagiography, paleography, codicology; Old and Middle English literature; Anglo-Norman literature; digital humanities.
Barbara Fuchs: Early modern English and Spanish literature, Mediterranean and transatlantic studies, literature and empire, transnationalism and literary history, race and religion in the early modern world; see also Spanish & Portuguese.
Lowell Gallagher: Spenser; English Catholic studies; early modern prose fiction; hermeneutic theory; queer theory.
Eric Jager: Old English, Middle English, Latin, French, Italian; Augustine and patristics; the history of the book; law and ritual; literary theory.
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.
Debora Shuger (Distinguished Professor): Tudor-Stuart religion and literature, neo-Latin, early modern intellectual history (especially religion, law, political theory).
Arvind Thomas: Middle English and Early Modern Literature, particularly texts that engage discourses in Latin such as canon law.
Robert N. Watson (Distinguished Professor): Shakespeare; Renaissance drama; Metaphysical poetry.
Erica Weaver: Old English, Anglo Latin; Old English literature and poetry; poetic theory
FRENCH & FRANCOPHONE STUDIES
Jean-Claude Carron: Humanism; French Renaissance; poetry, literature, and philosophy; history of food.
Zrinka Stahuljak: Continental French, Anglo-French, and Outremer literature, historiography, and culture; Mediterranean studies; manuscript studies; medievalism; history of sexuality; translation studies; see also Comparative Literature.
GERMANIC LANGUAGES
Christopher M. Stevens: Germanic linguistics and philology; historical linguistics; dialectology.
HISTORY
Jessica Goldberg: Medieval Mediterranean history, especially Italy and Egypt; economic and legal history; geography; Cairo Geniza studies.
Michael G. Morony: Early Islamic history.
Anthony Pagden: The history of political and social theory especially European overseas expansion and its aftermath; see also Political Science.
Carla Gardina Pestana: English America, especially 17th century; religion and empire in the British Atlantic world; conquest of Jamaica.
Teofilo F. Ruiz: Late medieval social and cultural history; the kingdom of Castile; Iberian peninsula, late medieval and early modern.
Peter Stacey: Renaissance political theory and intellectual history.
Kevin Terraciano: Colonial Latin American history, especially New Spain; Mesoamerican writing systems and languages; ethnohistory, philology, art history.
Stefania Tutino: Post-Reformation Catholicism; European early modern intellectual and cultural history; see also Italian.
Scott L. Waugh: (Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost): Social and political history of medieval England.
INDO-EUROPEAN STUDIES PROGRAM
Stephanie W. Jamison: Vedic Sanskrit; Indo-European linguistics; see also Asian Languages and Cultures.
Christopher M. Stevens: Germanic linguistics and philology; historical linguistics; dialectology; see also Germanic Languages.
Brent Vine: Classical and Indo-European linguistics; Vulgar Latin; history of English; see also Classics.
ITALIAN
Massimo Ciavolella: Boccaccio; Renaissance literature; Renaissance theories of love; see also Comparative Literature.
Andrea Moudarres: Dante, Renaissance Epic, Humanism, Islam and the West, and Political Theology.
Stefania Tutino: Post-Reformation Catholicism; European early modern intellectual and cultural history; see also History.
MUSICOLOGY
Cesar Favila: Music, religion, gender, and race in New Spain; women’s sacred music
Mitchell Morris: Fourteenth- to sixteenth-century music; relationship between music and liturgical development in the late medieval mass.
Elizabeth Randell Upton: Medieval and Renaissance music and musical culture; musical paleography and codicology; performance and listening; Early Music revivals; medievalism and music.
NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES & CULTURES
Carol Bakhos: Ancient and medieval rabbinic texts; comparative scriptural interpretation.
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.
Domenico Ingenito: Pre-Modern Persian poetry (in particular the history of lyric genres at the intersection of eroticisms and politics); rhetoric and prosody.
Luke Benson Yarbrough: Interreligious contacts in the Islamic world; Islamic historiography; manuscript studies and paleography.
PHILOSOPHY
John Carriero: Medieval Aristotelian philosophy; seventeenth-century philosophy.
Calvin Normore: Medieval philosophy; medieval and early modern political theory; 16th- and 17th-century philosophy.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Kirstie McClure: History and historiography of political thought; politics and literature; feminist theory; see also Comparative Literature.
Anthony Pagden: The history of political and social theory especially European overseas expansion and its aftermath; see also History.
Giulia Sissa: Culture and thought in ancient societies; the classical tradition in medieval and Renaissance political theory; see also Classics.
SCANDINAVIAN
Timothy R. Tangherlini: Folklore, oral traditions, ritual; Old Norse; social network analysis of saga.
SLAVIC LANGUAGES & LITERATURES
Gail Lenhoff: Old Russian hagiography, history writing, textual production.
SOCIOLOGY
Rebecca Jean Emigh: Fifteenth-century Tuscan agriculture; historical demography; sociological theory.
SPANISH & PORTUGUESE
Verónica Cortínez: Colonial and contemporary Latin American literature; literary theory; Chilean film.
John Dagenais: Medieval Castilian and Catalan literature; Hispano-Latin; manuscript culture; digital humanities; Romanesque architecture and pilgrimage.
Barbara Fuchs: Early modern English and Spanish literature, Mediterranean and transatlantic studies, literature and empire, transnationalism and literary history, race and religion in the early modern world; see also English.
Efraín Kristal: Spanish-American colonial literature; the Spanish historical epic; also Comparative Literature.
Javier Patiño Loira: Early modern Iberian literature; early modern Spanish and Italian poetics and rhetoric; early modern libraries.
THEATER
Michael Hackett: Early Baroque theater; Shakespeare; the English masque.