Thomas Head
Department of History
Hunter College and The Graduate Center,
City University of New YorkOffice: Hunter West 1507
Telephone: 212-772-5584 (contact via e-mail preferred)
E-mail: thead@hunter.cuny.edu
Fax: 212-772-5545
Postal address: Department of History, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, New York, New York, 10021
Office hours (fall 2003): Wednesdays, 2:00-3:30.
Phone messages may be left for Professor Head at the Hunter College History Department office (212-772-5484).
Tom Head completed his doctoral degree at Harvard University in 1986 with a dissertation which examined the development of hagiography and the cult of saints in the French region of the Orléanais from the Carolingian period through the twelfth century. It was subsequently published as Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800-1200 (Cambridge University Press, 1990). In the ensuing years, he has taught at the Claremont Colleges, Yale University, and Washington University. He came to Hunter College and The Graduate Center as a Professor of History in 1998. Since that time, he has been a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for the year 2000-01 and of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for the year 2001-2002.
Tom's interest in medieval monasticism and religious history dates back to his high school days at The Portsmouth Abbey School, run by the Abbey of St. Gregory the Great. He has recently written a reflection on the Benedictine tradition of scholarship for that school's alumni publication. Those interested may read it here .
Tom has continued to research and publish on varied topics connected with the development of the cult of the saints. At the heart of these projects is an interest in the ways in which Christianity was practiced and the ways those practices reflect beliefs. He has also developed interests in the emerging political and legal institutions--or, perhaps better, emerging modes of being political and legal--in the French and German kingdoms under the early Capetian and Ottonian kings. Both sets of interests are reflected in his publications . Those include studies of such subjects as the life of a twelfth-century female recluse in England, the development of the Peace of God in France around the year 1000, the cult of saints in southern Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the political uses of ritual and art in tenth-century Germany. (The hero of the last study, Archbishop Egbert of Trier, appears above in an illumination from the Codex Egberti, now conserved in the Staatsbibliothek in Trier.) He is currently completing a book on the development of the cult of saints in western Christianity during the late antique and medieval periods; the working title of the book is Inventing the Saints: Sanctity and Society in the Medieval West, ca. 150 - ca. 1215 .
As editor of the hagiography section of ORB (the On-Line Reference Book of Medieval Studies), Tom has made available a set of general articles and detailed bibliographies relating to the study of hagiography and the cult of the saints in medieval Christianity. On this homepage he also maintains an anthology of translated texts related to the cult of the saints.
Tom also serves as one of the book review editors for Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America.
Tom teaches a wide variety of courses concerning medieval Europe on both the undergraduate and graduate level. This year at Hunter College he is teaching History 211: Medieval Civilization (during the fall semester) and History 250.72: History of Christianity from its Origins to the Reformation (during the spring semester), a course which has also been offered in a slightly different form as History 314. He has also taught such courses as History 341.19: Court, Cloister, and City and History 311: Europe in the Early Middle Ages at Hunter. He will also offer undergraduate courses on the high and late middle ages, as well as more occasionally courses on historiography, the history of marriage and the family, and the history of law and conflict resolution. Materials for current courses are kept on-line through Blackboard at Hunter College and are available to anyone with a Hunter ID number.
At The Graduate Center, Tom's courses include History 70800: Europe in the Early Middle Ages, 400-1000 , History 705: Europe in the High Middle Ages, 900-1200 , and Medieval Studies 80500 / History 70400: Saints and Society in the Medieval West (this spring semester's offering). In relation to those courses, he maintains on this site a set of research bibliographies related to the study of the political and social history of western Europe in the period 800-1200. (The picture above is an illumination showing Hugh of Saint-Victor from a twelfth-century manuscript.)
For links to other sites of interest to students of medieval history and hagiography click here.