Title: "Asking the Big Questions"   

Header:
A true explorer of Europeanization, Anthony Perron, Ph.D., puts the finishing touches on a manuscript examining the history of Scandinavia. As a professor, Perron finds his own research heavily influenced by his interaction with students. “Teaching has encouraged me to ask big questions and to see where my research falls in the bigger story.”

Feature:
Anthony Perron, Ph.D., is fascinated with Europeanization. “I am interested in the question of what brought Europe together in the Middle Ages.  In particular, what made ‘fringe’ areas part of Western society?”

He is currently working on a manuscript that looks at the history of papal interaction with Scandinavia shortly after its Christianization. “At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Nordic region was a periphery, really ‘other’ to European civilization.  Think of the pagan Vikings” he said.  “I want to know how that Viking society became assimilated into Latin-Christian culture through the mediation of Rome in the 11th to end of the 13th century and what were the consequences of that process.”

“Before Europeanization, Scandinavia was a fairly unified cultural region.  However, cultural assimilation did not impact each of the Nordic countries in the same way.  Denmark emerged as the most thoroughly Latin Christian country, while Sweden, Norway, and Iceland to varying degrees retained a more vernacular identity.”

Perron’s research has led to a course he is very fond of teaching called “From Viking to Crusader.”  “Crusading, while emblematic of medieval civilization, was seen by Scandinavians as a continuation of the Viking plundering tradition.” 

His other courses focus primarily on the development of European society from antiquity to the Renaissance. He teaches an honors civilization course that looks at the role of law in Western history, as well as an upper-division survey course in medieval history and a course on conflicts of religious, political, and economic authority in early Europe.

Not only does Perron have Swedish ancestry himself, he also travels extensively throughout Scandinavia. He treats the students in his courses as intellectual partners. Often he will work out ideas with students and bring in photographs from his many travels to give a visual foundation to their studies.

As a professor, Perron finds his own research heavily influenced by the classroom. “Teaching has encouraged me to ask big questions and to see where my research falls in the larger story.”