A presentation for the Hannibal Square Community Land Trust (HSCLT). This presentation explored the history and legacy of Juneteenth and the ways that community building and property ownership in Central Florida reflect that legacy. The HSCLT is one of approximately 13 Community Land Trusts in Florida. Created in 2003, the goal of the HSCLT is to…[Read more]

Review of AFFILIATION AND TRANSMISSION IN DAOISM: A BERLIN SYMPOSIUM. Edited by Florian C. Reiter. (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 78). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. viii + 300 pages.

Review of THE EMERGENCE OF DAOISM: CREATION OF TRADITION. By Gil Raz. (Routledge Studies in Taoism). Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 292.

Review of CELESTIAL MASTERS: HISTORY AND RITUAL IN EARLY DAOIST COMMUNITIES. By Terry F. Kleeman. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 102). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiii + 425. Maps, illustrations.

A review of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS: DAOISM. Edited by James Robson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. Pp. xxxii + 754 + A29. Map, illustrations.

Gabor Lukacs’ 2008 book on “Kaitai Shinsho: The Single Most Famous Japanese Book of Medicine & Geka Sōden: An Early Very Important Manuscript on Surgery” is a bibliographical contribution to the comparative history of the introduction of Western science in East Asia. It focuses on two illustrated manuals of anatomy and surgery in Japanese, adap…[Read more]

In ancient China, portentology was a “science” in its own right, a specialised field of knowledge developed by rational individuals who endeavoured to fathom the concealed mechanisms at work beneath the spectacles of history and the world at large. This paper focuses on the nomenclature of portents (observed phenomena interpreted as auspicious or…[Read more]

Official Chinese historiography is a treasure trove of information on local resistance to the centralised empire in early medieval China (third to sixth century). Sinologists specialised in the study of Chinese religions commonly reconstruct the religious history of the era by interpreting some of these data. In the process, however, the primary…[Read more]

This article explores three facets of green space within a medieval monastic context: its origin, its effects and properties and the way it was shaped into an expression of power. We learn a great deal about the history of green space through the nuances of monastic thought and vice versa. The term ‘green space’ in a medieval context may ini…[Read more]

This paper deals with the political ideology of late pre-imperial and early imperial China as documented by remnants of an under-explored genre known in English as weft (wei 緯) writings or “Confucian Apocrypha”. It focuses on the transcendence of hierarchy and sovereignty, the transfer of dynastic legitimacy, and the pragmatic vehicle of “tang…[Read more]

In the contemporary discourse on migration, it feels peculiarly seamless to discuss “bans and border walls” in a single breath. However, the global preoccupation with travel restriction and border security must not be taken as an inevitability. States arrive at bans and walls as preferred means of migration control as a result of making spe…[Read more]

“Who were the Romans? Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy,” in Post-Roman Transitions. Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, eds. Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 14

“Foreign Saints at Home in Eighth- and Ninth-century Rome. The Patrocinia of Diaconiae, Xenodochia and Greek Monasteries,” in Cuius patrocinio tota gaudet regio. Saints’ Cults and the Dynamics of Regional Cohesion, eds. S. Kuzmová, A. Marinković and T. Vedriš

“Mobilizing Sanctity: Pius II and the Head of Andrew in Rome,” in Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz, eds. Yuen-Gen Liang and Jarbel Rodriguez (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017): 186-202

This paper investigates the multiple impulses that contributed to the early medieval interest in Pope Damasus’s inscriptions. In part, Damasus’s verses were read as guides to Rome’s martyrial topography; in part, they served as models of a classicizing Christian style. Above all, the appeal of these verses derived from their association with…[Read more]

This article argues that Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821–91) in his popular but much critiqued Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter challenged the ideals of an objective, dispassionate historiography advocated by the leading German historians of his generation. To do so it focuses on Gregorovius’s treatment of the city of Rome and its urban leg…[Read more]

“Hagiography as History and the Enigma of the Quattro Coronati,” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 93 (2017): 345–409

“Why Remember Ratchis? Medieval Monastic Memory and the Lombard Past,” Archivio Storico Italiano 177.1 (2019): 3–57

Review of Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation, by Nathan J. Ristuccia. The Medieval Review (TMR 18.11.01), 2018

This week the Indonesian presidential election has been a contest between the incumbent Jokowi, who has promised an ambitious programme of agrarian reform, and the descendent of the military dictator Suharto. In this article, Frans Ari Prasetyo exposes the contradictions of the Jokowi government’s dependence on the World Bank and local c…[Read more]