Courses Offered:
- Introduction to Medieval History
- Senior History Seminar on Sacred Violence
- Selected Topics Courses:
- Medieval Travel and Travelers
- Medieval Towns
- Jihad and Crusades
- Inquisition
- Monks
- Medieval Spain
- The Medieval Crown of Aragon
Michael Vargas studies the medieval Order of Preachers and its members (Dominican friars) in the fourteenth century. In this period the boozing and womanizing of the Order’s undisciplined friars was legendary, and so he asks: What explains behavior that is so unlike what we would expect from those who promised themselves to a religious profession? In answer he accepts that the Order suffered from the cataclysms of the period: economic disruption, war, plague, and schism. Still, he sees a need to replace accounts that make overly broad assertions of the friars’ contamination by factors outside the Order with a careful illustration of the complexities of their communal life. His focus is the everyday experience of average friars. In that experience he sees conflicted identities, competing loyalties, and plenty of good reasons to confront the demands of an organization growing increasingly bureaucratic and legalistic.
Professor Vargas is currently completing a book entitled Taming a Brood of Vipers: Conflict and Change in Fourteenth-Century Dominican Convents. It sees Dominican friars as agents and vectors of change inside their own convents. It recognizes Dominican convents as homes, schools and workplaces, rich and complex lived communities that encouraged conflict while idealizing the quest for cooperation. In these settings the daily difficulties of association were as much on the minds of friars as their school curricula and their preaching exempla.
Upon receiving a B.A. (Geography) from California State University, San Bernardino, Vargas continued at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received the M.C.P. (Master of City Planning). He then worked for over fifteenth years as a cultural planner/administrator. He served as Administrative Director of the Long Beach Opera and was General Manager of the 1990 Los Angeles International Festival under the artistic direction of Peter Sellars. He went on to receive the M.L.S. (Liberal Studies) from Columbia University, the M.A. (History) and Ph.D. (History) from Fordham University.