Matt Klemm

Associate Professor and Chair and Global PRemodern Studies Minor Coordinator, History
Phone: 607-274-1306
Office: Muller Faculty Center 405, Ithaca, NY 14850
Specialty: Medieval and Ancient History, Medieval Intellectual History, History of Science and Medicine

Fall 2024 Office Hours

Wednesdays 1-3 and Thursdays 10-11. Or send me an email if you want to arrange another time.

Education:

Johns Hopkins PhD, History

University of Iowa BA, Classics and MA, History

Grinnell College, Classics

Teaching:

I teach a variety of courses in ancient Mediterranean and medieval European history.  I am also the co-coordinator (with Dan Breen in English) of the Global Premodern Studies Minor program the faculty adviser to the Women's and Men's Ultimate (Frisbee) Clubs -- a sport that I have played for more than 20 years. 

Courses:

  • Before Europe (100)
  • Ithaca Seminar: Thinking with Animals in the Middle Ages (100)
  • Medieval Civilization (200)
  • Medicine and Magic in the Middle Ages (200)
  • Body and Society in Ancient Greece and Rome (200)
  • Science and Religion, Ancient Near East to Scientific Revolution (200)
  • Monks, Heretics, and Scholars (300)
  • Ancient Greece (300)
  • Seminar: Medieval Heresy
  • Seminar: Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
  • Seminar: The Conversion of Rome
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura [On the Nature of Things] (1-credit Honors seminar) 

My research focuses on the intersections of medicine, philosophy, theology, and natural philosophy (or "science") in the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance. I am especially interested in changing conceptions of the relationship between body, soul, and mind, and of human nature as a whole. I am also interested in thought about animals and comparisons between animals and humans.

Publications:

Medical Anthropology in the Late Middle Ages: Pietro d'Abano on Body, Soul, and the Virtues (Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean 11). De Gruyter, 2024.

 “Les complexions vertueuses: la physiologie des vertus dans l’anthropologie médicale de Pietro d'Abano [Virtuous Complexions: The Physiology of Virtue in the Medical Anthropology of Pietro d'Abano],” (trans. Aurélien Robert), Médiévales 63 (2012), pp. 59-74.

“A Medical Perspective on the Soul as Form of the Body: Peter of Abano on the Reconciliation of Galen and Aristotle,” in Paul J. J. M. Bakker, Sander de Boer, and Cees Leijenhorst (eds.), Psychology and the Other Disciplines: A Case of Cross-Disciplinary Interaction (1250-1750) . Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012, pp. 275-295.

“Animals and Anthropology in Medieval Philosophy,” (with Pieter De Leemans) in Brigitte Resl (ed.), A Cultural History of Animals, Vol. II: The Medieval Age . Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2007, pp. 153-178.

“Medicine and Moral Virtue in the Expositio Problematum Aristotelis of Peter of Abano,” Early Science and Medicine 11 (2006), 302-335.

“Pietro d’Abano,” (with Pieter De Leemans) in Thomas Glick, Steven Livesey, and Faith Wallis (eds.) Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia. London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 404-405.