Michael Vargas
Biographic Data
| ID | 3590580 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Vargas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Vargas |
| SIGNATURE | VARGAS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | SUNY New Paltz |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Splendor and Opulence of the Past: Studying the Middle Ages in Enlightenment Catalonia
Matrix and Fractal: On the Structure of Heritage Constructions in Catalonia
Heritage is more than isolated and commodified places and events. It is, at least in part, an assemblage of interconnected stories. Changing social, cultural, and political circumstances may strengthen or weaken the ways these stories connect one to another. An examination of heritage exemplars in Barcelona and Catalonia offers a way to better understand what gives the narrative connections between heritage, culture, and identity their tenacity. …
Jordi Bolòs, The Historical Landscape of Catalonia. Landscape History of a Mediterranean Country in the Middle Ages. The Medieval Countryside, 23. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols 2023
Catalonia is the ancestral turf of Jordi Bolòs; and he knows his turf well. In this book of synthesis, he offers readers the fruits of his more than forty years of study of the Catalan landscape. Physical and cultural geographies are, from his vantage, indistinguishable. Such an approach to the relationship of people to land and places to power opens for study a great many problems and questions that are, as he says repeatedly throughout the text…
Order into Action: How Large-Scale Concepts of World Order Determine Practices in the Premodern World , ed. Klaus Oschema and Christoph Mauntel. Cursor Mundi, 40.Turnhout: Brepols, 2022, 332 pages
The papers in this volume have their origin in a conference held in Heidelberg in 2016 that sought to explore medieval concepts of large-scale order. Two examples of such instrumental constructs are the European division of world geography into three parts – Asia, Africa, and Europe, and the Mongols’ association of their empire with a Mandate of Heaven. But the conference’s organizers had even loftier plans. They encouraged participants to consid…
Agrarian Archeology in Northwestern Iberia. Local Societies: The Off-Site Record, ed. Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo. Historical Archeology Series. Summertown, Oxford: Archaeopress, 2023, 168 pages
Shards of pottery, ceramic or stoneware fragments of handmade kitchenware, pop up now and then in agricultural fields, far from the loci of their making and normal use. Archeologists, as a way of indicating that they have found these fragments detached from their supposed proper places, use the term “off-site.” The term has an odd, self-contradictory ring, similar to the concept of “non-places” coined by Marc Augé and later applied by Richard Hod…
Charlemagne’s Defeat in the Pyrenees: The Battle of Rencesvals
Ethnic Identity, Memory, and Use of the Past in Italy’s ‘Dark Ages’,” Luigi Andrea Berto. London and New York: Routledge, 2022, 193 pages
Luigi Andrea Berto produced the now-standard edition of the Istoria Veneticorum , written early in the eleventh century, probably by John the Deacon. He later wrote a prosopography of medieval Venetian elites, and a book returning to John the Deacon exploring his political and social vocabularies. He has written on the making of history in ninth-century southern Italy, and on Christians and Muslims in the societies of their religious others. Much…
C laire T aylor J ones . Ruling the Spirit: Women, Liturgy, and Dominican Reform in Late Medieval Germany
Women attached to the medieval Order of Preachers have seldom received their due. The general histories show them to be grateful and passive recipients of the friars’ cura monialium. Since Herbert Grundmann, researchers have seen them as women first and Dominicans second, although perspectives vary: they aspired to a female apostolate, or they found enclosure burdensome, or they employed mystical hysterics to challenge the strictures of membershi…
Catalonia is not Spain’: Projecting Catalan identity to tourists in and around Barcelona
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, Catalan nationalists have mobilised themselves to assert a political path that will distinguish their region, Catalonia, from the rest of Spain. Rich history and extensive heritage resources count among their best political assets. Meanwhile, Catalonia's capital, Barcelona, has become a premier destination for global tourists, not only for the fun and sun but also because these same Catalan nationa…
Pondering Dysfunctions in Heritage Protection: Lessons from the Theft of theCodex Calixtinus
TheCodex Calixtinus, the 12th-century manuscript at the heart of Spain's Camino de Santiago, was stolen, hidden for a year, and then found in a trash can wrapped in newsprint and plastic. The extraordinary theft highlights some dysfunctions in cultural heritage thought and practice. Explored here are questions about exemplars and copies, ambiguities in heritage protection law, problems of proprietorship and commercialization of heritage goods, an…
Historia de la nueva Mexico
How a “Brood of Vipers” Survived the Black Death: Recovery and Dysfunction in the Fourteenth-Century Dominican Order
Survivors of the Black Death confronted a world changed very much for the worse, or so we often say when ignoring nuance. There is no denying that many chroniclers wrote from a situation of real anxiety about an uncertain future. Many locales felt the effects of severe wage inflation and dramatic price fluctuations, some work regimes intensified, social mobility increased, and the utility of traditional safety nets failed to provide against local…
The educator's point of view
Catalonia is not Spain’: Projecting Catalan identity to tourists in and around Barcelona
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, Catalan nationalists have mobilised themselves to assert a political path that will distinguish their region, Catalonia, from the rest of Spain. Rich history and extensive heritage resources count among their best political assets. Meanwhile, Catalonia's capital, Barcelona, has become a premier destination for global tourists, not only for the fun and sun but also because these same Catalan nationa…
The educator's point of view
The educator's point of view
How a “Brood of Vipers” Survived the Black Death: Recovery and Dysfunction in the Fourteenth-Century Dominican Order
Survivors of the Black Death confronted a world changed very much for the worse, or so we often say when ignoring nuance. There is no denying that many chroniclers wrote from a situation of real anxiety about an uncertain future. Many locales felt the effects of severe wage inflation and dramatic price fluctuations, some work regimes intensified, social mobility increased, and the utility of traditional safety nets failed to provide against local…
Historia de la nueva Mexico
Pondering Dysfunctions in Heritage Protection: Lessons from the Theft of theCodex Calixtinus
TheCodex Calixtinus, the 12th-century manuscript at the heart of Spain's Camino de Santiago, was stolen, hidden for a year, and then found in a trash can wrapped in newsprint and plastic. The extraordinary theft highlights some dysfunctions in cultural heritage thought and practice. Explored here are questions about exemplars and copies, ambiguities in heritage protection law, problems of proprietorship and commercialization of heritage goods, an…
Catalonia is not Spain’: Projecting Catalan identity to tourists in and around Barcelona
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, Catalan nationalists have mobilised themselves to assert a political path that will distinguish their region, Catalonia, from the rest of Spain. Rich history and extensive heritage resources count among their best political assets. Meanwhile, Catalonia's capital, Barcelona, has become a premier destination for global tourists, not only for the fun and sun but also because these same Catalan nationa…
C laire T aylor J ones . Ruling the Spirit: Women, Liturgy, and Dominican Reform in Late Medieval Germany
Women attached to the medieval Order of Preachers have seldom received their due. The general histories show them to be grateful and passive recipients of the friars’ cura monialium. Since Herbert Grundmann, researchers have seen them as women first and Dominicans second, although perspectives vary: they aspired to a female apostolate, or they found enclosure burdensome, or they employed mystical hysterics to challenge the strictures of membershi…
Ethnic Identity, Memory, and Use of the Past in Italy’s ‘Dark Ages’,” Luigi Andrea Berto. London and New York: Routledge, 2022, 193 pages
Luigi Andrea Berto produced the now-standard edition of the Istoria Veneticorum , written early in the eleventh century, probably by John the Deacon. He later wrote a prosopography of medieval Venetian elites, and a book returning to John the Deacon exploring his political and social vocabularies. He has written on the making of history in ninth-century southern Italy, and on Christians and Muslims in the societies of their religious others. Much…
Jordi Bolòs, The Historical Landscape of Catalonia. Landscape History of a Mediterranean Country in the Middle Ages. The Medieval Countryside, 23. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols 2023
Catalonia is the ancestral turf of Jordi Bolòs; and he knows his turf well. In this book of synthesis, he offers readers the fruits of his more than forty years of study of the Catalan landscape. Physical and cultural geographies are, from his vantage, indistinguishable. Such an approach to the relationship of people to land and places to power opens for study a great many problems and questions that are, as he says repeatedly throughout the text…
Order into Action: How Large-Scale Concepts of World Order Determine Practices in the Premodern World , ed. Klaus Oschema and Christoph Mauntel. Cursor Mundi, 40.Turnhout: Brepols, 2022, 332 pages
The papers in this volume have their origin in a conference held in Heidelberg in 2016 that sought to explore medieval concepts of large-scale order. Two examples of such instrumental constructs are the European division of world geography into three parts – Asia, Africa, and Europe, and the Mongols’ association of their empire with a Mandate of Heaven. But the conference’s organizers had even loftier plans. They encouraged participants to consid…
Agrarian Archeology in Northwestern Iberia. Local Societies: The Off-Site Record, ed. Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo. Historical Archeology Series. Summertown, Oxford: Archaeopress, 2023, 168 pages
Shards of pottery, ceramic or stoneware fragments of handmade kitchenware, pop up now and then in agricultural fields, far from the loci of their making and normal use. Archeologists, as a way of indicating that they have found these fragments detached from their supposed proper places, use the term “off-site.” The term has an odd, self-contradictory ring, similar to the concept of “non-places” coined by Marc Augé and later applied by Richard Hod…
Charlemagne’s Defeat in the Pyrenees: The Battle of Rencesvals
Matrix and Fractal: On the Structure of Heritage Constructions in Catalonia
Heritage is more than isolated and commodified places and events. It is, at least in part, an assemblage of interconnected stories. Changing social, cultural, and political circumstances may strengthen or weaken the ways these stories connect one to another. An examination of heritage exemplars in Barcelona and Catalonia offers a way to better understand what gives the narrative connections between heritage, culture, and identity their tenacity. …
The Splendor and Opulence of the Past: Studying the Middle Ages in Enlightenment Catalonia
History (9 works) · Geography (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Art (4 works) · History (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · Art history (3 works) · Economics (3 works) · Law (3 works)