Jay Rubenstein

Jay Rubenstein (born 1967) is an American historian of the Middle Ages.

Life Rubenstein grew up in Cushing, Oklahoma and attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota where he graduated with a B.A. in 1989. From 1989 to 1991 he studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1991 he completed an M.Phil. from Oxford, writing a thesis on the veneration of saints' relics in England after the Norman Conquest. In 1997, he received a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, working under the supervision of Professor Gerard Caspary. After leaving Berkeley he taught one year at Dickinson College, one year at Syracuse University, and seven years at the University of New Mexico.

He is currently a history professor at the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Director of the USC Center for the Premodern World. His published scholarship has focused on medieval intellectual history, monastic life, and the early crusade movement.

In recognition of his Rhodes Scholarship, his hometown of Cushing named a street after him.

Awards 2012 – Ralph Waldo Emerson Award from Phi Beta Kappa for significant contributions to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity 2007 – MacArthur Fellows Program 2007 – National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship 2006 – ACLS Burkhardt Fellowship 2004 – William Koren, Jr. Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies for an outstanding journal article published on any era of French history by a North American scholar 2002 – ACLS Fellowship

Selected publications

"What Is the Gesta Francorum, and Who Is Peter Tudebode?" Revue Mabillon 16 (2005): 179–204. "Biography and Autobiography in the Middle Ages," in Writing Medieval History: Theory and Practice for the Post-Traditional Middle Ages, ed. Nancy Partner. Arnold: London, 2005, pp. 53–69. "Putting History to Use: Three Crusade Chronicles in Context," Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 35 (2004): 131–168.

"Liturgy Against History: The Competing Visions of Lanfranc and Eadmer of Canterbury." Speculum 74 (1999): 271–301.