James Goodale

Professor Goodale earned his BA at Wesleyan University, where he focused on the study of Russian and Soviet history. After being graduated, he spent a few years working at various jobs, among them as an analyst at a market research firm and as a paralegal at a corporate law firm. Deciding to re-enter academia, he earned an MA at NYU, focusing on 20th-century European intellectual history. Switching coasts and centuries, he continued his studies at UCLA (1988-95), where he earned his PhD in European history. At UCLA, Goodale concentrated upon the Reformations in France, Germany and Switzerland; the Italian Renaissance; popular culture in early-modern Europe; and Women’s and Gender Studies of early modern Europe.

A professor since the 1994-95 academic year, Goodale held positions at UCLA and Beloit College before joining the Bucknell faculty. Over the years he has also held visiting positions at the (former) Max Planck Institute for History, in Göttingen, Germany; and at the University of Erfurt (Germany), where he held an endowed chair in Historical Anthropology. He was invited by the Max Planck Institute to live In the Augustinian monastery where Luther was a monk, and to undertake research in the monastery’s library. In 2001 he was the inaugural recipient of the Maria Sibylla Merian Fellowship, through which he worked and researched in Friedenstein Castle, in Gotha, Germany, in the ancestral library of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

He has published numerous articles on the development of the Reformation in Saxony and Thuringia, on religious violence in the 16th century, on Calvinism in German lands, on the cultural lives of Lutheran pastors; his most recent article focuses on Martin Luther’s personality and its effect on his ministerial abilities. He is completing a book that focuses on the conflicts that 16th century Lutheran ministers in villages had with their parishioners, over matters of everyday life, and how these disputes unexpectedly affected the villagers’ willingness to accept the Reformation. He is also working on a forthcoming article that investigates how 16th-century Lutheran pastors responded during localized outbreaks of black plague, and how their responses affected the development and acceptance of the Reformation.

At Bucknell, his courses focus on the intersection of politics, religion, and expressions of popular culture in late medieval and early-modern Europe. His courses tend to examine late medieval and early-modern works of art, literature, and theology as means to approach the cultural and religious conflicts of this era. Courses frequently offered include:

HIST 216 England and France During the Hundred Years’ War

HIST 230 Europe from the 11th to 17th Century

HIST 237 The Renaissance

HIST 246 Medieval Heresies and Heretics

HIST 249 The Reformation

HIST 250 Medieval and Early Modern Russia

HIST 251 Imperial Russia

UNIV 200 Tudors: Art, Politics, Religion (a team-taught course that fulfills the IP requirement)

UNIV 200 Imperial Russia: Facts and Fictions (a team-taught course that fulfills the IP requirement)