Authorsâ Academic Biographies
L.J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay
have been academic collaborators and fast friends for nearly thirty years. To date, they have co-edited six collections of essays centering on medieval violence and warfare. This is their second joint monograph. The following are their academic biographies.
Donald J. Kagay
is an expert in medieval legal and military history, with a specialty in medieval Spain, in particular, the Crown of Aragon. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degree at Southern Methodist University and in 1981, received his Ph.D. from Fordham University, working under one of the foremost historians of medieval Iberia, Dr. Joseph F. OâCallaghan. From 1993 until his retirement in 2015, Kagay taught history at Albany State University in Georgia where he earned the rank of full professor and was highly active in faculty affairs, holding on several occasions the offices of Faculty Senate President and President of the American Academy of University Professors chapter at the university.
Dr. Kagayâs scholarship includes the publication of five books and eight co-edited essay collections (six of them with his co-author of this work, Andrew Villalon, (listed in the latterâs academic biography). He has also produced forty-six refereed articles in a number of different journals including the Anuario de Estudios Medievales, Aportes, the Catholic Historical Review, the Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians, Imago Temporis: Medium Aevum, the Journal of Legal History, the Journal of Medieval Military History, the Journal of Military History, the Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, Mediaevistik, the Mediterranean History Review, Mediterranean Studies, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, and Viator. Dr. Kagay is a frequent reviewer for De re militari, the Sixteenth Century Journal, Mediaevistik, and the Medieval Review. He has also submitted articles to the Cambridge History of Warfare: Middle Ages, the Dictionary of Medieval Iberia, the Dictionary of Modern Spain, the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval History, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology. Dr. Kagay has been an invited speaker at the Meadows Museum (Dallas), St. Johnâs University (Minnesota), Texas Tech University, the Universidad de Barcelona and the University of Cincinnati.
In 1994, the University of Pennsylvania published Kagayâs translation of a major medieval law code under the title The Usatges of Barcelona: The Fundamental Law of Catalonia. This book has since been published electronically in the Library of Iberian Resources Online (libro@uca.edu). Along with Theresa M. Vann, Dr. Kagay published in 1998 a volume of essays in honor of their mentor, Joseph F. OâCallagnan with Brill. In 2002, he put out, The Customs of Catalonia between Lords and Vassals of Pere Albert, Barcelona Canon: A Practical Guide to Feudal Relations with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. In 2007, War, Government, and Society in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, a collection of thirteen of his earlier articles, appeared in Ashgateâs Variorum series. In 2015, he again collaborated with Dr. Vann to publish a work with Ashgate entitled Hospitaller Piety and Crusader Propaganda: Guillaume Caoursinâs Description of the Ottoman Siege of Rhodes, 1480. Dr. Kagay is currently working with Dr. Vann on a translation of the Historia de rebus Hispaniae, the seminal chronicle of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. He is also currently writing a biography of Elionor, Pere IIIâs third wife. He has also published several articles on the history of Dallas, Texas, where his family settled in the 1850s. The most important of these, an article concerning a utopian settlement north of Dallas that failed in 1848, was published in the Southwest Historical Quarterly.
In 1991, Dr. Kagay, along Derek Baker of the University of North Texas, founded the Texas Medieval Association (TEMA), serving ever since as its secretary-treasurer. In addition, he played a key role in organizing almost a dozen of TEMAâs earliest state conferences. In the early 1990s, he summoned and presided over an organizational meeting that led to the founding of De re militari: the Society for Medieval Military History. More recently, he played a similar role in the establishment of the Georgia Medievalists Group.
L.J. Andrew Villalon
did his undergraduate work at Yale University where he earned honors in history and was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1984. After many years working at the University of Cincinnati, where he currently holds the rank of professor emeritus, Villalon retired and moved to Austin, Texas, serving as senior lecturer at the University of Texas until his âfinalâ retirement in 2016. A specialist in late medieval and early modern European history, Villalon has delivered numerous papers on a variety of topics. His articles have appeared in both collections and a variety of academic journals including the Catholic Historical Review, the Sixteenth Century Journal, Mediterranean Studies, the Journal of Medieval Military History, the British Journal of Transport History, the Journal of Automotive Historians, and the Proceedings of the Ohio Academy of History.
Currently, Villalon is working on two book-length studies in the medieval/early modern period, one on the canonization of San Diego de Alcalá, the other on the life of Sir Hugh Calveley, an English knight and mercenary soldier in the Hundred Years War. He has co-edited with Donald Kagay (also the co-author of this book) six collections of medieval essays entitled-The Final Argument: The Imprint of Violence on Society in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (The Boydell Press, 1998); The Circle of War in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History (The Boydell Press, 1999); Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon: Medieval Warfare in Societies around the Mediterranean (Brill, 2002); The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus (Brill, 2005); The Hundred Years War, Part II: New Vistas (Brill, 2008) and The Hundred Years War, Part III: Further Considerations (Brill, 2013). Together the pair have also written an earlier, prize-winning monographâTo Win and Lose a Medieval Battle, Nájera (April 3, 1367): A Pyrrhic Victory for the Black Prince (Brill, 2017).
In addition to work in his major field, Villalon has published articles on automotive history and the history of World War I. In this other area, he is working toward a book examining the powerful war film, Paths of Glory, tracing its history from the real events of 1914â15 that inspired its creation to its enshrinement as a cult classic during the Vietnam Era.
Dr. Villalon has held various grants for study in Spain, including a Fulbright; received two awards from the American Association of University Professors for defending academic freedom; and in 2001, was presented the Professional-Scholarly Activity Award for the University College at the University of Cincinnati. He was the vice president of the Texas Medieval Association (TEMA) in 2007â2008 and president of that organization in 2008â2009 when he organized (with great help from Natasha!) TEMAâs annual conference held that year in Austin. He is a founding member of De re militari: The Society for Medieval Military History and was elected to a three-year term as its president in 2014. Villalon was an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology published by Oxford in 2010. In 2014, De re militari awarded Villalon and Kagay the Verbruggen Prize for the best book in medieval military history. In 1919, Villalon and Kagayâs book on the Battle of Najera (1367) received the Brigadier General James L. Collins Jr. Book Prize from the United States Commission on Military History for the best book in military history for 2017â2018.