Associate Professor
Ph.D., New York University (1995)
History of Europe, ca. 1400-1800, especially society and religion, urban history, material culture, central Europe


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Office: 4428 Friedmann Hall
E-mail: james.palmitessa@wmich.edu
Phone: (269) 387-4640
Fax: (269) 387-4651

Teaching

I teach undergraduate survey courses in world history and western civilization; upper-level undergraduate courses in early modern European history, including the European Renaissance; Reformation; the history of everyday life; marriage, family and sexuality; and the European Witchhunt; and graduate courses in society and religion and popular culture. I have also taught a two-semester series of graduate readings courses in central European history to the eighteenth century, a methodology course on material culture approaches, and the department’s required graduate course in historiography.

Research

I am interested in the history of central Europe from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, especially the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, as an important area of encounter between different languages, religions, culture and societies. An interest in cities led me to my current research focus on Prague, a bilingual and multi-confessional community which was faced in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with the the dual challenges of political centralization and religion reform, and became an important Habsburg residential city.

Selected Publications

Material Culture and Daily Life in the New City of Prague in the Age of Rudolf II (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 1997); “Arbitration of Neighborhood Ties and Honor: Building and Property Disputes before the Six-Man Council of Prague, 1547-1611,” Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIV/1 (2003); “The Prague Uprising of 1611: Property, Politics and Catholic Renewal in the Early Years of Habsburg Rule,” Central European History 31/4 (1998). My book reviews have appeared in Central European History, German Studies Review, Urban History Review/Revue d’Histoire Urbaine, and The Medieval Review.

Professional Activities

I am a member of the American Historical Association, the World History Association, the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, the German Studies Association, and the International Society for the Study of Material Culture of the Middle Ages. I serve on the book review board of The Medieval Review.