This fellowship was established by Professor Courtenay, an internationally renowned scholar of medieval European intellectual and university history. He joined the Department of History in 1966 and received his Ph.D. at Harvard the following year. He served as History Department Chair in 1985-1988, chaired the Classics Department in 1999-2001, and held the C. H. Haskins (WARF) Professorship from 1988 and a Hilldale Professorship from 1998 until he became Professor emeritus in 2008. Among his many honors, he is a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Historical Society, and the British Academy.
As a Festschrift published in his honor in 2017 notes: “For more than a half century, William J. Courtenay has been opening up new avenues in the exploration of later-medieval intellectual and university history. He has also trained several generations of scholars who are themselves active researchers, and some of his students have had students of their own.”
Offered annually (or as often as endowment income permits), the fellowship provides one semester of support (tuition, stipend, etc.) for an advanced dissertator to teach an undergraduate course of their own design. Preference will be given to students in ancient, medieval, or early modern European history. The call for applications is distributed in late fall semester with an application deadline of March 1 for a fellowship to be held the following spring.
Courtenay Teaching Fellows
- 2020-2021
- Lecturer – Charlotte Clare Whatley, PhD
- Course – History 223: How to Get Away with Murder: Crime and Society in Medieval England