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Dr. Whitney Leeson

Professor

Department:
History
Location:
129 Bank Building
Phone:
(540)375-2541

Degrees

  • Ph. D. in Anthropology, The University of Virginia
  • M.A. in Anthropology, The University of Virginia
  • B.A. in Anthropology and History, College of William & Mary

Research & Teaching Interests

  • Economic Anthropology
  • Historical Archaeology
  • Medieval France
  • Gift Exchange
  • Kinship and Marriage
  • New World Contact and Colonization

Publications

  • “Upending Ring Tournaments in the American South: The Competing Medievalism’s of Ex-Confederates, Unionists, and Freedmen during Reconstruction,” Medieval Perspectives, Vol. 35. (Forthcoming).
  • “‘Grand Colored Tournament’—Alexandria, Virginia, 1865—Emancipationists Mobilize the Medieval,” Studies in Medievalism. Forthcoming. Jennifer Mara DeSilva, Whitney A.M. Leeson, and Barbara Pitkin (eds.), The Early Modern Classroom: Teaching the Early Modern World in the Era of COVID-19, Sixteenth Century Journal 51, no. S1, (2020).
  • “The Silver Panel.” Written with Gary Gibbs and Ivonne Wallace Fuentes. Sixteenth Century Journal 51(x), (2020).
  • “Jesuit Relations Reading Workshop: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Jesuit and Wendat Medical Responses to the 1636 Influenza Epidemic.” World History Bulletin, 36 no. 1, (Spring 2020).

Extracurricular

  • Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation
  • Mill Mountain Garden Club

Courses

  • Civilization II
  • Humanities I
  • Introduction to Anthropology
  • Introduction to Archaeology
  • Ethnography
  • Historical Anthropology
  • Medieval France
  • The Annales School
  • Witchcraft
  • History of Hawaii—Intensive Learning Travel Course
  • Post-Classic Maya—Intensive Learning Travel Course
  • Historical Archaeology—Intensive Learning Travel Course
  • Classic and Post-Classic Maya
  • The Black Death—First Year Seminar
  • The Jesuits in New France—Senior History Seminar
  • Contact in New France and Early Colonization—Senior History Seminar
  • The Carolingians
  • Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
  • In Contact: Material Culture in New France
  • New Worlds
  • Medieval Material Culture: Knightly Things—Senior History Seminar
  • Things in Contact: From New France to Old Hawaii
  • Seven Deadly Sins—First Year Seminar
  • The Anthropology of Hawaii The Anthropology of Fashion

Recent Conference Presentations

  • “Things in Contact.” May 14, 2012. “Sites of Contact” Roundtable, Tocqueville Seminars Conference, Richmond, VA
  • “Knights, Ladies, and Castles: How Children Learn about the Gender Roles of Medieval Men and Women.” March 23-24, 2012. Childhood Reconsidered: Representations of Children in the Humanities, 2012 Virginia Humanities Conference, Roanoke VA
  • “Jousting Knights and Tournament Ladies: Children’s Understanding of Reconfigured Gender Relations in the Modern Sport of Jousting.” May 10-13, 2012. 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI
  • “Teaching History Using Emerging Technologies: The Roanoke College iTouch Project.” January 6-9, 2011. 125th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Boston MA
  • “What’s In a Name? Diminutives, Nicknames, and Aliases in Fourteenth-Century Avignon.” Southeast Medieval Association, November 18-20, 2010, Roanoke VA
  • “An Ambiguous Woman and a Dangerous Wife: Unraveling the Marital Status of Francoyse des Achard in Sixteenth-Century Avignon.” October 14-17, 2010. Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Montreal Canada
  • “The Social Use of Names in Fourteenth-Century Avignon: Naming Practices and Strategies of Identification in the Terriers of Bishop Anglic Grimoard and the Repenties of Sainte Marie Magdeleine.” 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 13-16, 2010, Kalamazoo MI
  • “The Meaning of Mats in the Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century Eastern Woodlands.” October 20-31, 2009. Southeast World History Association, Roanoke VA