Adam J. Davis
Adam J. Davis (on research sabbatical for 2024-25) is the John L. and Christine Warner Family Endowed Professor of History. From 2019 to 2024, he was Director of Denison’s Lisska Center for Intellectual Engagement. In that role, he worked with students applying for competitive national fellowships, coordinated the Summer Scholars research program, developed the “Minds Wide Open” series, designed Denison’s Scholar-Leader Programs (Exordium and Studium), and launched both Denison’s Debates and Discourse Program (in conjunction with the national organization, Braver Angels) and Denison’s competitive Debate Team. In 2016 he was awarded Denison University’s Charles A. Brickman Teaching Excellence Award, “given each year to a faculty member who is a master craftsman in the profession.” Davis has been the recipient of a year-long Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Bourse Chateaubriand (given by the French Embassy), a William G. Bowen Faculty Fellowship, two Robert C. Good Fellowships, as well as grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Lilly Endowment. He is a “life member” of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, where he was a Visiting Fellow in 2017-18.
Learning & Teaching
- HIST 152: Late Antiquity
- HIST 153: Origins of Europe: Medieval Society
- HIST 201: Doing History: Debating the Middle Ages
- HIST 205: Sophomore Seminar - The History of the Liberal Arts
- HIST 251: The Crusades
- HIST 253: The Renaissance and Reformation of the Twelfth Century
- HIST 255: Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages
- HIST 350: Plagues and Peoples: From the Black Death to Covid-19
- HIST 430: Senior Seminar: Religion and Society in Medieval Europe
- W101: Writings About the Self
Research
A historian of medieval Europe, Davis’s scholarship reflects his wide-ranging interests in medieval ecclesiastical reform and religious life, medieval attitudes toward commerce, wealth, and poverty, and the history of charity and charitable institutions. His most recent book, The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Medieval Hospital (Cornell University Press, 2019; pbk 2021; open access ebook 2023), explores the connection between the emergence of the medieval commercial economy and the rise of hospitals as new charitable institutions in the Latin West. It casts new light on the nature of Christian charity during Europe’s first great age of commerce. The book was awarded the Ohio Academy of History’s annual Publication Award (2021) for the best history book published by an Ohio author. Davis’s first book, The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy (Cornell UP, 2006), brought together the intellectual and theological world of the University of Paris with the administrative and moral challenges a Franciscan archbishop faced while trying to reform the French clergy and laity. He is currently working on a new book, “Medieval Ambitions: A Cultural History of a Virtuous Vice.”
Works
Books
- The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Medieval Hospital (Cornell University Press, 2019; pbk 2021)
- The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
Recent journal articles and book chapters
- “Three Visionary Women Hospital Founders c. 1300,” in Medieval Work, Worship and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices edited by Tanya Stabler Miller, Nancy McLaughlin, and Abigail P. Dowling (Routledge) (in press)
- “La nature des soins hospitaliers en milieu urbain aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Infirmeries et Hospices: Lieux de soins du Moyen Age à l’époque moderne, edited by Susan Boynton and Isabelle Cochelin (Brepols, forthcoming)
- “The Aristocratic Culture of Charity in Medieval Champagne,” in On the Borders of the Realm: Aristocratic Culture in Medieval France, edited by Randall Pippenger and Anne Lester (Brepols, forthcoming)
- “Poverty, Charity and Spirituality,” in A Cultural History of Poverty: The Middle Ages, ed. Eliza Buhrer (Bloomsbury Academic) (in press)
- “Eudes Rigaud et Louis IX: une relation étroite fondée sur des idéaux religieux et politiques similaires,” in Eudes Rigaud en son temps, edited by Elisabeth Lalou (Presses universitaires de Lyon) (in press)
- “Servants and Service in Twelfth and Thirteenth-Century Hospitals,” in “We Are All Servants:” The Diversity of Service in Premodern Europe, 1000-1700, edited by Isabelle Cochelin and Diane Wolfthal (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto Press, 2022): 215-233
- “Hospitals, Charity and the Culture of Compassion in Medieval Europe,” in Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations, c. 1100-1500, edited by Sharon Farmer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016): 23-45
- “The Social and Religious Meaning of Charity in Medieval Europe,” History Compass 12.12 (December 2014): 935-950
- “The Economic Power of a Hospital in Thirteenth-Century Provins,” in Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan, edited by Katherine L. Jansen, G. Geltner, and Anne E. Lester (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 121-134
- “From the Purse and the Heart: Exploring Charity, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights in France,” co-authored introduction (with Bertrand Taithe) to Toward a French History of Universal Values: Charity, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights, a special issue of French Historical Studies 34.3 (Duke University Press) (Summer, 2011): 413 – 432
- “Preaching in Thirteenth-Century Hospitals,” Journal of Medieval History 36, no. 1 (March 2010): 72-89
Other
- William G. Bowen Faculty Fellowship (Spring 2025)
- Braver Angels College Debates and Discourse, John Templeton Foundation (2023-25), Faculty Fellow
- Ohio Academy of History’s 2021 Publication Award for The Medieval Economy of Salvation as the best history book in any region/time period published by an Ohio author the previous year
- Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge University, 2017-18 (Life Member, Clare Hall)
- R. C. Good Fellowship, research sabbatical, 2017-18
- Charles A. Brickman Teaching Excellence Award, Denison University, 2016
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship, 2014-15
- R. C. Good Fellowship, Research sabbatical 2009-10: Visiting Scholar at Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
- Lilly Endowment Fellowship, research sabbatical, Fall 2006
- Mellon Cluster Grant for “World of Byzantium” travel study project
- Bourse Chateaubriand, French government fellowship for year-long doctoral dissertation research and academic study in France, 1998-1999.
