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Dr. Richard E. Barton, Associate Professor of History, and Katie Barton

Dr. Richard E. Barton

Link to Dr. Barton's Webpage

Contact Information

Email: rebarton@uncg.edu
Office: MHRA 2115
Office Phone: 336-334-3998

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1997
M.A., University of California, Santa
Barbara, 1990
B.A., Williams College, 1988

Teaching Experience

Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2004-
Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1998-2004
Lecturer, Yale University, 1997-98
Part-Time Lecturer, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1996-97

Research Interests

My research program investigates the structures and nature of power in the aristocratic society of western France between c.900 and c.1200. For medieval aristocrats, power may have seemed a relatively uncomplicated concept: it was literally the ability to dominate lesser men and women. Yet my work broadens the concepts of power, domination, and lordship to include interpersonal dynamics, gender constraints, emotional display and convention, collectively held beliefs and identities, and affective notions of right. What this means, of course, is that I combine in my conception of medieval aristocratic power two notions: a practical understanding of power as the ability to constrain and a more theoretical understanding of power as the confluence of intangible qualities of affect, honor, and/or "charisma."

My research is focused on Western France - including Maine, Anjou, the Touraine, the Vend-mois, western Brittany, and Southern Normandy - between c.900-1200 (I have also done some work on the early history of Norman England, but this is not a true research specialty). I make use of chronicles, letters, saints' lives, and early chansons de geste, but most of my work involves the analysis of charters (or diplomas, "acta," or "notices"). These brief quasi-legal documents were normally drawn up by the monastic recipient of an aristocratic gift of property as a means of keeping straight the monastery's land-holdings; they exist in the thousands in archives all over the west of France.

Current Projects

  • “Talking, Advising and Judging: the Practice of Justice in the De injusta vexacione Willelmi episcopi primi,” article in preparation
  • "Women as Lords in Western France, c.1150-1250," paper being revised for publication
  • "Bishops and their Men in the Diocese of Le Mans," article and longer-term prosopographical project in preparation
  • “Blurring the Boundaries of Epic and History: the Canons of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour and the Strange Case of Count David.” Article in preparation.
  • “Geoffrey of Mayenne or Geoffrey of Acerra? A Manceau Aristocrat’s Adventures in Southern Italy, c.1080-1130” Article in preparation.
  • Emotion and Power: Aristocratic Attitudes towards Anger, Honor and Shame in Western France, c.950-1200. Book manuscript in preparation.

Courses Taught

Courses in Preparation

    The Viking Age - a 300-level (or perhaps an incarnation of HIS 542) covering Vikingexpansion into the North Atlantic and the cultures established in Scandinavia, the British Isles, Iceland, Greenland and Vinland between 800 and 1200
  • Violence in the Middle Ages - will be taught as an incarnation of either HIS 542 or HIS 709. Attempts to understand medieval attitudes towards violence, including motivations for acting violently and methods for restraining violence.

Recent Publications

  • *“Making a Clamor to the Lord: Noise, Justice and Power in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century France,” in Feud, Violence and Practice: Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor of Stephen D. White, ed. B. Tuten and T. Billado. (Ashgate, 2010), 213-238.
  • "Between the King and the Dominus: the Seneschals of Plantagenet Maine and Anjou," Les seigneuries dans l'espace Plantagenêt (c. 1150-c. 1250), Actes du colloque organisé à Bordeaux et Saint-Emilion les 3, 4 et 5 mai 2007, ed. M. Aurell and F. Boutoulle (Bordeaux, 2009), 139-162.
  • "La carrière de Hélie, comte du Maine," in Tinchebray 1106-2006, ed. V. Gazeau et J. Green, Le Pays-Bas Normand, nos. 271-272 (Flers, 2009), 207-220.
  • "Gendering Anger: Ira, Furor and Discourses of Power and Masculinity in the 11th and 12th Centuries," in In the Garden of Evil: the Vices in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard Newhauser (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 371-392.
  • Lordship in the County of Maine, c.890-1160 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004).
 

Page updated: 02-Dec-2010

Accessibility Policy

Department of History
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
P.O. Box 26170
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
VOICE 336.334.5992
FAX 336.334.5910
EMAIL history_department@uncg.edu