James Naus

Research

My research centers on the crusading movement and its impact on medieval society. My earlier work focused on the cultural and political history of France, with particular attention to how royal association with crusading shaped the practice of kingship during the Central Middle Ages. That work culminated in my book, Constructing Kingship: The Capetian Monarchs of France and the Early Crusades (2016).

I am currently writing a biography of Bohemond of Antioch, one of the key leaders of the First Crusade, under contract with Yale University Press. I am interested both in Bohemond's life itself and, more broadly, in the way it helps us think differently about the First Crusade. Accounts of Bohemond's life are chiefly organized around the First Crusade and treat his 1098 conquest of Antioch as the pivot on which his career turns. Such a focus makes his crusading career appear discontinuous, isolating a few years of his life from the decades of political and cultural formation in southern Italy that came before. In southern Italy, Latin and Byzantine political and cultural systems overlapped within a wider Mediterranean world shaped by continual movement and exchange. My book places Bohemond's crusading career within that world and reads his campaigns in the East as the continuation of a life formed in Norman Italy.

Teaching

In addition to regularly teaching the general education survey, I offer upper-division courses on the crusades, medieval Europe, and Roman history. I also regularly teach graduate seminars, advise M.A. students, and direct several graduate independent studies each year.

Publications

Books

Constructing Kingship: The Capetian Monarchs of France and the Early Crusades (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).

The Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict, co-edited with Thomas F. Madden and Vincent Ryan (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010).

Articles and Chapters

"Royal Participation and Leadership in the Crusading Movement, 1095–1200," in The Cambridge History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Phillips, Andrew Jotischky, Thomas Madden, and M. Cecilia Gaposchkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026), 172–90.

"The Italian Context for Bohemond's Participation in the First Crusade," Crusades 24 (2025): 149–62.

"Philip Augustus and the Decision to Join the Third Crusade," in Third Crusade: New Interpretations, ed. John Hosler and Stephen Bennett (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2025), 100–14.

"Royal Memory and the Crusades," co-authored with Vincent Ryan, in Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, ed. Megan Cassidy-Welch (London: Routledge, 2016).

"The Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk and the Coronation of Louis VI," in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, ed. Marcus Bull and Damien Kempf (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), 105–15.

"Negotiating Kingship in France at the Time of the Early Crusades: Suger and the Gesta Ludovici Grossi," French Historical Studies 36 (2013): 525–41.

"The French Royal Court and the Memory of the First Crusade," Nottingham Medieval Studies 55 (2011): 49–78.

Public Engagement

I regularly appear as a historical commentator on television outlets including FOX 2 Detroit, The Pulse, and LiveNOW from FOX. I also write guest editorials for publications such as USA Today, the Detroit News, and Bridge Michigan. I have been a guest on podcasts such as Memory Medieval and regularly deliver lectures to public audiences.