Smith, Julia M.H. 1956-

PERSONAL:

Born 1956, in Cambridge, England. Education: Oxford University, Ph.D., 1985.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of Glasgow, 10 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland.

CAREER:

University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, reader in medieval history; fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 1999-2000; University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, Edwards Professor of Medieval History, c. 2006—.

WRITINGS:

Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor) Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough, Brill (Boston, MA), 2000.

(Editor, with Leslie Brubaker) Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History, 500-1000, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Medieval scholar Julia M.H. Smith has published extensively on the history of Europe. Her works, ranging from Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians to Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History, 500-1000, all reinterpret European history during a critical period of its development. In the latter book, Smith breaks with traditional views of the medieval period as a time when Roman culture and political institutions were decaying, being replaced with "national monarchies and an organised church," declared a contributor to the Contemporary Review. As an alternative interpretation, Smith suggests that the emergence of medieval Europe was a much more complex process, in which the forces that we believe shaped the modern world had not really emerged. Europe, she concludes, was not the homogenous cultural entity historians call Christendom during this time; it was, instead, a mass of different political and cultural units that could have developed in any number of ways.

Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900, the collection that Smith edited with fellow historian Leslie Brubaker, also opens important new vistas on Europe after the classical period. The volume, stated Elizabeth Freeman in History: Review of New Books, "fits perfectly into a preexisting research area and … adds a critical new direction to that research." "The editors of this volume should … be congratulated," said Marie A. Kelleher in her Canadian Journal of History review, "for making the effort to balance contributions from scholars of the medieval West with those from scholars of late Antiquity and medieval Byzantium and Islam." "Likewise," Keller continued, "the inclusion of essays on masculinity as well as femininity reminds the reader that women are not the only ones affected by gender." "The book," Freeman concluded, "should be read by all researchers interested in adding a gendered approach to their examinations of the early Middle Ages."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Journal of History, spring-summer, 2006, Marie A. Kelleher, review of Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900, p. 105.

Contemporary Review, summer, 2006, review of Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000, p. 257.

English Historical Review, November, 2002, Bryan Ward-Perkins, review of Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough, p. 1303.

Historian, summer, 1993, Richard E. Sullivan, review of Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians, p. 763.

History: Review of New Books, fall, 2005, Elizabeth Freeman, review of Gender in the Early Medieval World, p. 27.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April, 1993, Joseph-Claude Poulin, review of Province and Empire, p. 335.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 2006, review of Gender in the Early Medieval World.

ONLINE

University of Glasgow Web site,http://www.gla.ac.uk/ (December 17, 2006), biography of Julia M.H. Smith.