Name:
James Mixson

Title:
Ph.D.

Current Position/Academic Assignment:
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Alabama

Hometown:
Tuscaloosa, AL

Educational Background:
B.A., History, University of Georgia (1991); Ph.D., Medieval Studies, University of Notre Dame (2002)

How did you learn about HMML?
Through my graduate training at the University of Notre Dame

Current research at HMML:
Evidence, from Austrian monastic manuscripts, of fifteenth-century debates over the meaning of ownership and the ideal of Christian community in a monastic setting. I'm also interested in evidence of the tensions of those debates inspired in daily experience.

Why did you choose to study this—what got you interested in this topic?
A scholarly fascination with the paradox of late-medieval monasticism. Late-medieval monks and nuns, canons and friars were, in one sense, to retreat from the world and embrace religious poverty. But they lived in often massively wealthy corporations, and they often enjoyed that wealth in visibly personal ways – through personal cash incomes, comfortable apartments, and so on. I wanted to understand how they reconciled their wealth with their way of life, and how their way of life reflected broader changes in European economy and culture.

What has been the most surprising thing you've uncovered in your current research?
One text in a manuscript from Melk that describes how monastic reformers adapted procedures of inquisition, backed by territorial princes, to enforce their vision of monastic community.

What can we learn from that?
It is a reminder that modern minds tend to separate religious ideals, law, economy and politics in ways that medieval people did not. It is also a reminder that religious ideals are always subject to contest and negotiation in particular historical settings.

Why did you decide to come to HMML for this particular research?
Many of the thousands and thousands of Austrian monastic manuscripts that are at the heart of the HMML collection were produced by the same late-medieval cultural energies of reform and debate that are at the heart of my project.

What would you tell someone about your experience at HMML?
It is a marvelous but underused resource for the religious history of the later Middle Ages in Germany and Austria, and its people are as marvelous as its texts.

Do you have a favorite book or teacher from your youth that influenced your career/academic path?
Herbert Grundmann's Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, and the work of his student, Kaspar Elm.

What do you read for leisure?
Southern writers – Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Erskine Caldwell, Tom Wolfe. Also an occasional book on philosophies of teaching or leadership. Do undergraduate essays count, too?

If you could travel back in time, what event would you like to experience in person? Why?
It is said that my grandfather, who played running back at the University of Georgia in the 1920s, did a forward flip over the goal line to win a game. But there’s no evidence other than the family memory. The historian in me wants to verify things...and if it really happened, of course, I would love to be there to cheer him in person.