Summary
I am a historian of the late antique and medieval world with a focus on Italy and the Mediterranean from the sixth century to the 11th century. While my current research is based on textual sources (charters and narratives), and their intersection with paleoenvironmental and climate records, my background was in archaeological and I still gravitate towards objects, places and their contexts. My teaching covers a range of course, covering the periods from beginning of the Roman Mediterranean to the High Middle Ages, and I am currently developing new offerings in premodern environmental history.
My current research extends in two main directions. The first is a monograph-length project on Greek identity, language, and its use and expression in 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 University of Nevada, Reno’s Geography Department, Gianluca Piovesan at the University of Tuscia, and Annamaria Pazienza, a Marie-Curie Global Fellow here at the University of Nevada, Reno (2021-2023) and at Ca’ Foscari in Venice. Research on these projects has been supported by fellowships at the University of Padova, the University of Tübingen’s Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages research group, and the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies, and a grant from the National Science Foundation.
My first 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 restored 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. In addition to this work, 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.
Specialties
- Middle Ages
- Environmental History
- Language and Identity
- Religion
Courses taught
- CH 201: Ancient and Medieval Cultures
- HIST 105: European Civilization to 1648
- HIST 120: Intro to Environmental History: Climate, Crisis, Contagion
- HIST 208: Introduction to World History
- HIST 289: Introduction to the History of the Middle East
- HIST 372: Ancient Civilizations II: Roman History
- HIST 373: Medieval Civilizations
- HIST 374: History of the Byzantine Empire
- HIST 454/654: Topics in Medieval History (three different courses: "Conflict and Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean," "Ravenna between East and West, North and South 400-1200," "Monks and Monasticism")
- HIST 456/656: Topics in Ancient History ("Elites in the Late Roman Empire/Late Antiquity")
- HIST 491B: Women in Medieval Civilization
- HIST 498/698: Advanced Historical Studies (1-credit seminars: "Slavery in the Roman World," "Holy Wars: Medieval Perspectives on the Crusades")
- HIST 710: Seminar in Medieval History ("Medieval Historiography")
- HIST 783: Historiography
Selected publications
Books
- Rediscovering Sainthood in Italy: Hagiography and the Late Antique Past in Medieval Ravenna, The New Middle Ages, (New York: Palgrave, 2016).
- Coedited with M. Sághy, Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire: New Evidence, New Approaches (4th-8th centuries), Medievalia Series (Budapest: CEU Press, 2017)
Selected articles and book chapters
- “Reconceptualizing the Environmental History of Sixth-Century Italy and the Human-Driven Transformations of Its Landscapes” Studies in Late Antiquity 6 (2022): 707-33.
- “Inheriting Identity and Constructing History in Medieval Ravenna” in H. Hummer, C. Booker, and D. Polanichka, Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies in Identity and Power (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022).
- Jordan Palli, Scott Mensing, Edward Schoolman, Francesco Solano, Gianluca Piovesan, “Historical ecology provides a long-term perspective for the natural restoration of Mediterranean mountain forests” Ecological Applications (2022), e2758
- “Motivations and Justifications for Genocide: Forced Migration and Persecution as Imperial Policy in the Byzantine World, 550-1200” in Melodie Eichbauer (ed.), A Cultural History of Genocide in the Middle Ages (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), pp. 41-56
- “Dux to Episcopus: From Controlling Cities to Sees in Byzantine Italy, 554-900” in Thomas Macmaster and Nicholas Matheu, Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean: Empire, Cities and Elites, 476-1204, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 215-233
- Scott Mensing, Edward M. Schoolman, Jordan Palli, and Gianluca Piovesan, “A consilience-driven approach to land use history in relation to reconstructing forest land use legacies” Landscape Ecology 35 (2020), 2645-2658.
- “On moving relics and monastic reform: The tenth-century Vita Probi and Patterns of Translatio in Ravenna” Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome – Moyen Age 132-2 (2020).
- Edward M. Schoolman, Scott A. Mensing and Gianluca Piovesan, “Land Use and the Human Impact on the Environment in Medieval Italy” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 49.3 (2019), 1-26
- “Greeks and ‘Greek’ Writers in the Early Medieval Italian Papyri” Medieval Worlds 9 (2019), 139-159
- “Aristocracies of Early Medieval Italy, c. 500 -1000” History Compass (2018).
- Edward M. Schoolman, Scott A. Mensing and Gianluca Piovesan, “From the Late Medieval to Early Modern in the Rieti Basin (AD 1325-1601): Paleoecological and Historical Approaches to a Landscape in Transition” Historical Geography 46 (2018), 103-128
- Scott A. Mensing, Edward M. Schoolman, Irene Tunno, Paula Noble, Leonardo Sagnotti, Fabio Florindo, Gianluca Piovesan, “Ecologic change is linked directly to sociopolitical transformation in central Italy since the Roman period” Science Reports 8 (2018), 2138
- Edward Schoolman, “Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles in the Early Middle Ages: Survival and Continuity in Ravenna and the Latin West” Medieval Prosopography 32 (2017), 1-39
- Edward Schoolman “Luxury, Vice, and Health: Changing Perspectives on Baths and Bathing in Late Antique Antioch” Studies in Late Antiquity 1.3 (2017), 225-253
Education
- Ph.D., History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2010
- M.A., History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006
- M.A., Archaeology, University College London, 2003
- B.A., History, University of Chicago, 2001