Dr. Scott Wells, Chair of the History Department

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