Click to jump to Ken's list of academic publications
Ken was a Fulbright scholar to France in 2007–2008 and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard in 2009-2011, has presented at numerous conferences, and has extensive academic publications to his credit (listed below). Ken was employed at the Higgins Armory Museum from 2009 until the Museum's closing at the end of 2013, has taught at Boston University and the University of Massachusetts, and has also been associated with the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Renaissance Studies as a Fellow. He considers Tom Glick (BU, emeritus), Richard Gyug (Fordham, emeritus), and Dan Smail (formerly of Fordham, currently at Harvard) to be his Doktorväter.
Ken's philosophy is that a scholar must also be a public historian. Ultimately, we have to tell our stories to an audience and, unless our inquiries offer a fresh insight into the human condition, we are ultimately destined for irrelevance and antiquarianism. Furthermore, "expertise" in the writing in history should not belong just to those with the time and money to spend on graduate training. Rather, the tools of the profession must be placed in the hands of the people. Hoarding "authority" in the Ivory Tower creates artificial, undemocratic divisions. Ken actively works to break down these barriers and give a voice back to those outside academe.
Ken's areas of expertise include medieval, Renaissance, and early modern cultural, intellectual, and social history; premodern technology; cultural encounters in the Middle Ages and Age of Exploration; ideas of race and racism; the history of sex and sexuality; and medieval and early modern military history. His current CV can be downloaded here.
Consulting and Press Information
Ken has consulted with The History Channel, been quoted in newspaper articles, and taught wildly varying subjects and audiences, from giving retirees the tools to write their family histories to instructing groups of West Point cadets, professional martial arts instructors, andmulti-generational extended families in medieval fencing techniques. He specializes in not only revealing the intricacies of the past in plain language, but also in making the story relevant to the audience.
He is, of course, available as a peer reviewer.
Books:
Untitled sourcebook on history and philosophy of time. New York: Italica Press, forthcoming.
Sources on history and philosophy of timekeeping
On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. (errata here)
History of timekeeping
Flowers of Battle, Vol III: Florius de Arte Luctandi. Wheaton, IL: Freelance Academy Press, 2019.
Translation of BnF MS Lat 11269 with extensive scholarly introduction
Game of Thrones and the Medieval Art of War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017.
Popular-audience treatment not just of the TV/book series, but a "chocolate-covered" book about of real medieval history highlighting not just warfare, but women's roles and diversity.
Co-editor with Michael A. Cramer, “Can These Bones Come to Life?”: Insights from Re-construction, Re-enactment, and Re-creation. Proceedings of the Oakeshott and Higgins sessions from the International Medieval Congress, Volume I: Historical European Martial Arts. Wheaton, IL: Freelance Academy Press, 2014.
Conference proceedings
The Knightly Art of Battle. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011.
Popular-audience work on Fiore dei Liberi's 1410 Fior di Battaglia, MS Ludwing XV 13 in the Getty's collection
Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise. New York: Italica Press, 2009.
Translation of Camillo Agrippa's 1553 Treatise on the Science of Arms with extensive scholarly introduction. Revised edition, 2014.
Journal Articles and Book Chapters:
“Quantizing the Problematic: Applying Statistical Methods to Popular Medievalisms.” Perspicuitas May 2022.
“Difference and Exclusion.” In A Cultural History of Sport Vol. 2: A Cultural History of Sport in the Medieval Age ed. Wray Vamplew, John McClelland, and Mark Dyreson. London: Bloomsbury, 2021. (Under embargo; please email for a PDF)
"Liberal Arts for Social Change." Humanities 2020, 9(3), 98.
“Fencing, Martial Sport, and Working-Class Culture in Early Modern Germany: The Case of Strasbourg” (with Olivier Dupuis). Journal of Medieval Military History 16, 2019.
"On the Art of Fighting: A Humanist Translation of Fiore dei Liberi’s Flower of Battle Owned by Leonello D’Este." Acta Periodica Duellatorum 6.1, 2018.
“The Italian School of Fencing: Art, Science, and Pedagogy.” In A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Fightbooks, ed. Timothy Dawson, Daniel Jacquet, and Karin Verelst. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
“Victor Victus: Bilingualism, Biculturalism, and the Medieval Frontier.” In Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, ed. Albrecht Classen. New York: De Gruyter, 2016.
“Time and Timekeeping” (with Denis Casey), “Weapons, Warfare, Siege Machinery, and Training in Arms,” and “Chivalry and Knighthood.” Book chapters in Fundamental Aspects and Conditions of the European Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2015.
“The Number of Motion: Camillo Agrippa’s Geometrical Fencing and the Enumeration of the Body.” Journal of the Northern Renaissance, Winter 2014.
“The Medieval Experience of Time: Aristotle, Universals, and Technologies” and “Fiore dei Liberi: Texts and Contexts.” In “Can These Bones Come to Life?”: Insights from Re-construction, Re-enactment, and Re-creation. Proceedings of the Oakeshott and Higgins sessions from the International Medieval Congress, Volumes I and II, ed. Ken Mondschein and Michael Cramer. Wheaton, IL: Freelance Academy Press, 2014.
"Notes on Bibliothèque Nationale MS Lat. 11269, Florius de Arte Lutandi." Arms and Armour 8:2 (2011).
“Future-Spectives.” Sixteenth Century Society Journal 40:1 (Spring, 2009).
Essay on digital humanities and the changing direction of scholarship.
“Multiple Factors.” The Independent Scholar 19:4 (Fall, 2005).
Essay on the difficulties of publishing academic and non-academic nonfiction.
Encyclopedia Articles:
“Exploration and Colonization.” In Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. (Robert Bjork, ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
"Metrosexual." In Dictionary of American History, Dynamic Reference (Gary Cross, ed.). Detroit: Gale Group, Inc., 2009.
“Love, Western Notions of.” In The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Maryanne Cline Horowitz, ed.). Detroit: Gale Group, Inc., 2004. (with Vern Bullough)
“Meme.” In The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Maryanne Cline Horowitz, ed.). Detroit: Gale Group, Inc., 2004.
“Sex Toys.” Article in Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003.
Book Reviews:
Review of David Crouch, The Chivalric Turn. Speculum, forthcoming.
Review of Terminiello and Pendragon, The Art of Fencing: The Forgotten Discourse of Camillo Palladini. Renaissance Quarterly, forthcoming.
Review of Tobias Capwell, Armour of the English Knight 1400–1450. De Re Militari, 2018.
Review of B. Ann Tlulsty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany. De Re Militari, 2014.
Review of Tobias Capwell, The Queen of Weapons. De Re Militari, 2014.
Review of Journal of Medieval Military History Vol. IX. De Re Militari, June 2012.
Review of Carolyn Springer's Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance. De Re Militari, Jnauary 2012.
Review of Christan Teutsch’s Victory at Poiters. De Re Militari, 2010.
Review of Richard Kaeuper’s Holy Warriors. The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2010.
Peer-Reviewed Online Academic Writing:
"What 'Knight Fight' Gets Dead Wrong About Medieval Men." The Public Medievalist, 2019.
"Words and Swords: A Samizdat on Medieval Military History and the Decolonization of the Academy." Medievally Speaking, 2018.
"The Medieval Problem with Anglo-American Sherrifs." The Public Medievalist, 2018.
"Not a Good Look: The SCA Swastika Incident." The Public Medievalist, 2018.
"Medievalisms." Medievalists.net, 2018–present.
"Pyongyang’s Game of Thrones." Fletcher Forum, 2013.
"Strategies of War in Westeros." De Re Militari, 2013.