国产传媒

Biography

Dr. Khalifian specializes in medieval European history and World History. His research focuses on legal thought and the social history of jurists in medieval Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Dr. Khalifian’s dissertation, “ The Formation of a Medieval Legal Profession: Jurists, Jurisprudence, and Notaries in Montpellier, c. 1204- 1390,” explores the influence of the legal and notarial professions on urban society in the southern European town of Montpellier. For his research, Dr. Khalifian has conducted numerous visits to local archives in France and has examined hundreds of notarial documents, which give insight into the city’s legal culture and contain invaluable information about the fascinatingly mundane. His other research interests include the social history of medieval universities and cross-cultural interactions between Christian, Jewish, Islamic communities in the Mediterranean world.

Dr. Khalifian’s teaching at the Mount covers a range of historical themes and periods. He developed several new courses for the History program, including the Rise and Fall of Empires in World History, the Mediterranean World, the Silk Roads, and Comparative Borders and Borderlands in World History. He also teaches both the premodern and modern World History survey courses, the History of Medicine, the History of Diseases and Epidemiology, and Revolutions and Social Movements.

Before earning his PhD at Yale, Dr. Khalifian received an MA in medieval history and World History from California State University, Long Beach. Dr. Khalifian believes in pushing students to broaden their perspectives and utilize cross-cultural comparative frameworks to reassess how they think about the past. He is fluent in Farsi and French, reads Latin proficiently, and has spent several years studying Arabic, German, and Italian. He also has extensive experience in medieval European paleography, codicology/manuscript studies, and early books/printing. He is an avid collector of premodern manuscripts and artifacts.

Before entering academia, Dr. Khalifian worked as a journalist and producer in one of Southern California’s major NPR stations. He has years of experience in audio editing, scripting, and podcast production, and he is deeply enthusiastic about scholars producing content to connect with the broader public.

Fields of interest

Medieval European history; World History; medieval law and jurisprudence; cross-cultural exchange and interactions; medieval universities; medieval European notarial culture; Latin paleography.