Nicole Lopez-Jantzen

Dr. Nicole Lopez-Jantzen joined the faculty at CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College in 2017 as a historian of medieval history. Prior to this appointment she worked as an assistant professor at Queensborough Community College (2013-2017). Dr. Lopez-Jantzen received her doctorate in history from Fordham University in 2012, where she analyzed the struggle over Ravenna as part of a larger conflict over authority in the post-Roman west. Her recent research has focused on the role of Lombard and Byzantine women in the identity construction and ideology fundamental to the new dominant groups in the early medieval west and on sexuality in early medieval Italy, some of which is forthcoming in the article “Italy” for the Companion to Sexuality in the Medieval West (Arc Humanities Press, 2020). She also participated in the NEH Summer Institute Migration and Empire: The Roman Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad in 2017 and presented at the Inclusion and Exclusion in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean (Carlisle, PA) in April 2018, and is currently working on racialization in the early Middle Ages.

In addition to her research, Dr. Lopez-Jantzen’s teaching seeks to make the teaching of western civilization more inclusive, particularly by consistently highlighting the experiences of women, non-elites, and religious minorities. In January 2019 she was a discussant on the “Decolonizing the Middle Ages” roundtable at the 133rd Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, IL (January 2019). She is also the co-chair of BMCC’s Women’s HerStory Month Committee and serves on the board of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.

Expertise

• Late antique and early medieval Italy, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity in the pre-modern Mediterranean.

Degrees

• PhD in History, Fordham University (2012)
• MA in History, Fordham University (2005)
• BA in History, University of Maryland, College Park (2002)

Research and Projects

• Gender and sexuality in medieval Italy
• Race and ethnicity in the early Middle Ages

Publications

(With Janine Larmon Peterson) “Italy.” In Companion to Sexuality in the Medieval West. Ed. Michelle M. Sauer. Leeds: ARC Humanities Press (forthcoming 2020).

“Disobedience in the Seventh-Century Liber Pontificalis: Negotiating Rebellion and Roman Identity.” postmedieval 11.2 (forthcoming 2020).

“Between Empires: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages.” Literature Compass 16.2 (forthcoming 2019).

“Kings of All Italy? Overlooking Political and Cultural Boundaries in Lombard Italy.” Medieval Perspectives 29 (2014): 75-92.

“Reconceptualizing Ravenna’s Economic Importance in the Eighth Century.” Medioevo Adriatico 3 (2011): 125-168.

Honors, Awards and Affiliations

• 2019: William Stewart Travel Award
• 2017: William Stewart Travel Award; PSC-CUNY Research Award; National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Grant to attend the NEH Summer Institute Migration and Empire: The Roman Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad.
• 2015: PSC-CUNY Research Award
• 2014: NEH Grant to attend the NEH Summer Seminar Reform and Renewal in Medieval Rome at the American Academy in Rome; PSC-CUNY Research Award
• Member of the American Historical Association, Medieval Academy of America, and Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship