College of Natural & Social Sciences
Department of History
Office: King Hall C4066
Phone
323-343-2020 (History Department main number)
Email
swells2@calstatela.edu
Career at Cal State LA
- tenure-line faculty member since 2003
- full professor since 2014
- Chair of the History Department, 2014-2017 and 2023 to Present
- Associate Director of the Honors College, 2017-2019
Educational Background
- Ph.D. in History, 2003: New York University, NY, NY
- B.A., 1992: Columbia University, NY, NY
Research Interests
- systems of thought in medieval and early modern Europe and their relationship to cultural, social and political contexts
- histories of the body, including gender studies and disability studies
- medieval spirituality and devotional practices, including those associated with mysticism and with relic veneration
- cultural, political and institutional development of religious communties, especially in Germany from the Carolingian era through the twelfth century
Publications
- "The gendering of power in the family and the state," with Ping Yao. In The Cambridge World History. Volume 4: A World with States, Empires and Networks 1200 BCE-900 CE, edited by Craig Benjamin. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- "Discourses on gender and sexuality," with Ping Yao. In The Cambridge World History. Volume 4: A World with States, Empires and Networks 1200 BCE-900 CE, edited by Craig Benjamin. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- "The Warrior Habitus: Militant Masculinity and Monasticism in the Henrician Reform Movement." In Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, edited by Jennifer Thibodeaux. Palgrave, 2010.
- "The Exemplary Blindness of Francis of Assisi." In Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, edited by Joshua Eyler. Ashgate, 2010.
- Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom. Essays in honor of Penelope D. Johnson, co-edited with Katherine Allen Smith. Brill, 2009.
- "The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity in East Francia: The Case of Gandersheim, ca. 850-950." In Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe.
Teaching Fields
- medieval and early modern Europe
- world history to 1700
- comparative religion
- historiography and critical theory