John Klassen, PhD

Professor Emeritus of History

  • PhD (Washington)
  • MA (McGill)
  • BA (Goshen)

Expertise

Church and the State relations, Fathers and mothers in Christian tradition, Grace in Western tradition, History of gender (men and women)(masculinity and femininity), History of the family, History of women and men, History and contemporary issues in Europe, History of Human Rights, Medieval Europe, Reformation, family & gender, Medieval Bohemia, Reformation, Renaissance, Violence coercion and peace in the Christian tradition, War and peace, Women and men in the church, and Church origins - Anabaptist, Free Church, Mennonite

Awards & Honours

Notable accomplishments and experiences

  • Social Science & Humanities Research Council Grant, 1999-2001
  • Hiking the West Coast Trail, Vancouver Island, 1991, 1994
  • Frantisek Palacky Silver Mediallion by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1991

Recent Publications

Books

  • The Letters of the Rozmberk Sisters. Gender and Family in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia (Boydell & Brewer, 2001).
  • Warring Maidens, Captive Wives, and Hussite Queens (East European Monographs/Columbia University Press, 1999).
  • The Nobility and the Making of the Hussite Revolution (East European Quarterly/Columbia University Press, 1978).

Articles

  • “The Rhetoric of Domestic Morality in Last Wills and Testaments in Sixteenth-Century Prague. Sixteenth Century Journal XLIV/2 (2013).
  • "The Public and Domestic Faces of Ulrich of Rozmberk" in Sixteenth Century Journal, 31 (2000).
  • "Images of Anti-Majesty in Hussite Literature" in Bohemia (Collegium Carolinum of Mnchen, 33(1992)
  • "The Disadvantaged and the Hussite Revolution" in International Journal of Social History, 35 (1990).
  • "Household Composition in Medieval Bohemia" in Journal of Medieval History, 16 (1990).
  • "Gifts for the Soul and Social Charity in Medieval Bohemia" in sterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte, 554. Band (Vienna, 1990)
  • "The Development of the Conjugal Bond in Late Medieval Bohemia" in Journal of Medieval History, 13 (1987).

Papers

  • "The rhetoric of domestic morality in last wills and testaments in 16th century Prague" at the Symposium on the Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, June 2004, sponsored by the Centre of Medieval Studies and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.
  • "Acts of Kindness and Religious Rhetoric in Prague Old Town, 1518-1531" at the Symposium on the Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, June 2002, sponsored by the Centre of Medieval Studies and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.
  • "The Hussite Revolution: Ideals and Reality" [Plenary Address] at the University of British Columbia/Vancouver School of Theology, conference on the Hussite Revolution and the Bible, 17 March 1989.