I am an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I teach a range of courses covering the beginning of the Roman Mediterranean to the High Middle Ages.
My current research extends in two main directions. The first is a monograph-length project on Greek identity, language, and the expressions of “Greekness” in Early Medieval Italy, focusing on the cities of Ravenna, Rome, and Naples. The second is focused on the intersections of land management, climate, and environment made visible through medieval historical records and paleoecological data (in collaboration with Scott Mensing and Adam Csank in UNR’s Geography Department, and Gianluca Piovesan and the University of Tuscia).
My book, Rediscovering Sainthood in Italy: Hagiography and the Late Antique Past, which appeared in Palgrave’s New Middle Ages series in 2016, examined the political and social conditions in which old saints were restore and new saints were created. In particular, I focus on the case of “Barbatianus” – a saint said to have been the confessor to the fifth-century empress Galla Placidia – whose cult is restored and reinvented in Ravenna in the 10th century during a period of rapid transformations.
I have co-edited the proceedings of a conference with Marianne Sághy, Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire: New Evidence, New Approaches (4th-8th centuries), published in 2017 with Central European University Press in the Medievalia series.
A list of my other publications can be found here, and occasional blog posts are available here.
Edward M. Schoolman 