Matt Klemm

Associate Professor and Chair and Global PRemodern Studies Minor Coordinator, History
Phone: 607-274-1306
Office: Muller Faculty Center 405, Ithaca, NY 14850
Specialty: Medieval and Ancient History, Medieval Intellectual History, History of Science and Medicine

Fall 2023 Office Hours

Fall office hours coming soon! Send me an email if you need to contact me in the meantime.

I teach a variety of courses in ancient Mediterranean and medieval European history.  I am also the co-coordinator (with Dan Breen) of the Global Premodern Studies Minor program the faculty adviser to the Women's and Men's Ultimate (Frisbee) Clubs -- a sport that I have played for more than 20 years. 

Courses:

  • Before Europe (100)
  • Ithaca Seminar: Thinking with Animals in the Middle Ages (100)
  • Medieval Civilization (200)
  • Medicine and Magic in the Middle Ages (200)
  • Body and Society in Ancient Greece and Rome (200)
  • Science and Religion, Ancient Near East to Scientific Revolution (200)
  • Monks, Heretics, and Scholars (300)
  • Ancient Greece (300)
  • Seminar: Medieval Heresy
  • Seminar: Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
  • Seminar: The Conversion of Rome
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura [On the Nature of Things] (1-credit Honors seminar) 

My research focuses on the intersections of medicine, philosophy, theology, and natural philosophy (or "science") in the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance. I am especially interested in changing conceptions of the relationship between body, soul, and mind, and of human nature as a whole. I am also interested in thought about animals and comparisons between animals and humans.