Victoria Morse

Education & Professional History

University of California-Berkeley, MA; PhD

Highlights & Recent Activity

I recently completed a term as director of the Perlman Center for Teaching and Learning and, for the first time since the pandemic, led the off-campus program that I teach in Rome with Bill North, History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome.

During the summer of 2023, I had the privilege of working with a team of Carleton students on developing a new course on The Global Middle Ages (History 136). I am spending my fall term sabbatical working on the introduction to a translated primary source and continuing to read and expand my knowledge of the global Middle Ages beyond Europe and the Mediterranean world.

Organizations & Scholarly Affiliations

Medieval Academy of America

Renaissance Society of America

American Historical Association

My research is currently focused on ideas about place and space in Italy in the 14th century. In a period of transition from smaller political units to larger regional states, how did people imagine the political world they inhabited? What role did maps play in creating and developing a sense of political spaces? How did people think about mountains, rivers, and other natural features of the landscape? What role did ancient texts, roads, cities, and other artifacts play in shaping these ideas?

I have been excited to collaborate with student research assistants to explore these and other questions in a series of primary sources (both in English and in Latin). I look forward to many future research partnerships!

I teach on a range of topics in the time period 1100-1600CE in the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Middle East, including courses on the crusades, the Black Death, women’s history, maps and mapmaking, and the Mediterranean world. My own research focuses on Italy and I bring those interests to my courses via an off-campus studies program based in Rome and a seminar on the development of regional states in 14th-century northern Italy.

Students in my classes learn to analyze primary sources, how to do historical research, and how to present their work and their ideas to broader audiences through exhibitions, maps, and digital tools. We explore themes of inclusion and exclusion, ideas about place and space, encounters with “others,” and religious experiences, as well as social, economic, and political life.

My hope is that students will gain the skills in my courses that will allow them to “make history” for themselves. Above all, I try to create an equitable and respectful learning space where everyone can participate, feel heard, and explore new ideas about how human beings have organized and imagined their lives in past times. Looking far back into the past is a wonderful way to develop empathy and understanding for many different viewpoints and to understand the diverse and fascinating ways human societies and cultures have constructed themselves.

With Kathy Tezla. “Collection Development Between Teaching Mission and Resource Management: The Case of Carleton College.” In Rethinking Collection Development and Management, ed. by Rebecca S. Albitz, Diane Zabel, Christine Avery, pp. 149-60. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2014.

“Saint Francis and Salimbene de Adam: The Franciscan Experience of Family.” In The Middle Ages in Text and Texture: Reflections on Medieval Sources, ed. Jason Glenn. Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2011.

“The Role of Maps in Later Medieval Society (12th-14th Centuries).” In The History of Cartography, vol. 3, The European Renaissance, ed. David Woodward. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2007.

“Seeing and Believing:  The Problem of Idolatry in the Thought of Opicino de Canistris.” In Orthodoxie, Christianisme, Histoire, ed. by Susanna Elm, Éric Rebillard and Antonella Romano. Collection de l’École Française de Rome, 270.   Rome: École Française de Rome, 2000.

“The Vita mediocris:  The Secular Priesthood in the Thought of Opicino de Canistris.” Quaderni di storia religiosa 4(1997): 257-82.

I love to cook and am always interested in exploring foodways and cuisines from around the world.  I am also working on rewilding parts of my garden to support native bees, butterflies, and birds.