B.A. (Geography). California State University, San Bernardino. 1982
M.C.P. (Master of City Planning). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1984
M.L.S. (Master of Liberal Studies). Columbia University. 1996.
M.A. (History). Fordham University. 1999.
Ph.D. (History). Fordham University. 2006.
Courses offered:
Introduction to Medieval History
Medieval Travel and Travelers
Jihad and Crusades
Medieval Spain
The Reconquest of Medieval Spain
Monks and Mendicants
Research Interests:
My doctoral dissertation, Administration in a Time of Change: The Dominican Province of Aragon, 1301-1378, is a study of a medieval religious order under duress. It studies the relationship between disciplinary lapses by some friars in the Order’s second century (no lack of sex and scandal among the fourteenth-century friars) and structural weaknesses within the order that encouraged its operational difficulties.
Michael’s work also looks at efforts of Dominican administrators’ to confront their organization’s problems. His work has required that he compile a database of Dominican friars in Aragon, amounting now to over 10,000 activities by some 3000 individual friars. The database has helped him to monitor the friars’ movements, their work and their family networks, and thus lays bare the roots of some of the order’s fourteenth-century difficulties and efforts to defend the order’s honor.
Central to Michael’s research are questions about how people work together (or fail to do so) within large organizations. Especially interesting is how new members struggle to find their fit within organizations with long histories. At stake for the organizations are changes in the norms, rules, and concepts that give them coherence and a sense of mission. At stake for the individuals are personal identity and agency. History can be seen as the dynamic struggle between individuals and their predecessors’ ways of organizing.
Additional background:
Michael is in his second career. In 1984, he received a Masters degree in City Planning from MIT, after which he managed a number of theatre, dance, and visual arts organizations. He served as Administrative Director of Long Beach Opera and, later, General Manager of the 1990 Los Angeles International Festival under the artistic direction of Peter Sellars. He thus brings both personal experience of the administrative perspective and some academic training to the management problems encountered by medieval religious orders.