John David Cotts
Assistant Professor of
History
(509)
526-4789
Research fields
Cultural and intellectual history of the High Middle Ages; clerical culture in twelfth-century France and England; learning, spirituality and practical theology; medieval epistolography
Teaching fields
Medieval and early modern Europe; cultural and intellectual history; history of religion; western civilization
Education
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2000
M.A. University of California, Berkeley, 1995
B.A. Oberlin College, 1993
Academic appointments
Assistant Professor of History, Whitman College, 2004-
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Grinnell College, 2002-2004
Lecturer in History, University of California, Berkeley, 2001-2002
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, The Colorado College, 2000-2001
PUBLICATIONS
Book
* The Clerical Dilemma: Peter of Blois and Literate Culture in the Twelfth Century (forthcoming from Catholic University Press, 2009)
Articles
*“Monks and Clerks in Search of the Beata Schola : Peter of Celle's Warning to John of Salisbury Reconsidered,” in Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe Before the University , ed. Sally Vaughn and Jay Rubenstein (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 255-77.
*“Peter of Blois and the Problem of the ‘Court' in the Late Twelfth Century,” Anglo-Norman Studies 27 (2005): 68-84
* “Monks and Mediocrities in the Shadow of Thomas Becket: Peter of Blois on Episcopal Duty,” Haskins Society Journal 10 (2001): 143-61
*“The Critique of the Secular Clergy in Peter of Blois and Nigellus de Longchamps,” Haskins Society Journal 13 (2004 for 1999): 137-50
Reviews
*review in preparation for Journal of British Studies
*Martin Aurell, The Plantagenet Empire, 1154-1224, trans. David Crouch (Harlow and London: Pearson Longman, 2007) for H-Albion online reviews
* David Gary Shaw, Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Medieval England (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Speculum 82 (2007): 482-83
* R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe. Volume 2: The Heroic Age ( Oxford : Blackwell, 2001), Religion and the Arts 6 (2003): 414-16
* Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd edition (Oxford : Blackwell, 2002), for H-Net online reviews
Pedagogy article
*“Was Bernard of Clairvaux a Republican? The Middle Ages and the Liberal Liberal Arts College,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (forthcoming, 2008)
Selected presentations
*"The English Clergy and the Third Crusade: The Practical Theology of Holy War," to be presented at the annual meeting of the Americal Historical Association, New York, NY, January 2-5, 2009.
*"Anxiety, Remorse, and the Twelfth-Century 'Renaissance,'" to be presented at the 43rd International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, on May 8, 2008.
*“The Practical Theology of Remorse: Penitence and the Secular Clergy in the Twelfth Century,” presented, by invitation, at “Sapientia inter Verbum et Res,” a one-day conference at the University of California , Berkeley on November 13, 2004.
*"Peter of Blois and the Problem of the Court,” presented, by invitation, at the Battle Conference of Anglo-Norman Studies at Battle, England, July, 2004
*Untitled presentation in “Teaching the Middle Ages at a Small Liberal Arts College,” a pedagogy session at the Thirty-Ninth International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May, 2004 (by invitation)
*“Penitential Thought and the Formation of a Clerical Elite in Europe , 1140-1215,” presented at the Missouri Valley History Conference, March 4-6, 2004
*“Remorseful Clerks and the Penitential Impulse in the Schools and in the World,” presented at the annual meeting of the Charles Homer Haskins Society, Cornell University , November 19, 2002
*“Alia est conditio mea : Perceptions of Religious Difference in Twelfth-Century Correspondence,” presented at the Thirty-Seventh International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2-5, 2002
*“Clerks, Courtiers, and Shepherds: Peter of Blois and the Search for the Ideal Cleric,” presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Boston , MA , January 2001
Professional Service
*Vice-President for North America and Conference Program Director, The Charles Homer Haskins Society
*Referee, The Haskins Society Journal
* Manuscript review for Longman Publishers
Awards
*The Bethell Prize, for the outstanding paper given by a graduate student or junior professor at the International Conference of the Charles Homer Haskins Society, 1999.
* Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, University of California at Berkeley , 1997
Courses Taught, 2004-2008
*History 181: Europe Transformed [c. 400-1400]
*History 182: Expansion and Enlightenment [c. 1400-1789]
*History 202: European Intellectual History, 386-1300
*History 207: The Age of Humanism and Reform, 1300-1650
*History 237: The Making of England
*History 274: Heretics and Reformers, 1050-1600
*History 309: Popular Culture in Europe , 1150-1650
*History 379: Cultural Encounters in Pre-Modern Europe
*History 393: Constructions of Gender in the Middle Ages
*History 492: Church and State in the Middle Ages
*General Studies 145-146: Antiquity and Modernity
Institutional Service
*General Studies Committee, Whitman College, 2007-2008
*Core Curricular Committee, Whitman College, 2008
*Library Advisory Committee, Whitman College, 2005-2008
*Aid to Scholarship and Instructional Development Committee, Whitman College, Fall 2005
*Juror for the Camery Senior Essay Prize in History, Grinnell College, 2003
*Graduate Student Representative to the Faculty Senate Committee on Teaching and Learning, University of California , Berkeley , 1999-2000
*American Historical Association
*Medieval Academy of America
*The Charles Homer Haskins Society
*The American Society for Church History