Valerie L. Garver

Current Research

My research seeks to answer related questions concerning the history of women, gender, childhood, and family, as well as the historical and interdisciplinary study of material culture. My published work has mainly focused on the Carolingian world writ large, but as a broadly trained early medievalist, I remain engaged in the study of much of northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages and am committed to understanding that region in broader temporal and geographic contexts. I am currently finishing a book titled Textiles, Clothing, and Society in the Carolingian World, which examines a crucial form of material culture to reassess Carolingian society. A nascent book project on early medieval childhood that draws from both material and textual sources is also underway. This study will investigate children and ideas concerning children through the methodological lenses of gender studies and material culture studies.

My research has been supported by membership in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; a Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship; a Solmsen Postdoctoral Fellowship; the Fulbright Program; a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society; a Research Project Grant from the Pasold Research Fund; and a Mercator Fellowship.

Major Publications

Books

• (Editor) A Cultural History of Work in the Medieval Age. Bloomsbury Press, 2018.
• (Co-editor with Owen M. Phelan) Rome and Religion in the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of Thomas F. X. Noble. Ashgate Press, 2014.
• Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World. Cornell University Press, 2009, paperback edition 2012.

Articles/Book Chapters

• "Carolingian Boyhoods," in Carolingian Experiments, ed. Matthew Gillis, Turnhout: Brepols, 2022, 27–46.
• "Sensory Experiences of Low-Status Textile Workers," in Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, ed. Fiona Griffiths and Kathryn Starkey, Berlin: De Gruyter Press, 2018, 50–76.
• "Work, Skill, and Technology," in A Cultural History of Work in the Medieval Age, ed. Valerie L. Garver, London: Bloomsbury Press, 2018.
• "Go humbly dressed as befits servants of God: Alcuin, Clerical Identity, and Sartorial Anxieties," Early Medieval Europe 26.2 (2018): 203–230.
• "Conceptions of Children and Youth in Carolingian Capitularies," in Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, ed. Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, London: Routledge, 2018, 209–223.
• "Material Culture and Social History in Early Medieval Western Europe," History Compass 12/10 (2014): 784–93.

Teaching Interests

In addition to teaching the History of the Western World, I offer a variety of classes about the Middle Ages at the undergraduate level. My specific teaching interests include the Carolingian world, the social history of the European Middle Ages, and the history of women, gender, childhood, and family. I have also offered interdisciplinary courses in medieval studies and Game of Thrones, which gained media attention in 2015.

Courses Taught

• HIST 110: History of the Western World
• IDSP 225: Introduction to Medieval Society and Culture
• HIST 305: Europe in the Early Middle Ages
• HIST 306: Europe in the Later Middle Ages
• IDSP 425: Seminar in Medieval Studies