Education
Doctoral Candidate: The University of Tennessee, 2013
M.A. Education: Wake Forest University, 2007
B.A. History and Music: The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2006.
Field of Study: Medieval and Renaissance
Research Interests: Intellectual culture, Crusade, Reform, Medieval Flanders
Dissertation Title (Working): Two Murders and a Coronation: Crusade and the Counts of Flanders, 1071-1204
Contact Information:
Email: bphillis@vols.utk.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Biography: My dissertation traces the development of a collective identity that characterized the counts of Flanders in the twelfth century. I argue that the identity of the Flemish counts came to be bound up in their participation in the crusading movement. This ethos was developed within the context of local interactions. Nobles who held lands from the counts, canons who served in the comital administration, monks whose monasteries commemorated comital deeds, and burghers who sought to win recognition of their own collective rights all played roles in negotiating this identity. Consequently, this project also argues that local conditions were critically important to the development of political ideologies in the Middle Ages.