Celia Chazelle
Professor and Department Chair
Department of History
Curriculum Vitae
I will be on leave during the spring semester, at Princeton Theological
Seminary.
I can still be reached through the contact
above.
When I was a high school student outside Boston at the time of Kent State, I immersed myself in the anti-war movement and — inspired by a terrific teacher — the study of US history. I thought at the time that I was headed for a career in public service, possibly law and government. Then I went to the University of Toronto, discovered the Middle Ages, and... the subsequent chapters in my professional life are pretty clear from my curriculum vitae.
In the last several years, however,
my dismay at the growing social inequalities in this country and at the
impact of American foreign policy on the rest of the world has led my
scholarly interests back to something akin to their starting point.
I am still fascinated by medieval history,
in particular the history of the Early Middle Ages — a
frequently misunderstood era. The latter
point is discussed in
the volume of essays I have co-edited with Felice Lifshitz,
Paradigms and
Methods in Early Medieval Studies.
As a small contribution to the
effort to encourage early medieval studies see, too, the
website of my listserv,
the Early Medieval
Forum. But more overtly
than my past research, my recent projects
concern the contributions that medievalists — perhaps especially early medievalists — can
make to our understanding today of
social justice, human rights, and how best to promote peace.
I also try to work on these issues more directly, away from the arena of medieval scholarship. One focus for this is Camden,
New Jersey, the poorest city in the US; among the many important community organizations and activist groups there, note in particular
the Center for Transformation, which promotes environmental justice in
Waterfront South in the face of the
devastating impact of pollution from deisel and big industry on that district. I also teach in one of the New Jersey state prisons.
The online essays by my husband
Bernard eloquently express a
perspective on current events matching my own.
On the history of Christian beliefs about abortion and their relevance to rethinking current public policy, see here.
On the human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, click here
Most of my courses investigate different aspects of the social, political, cultural, and religious history of western Eurasia
and the Mediterranean, including North Africa, from the Roman Empire to the late Middle Ages.
I have also taught the department survey course, “World History I” (prehistory to 1500) and the college’s freshman or “First
Seminar,” for which I focus on current issues of social justice and human rights and their historical background. Other seminars offered in the past have examined premodern religions, especially ancient and medieval Christianity, the Merovingians
and Carolingians, the Middle Ages in modern film, the
mythology of “Star Wars,” and the role of medieval studies in addressing modern issues of social justice.
STUDENTS: click here
for SOCS website
Prison Teaching
Interview: “Prison Instruction: A Respite from Isolation,” by Michele Alperin, US1 News
Teaching at the College of New Jersey
Course Offered Fall 2009
Click here for the class
blog from last fall, where the students exchanged ideas about assigned readings, guest
lectures, topics raised in class discussions, and their community service in Camden, a critical component of their coursework.