Dr. Adam J. Davis received his Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2001. He arrived at Denison in
2003 after teaching as a lecturer at Yale.
Dr. Davis teaches survey courses on Late Antiquity, the high and later Middle
Ages, and early modern Europe. His upper-level courses include Renaissance
Italy, Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance/Reformation of
the Twelfth Century, and Doing History: Debating the Middle Ages.
Davis's research explores the interplay between medieval ideas and institutions,
social values and practices. His first book, The Holy Bureaucrat:
Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy (Cornell University Press,
2006), used the career of the Franciscan archbishop of Rouen as a window into the relationship between medieval institutional
power and evangelical devotion. Davis's publications have appeared in
the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, the Revue Mabillon, the
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, and an edited volume on Medieval Education
(Fordham University Press, 2005). He has published reviews in the American Historical Review, Speculum, H-France, and The Medieval Review. Next year he will be co-editing a special issue of French Historical Studies, "Towards a French History of Universal Values: Charity, Human Rights and Humanitarianism." During the 2009-2010 academic year, Professor Davis will be on sabbatical (supported by a Robert C. Good Fellowship) and working on a book on medieval poor hospitals and the formation of a charitable society in northern France.