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anu |
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adhakrishnan |
Humani nil a me alienum puto--Terence
PhD Student, Medieval European History, Princeton University
I am a medieval history student who hopes to specialise in the history of Rome during the fourteenth century, when the papacy was away in Avignon. I grew up in India, studied Economics at Harvard, and worked as a fundraiser at Columbia University before coming to Princeton. I had spent five months in Rome during a year off at Harvard during which I both fell in love with the city and became interested in history. As a Columbia employee, I began taking classes in History but became interested in the Middle Ages after the transformative experience of reading Dante.
Eager to become a medievalist, I enrolled in the PhD program at the CUNY Graduate Center while continuing to work fulltime. Recognising that I would never finish a PhD with a fulltime job, I applied to graduate schools a second time and was fortunate to be admitted with funding. As a result I was able to give up my fundraising job and am now a fulltime student at Princeton--I am a bit like a monk who has switched monasteries! At the Graduate Center I studied Hagiography with Prof. Thomas Head and History of Medicine with Prof. Nancy Siraisi. At Columbia, I took courses in canon law with Prof. Robert Somerville and in the history of spirituality with Prof. Caroline Bynum. At Princeton I am working with Prof. William Chester Jordan for my major field in late medieval social history. For my two minor fields I intend to study the Late Antique Mediterranean world with Prof. Peter Brown and Byzantine History with Prof. John Haldon.
My Interests
LATE MEDIEVAL SOCIAL HISTORY
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The assumption that the history of Rome and the history of the papacy are coterminous has led to a lacuna in the historiography of Rome in the fourteenth century. I hope to write a dissertation on Rome During Avignon directed by Prof. William C. Jordan that examines the lives of ordinary people in this period using notarial protocols, wills and testaments, and any other sources I can lay my hands on. I will be in Rome in June 2005 doing preliminary archival searches. I intend to return to Rome during my third and fourth years to conduct this research. I took Prof. Jordan's rural history seminar so my dissertation will also include a rural history of the city, paradoxical though this may sound. |
HAGIOGRAPHY
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I was fortunate to take a number of courses in medieval hagiography with Prof. Thomas Head at the Graduate Center. I have written and presented papers on Guibert of Nogent's treatise on relics, the transvestite Cistercian monk Hildegund of Schoenau as related by Caesarius of Heisterbach, and on wealth and sanctity in the Late Antique Life of St. Euphrosyna of Alexandria. I am currently working on a paper on Childhood in the German High Middle Ages using Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogue of Miracles recognising that the chaff for the historian of spirituality is wheat for the social historian. |
HISTORY OF MEDICINE
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I was introduced to the history of medicine by Prof. Nancy Siraisi at the Graduate Center. Under her guidance I have written and presented papers on Tommaso del Garbo's vernacular plague treatise, the changes it incurred in the transition from manuscript to print, and the plague consilia of Gentile da Foligno. I hope to produce a scholarly edition of the Latin version of Tommaso del Garbo's plague treatise since it has never been edited. |
CANON LAW
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Prof. Robert Somerville was my guide to the intricacies of medieval canon law and medieval councils. The first course I took as a Columbia employee was his History of the Papacy. Since then I have taken courses on Medieval Councils, Canon Law and Canonical Collections, and a course on Papal Decretals and Decretalists. |
DANTE'S AMAZING IMAGINATION--THE CANTO OF THE SUICIDES
L'arpie pascendo poi delle sue foglie
Fanno dolore e al dolor finestra
