Rate My Professor Thomas Wittkamp

Thomas Wittkamp’s research centers on vassals and vassalage in narrative sources of the Carolingian period, examined from a historical-anthropological perspective, with particular attention to semantics, rituals, patronage, emotions, loyalties, and hierarchies in sources such as the Gesta Karoli Magni of Notker the Stammerer and accounts involving figures like Tassilo III. His key publications include the 2021 article “Das Schicksal Hugos, Sohn Lothars II., und die Normannenpolitik der Lotharlinie” in a volume on Lotharingia and “Warriors and warlike kings in the Gesta Karoli of Notker the Stammerer” in Early Medieval Militarisation. He has delivered numerous lectures at conferences and workshops on topics including benefices, emotions in lord-vassal relations, and militarisation in the early Middle Ages. His work contributes to understandings of political and social structures in the Carolingian era through detailed source analysis and interdisciplinary approaches.