Medieval Europe

Education

• M.A. and Ph.D, History, The Ohio State University
• B.A., English and History, Michigan State University

Research Interests

Leigh Ann Craig studies the history of medieval European religion, gender, and culture. Her present research focuses on the ways in which people from differing walks of life diagnosed and coped with disabilities which modern people would refer to as mental illness. In particular, she is exploring the question of how medieval people decided whether a given individual was suffering from a humoral imbalance (such as melancholy, mania, or frenzy) or from demonic possession. Her research is currently focused on this question as it appears in later medieval miracle stories.

Select Publications

• "Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages" (Brill, 2009)
• Associate Editor, "The Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage" (Brill, 2009)

Courses

• The Art of Historical Detection: Premodern Disease
• The Early Middle Ages  
• The High and Later Middle Ages
• Europe in the Early Modern, 1350-1650
• Science, Skepticism, & the Supernatural in the Western Tradition (with John Powers)
• Medievalism in Film

Awards

• VCU College of Humanities and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award (spring 2015)
• Research Fellow, Humanities Center, Virginia Commonwealth University (spring 2015)
• Fellow, Harris-Manchester Summer Research Institute, University of Oxford (summer 2010)