Professor, History
Katherine Smith teaches medieval and early modern history, including courses on the Crusades, women and gender, war and society, and the Renaissance and Reformation. She loves working with material culture and has developed a course that presents the early medieval history of Europe and the Mediterranean world through 100 objects.
Katherine’s research focuses on the cultural world of monasticism in the central Middle Ages. Her first book explored how monastic identity was negotiated through real and imaginary encounters with war and warriors; her second book considered how monastic commentators drew on their training in biblical exegesis to make sense of the First Crusade. Her current project reconstructs the material and sensory world of medieval monasticism as shaped by through objects, rituals, and daily routines.