Faculty Profile for Dr. Jacob Doss
Biography Section
Biography and Education
Jacob Doss is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy at Texas State University. He is trained as a historian of the religions of medieval Europe. His research explores the intersection of gender, education, and conceptions of childhood in twelfth-century Cistercian monasticism and addresses how medieval Christian notions of masculinity shaped religious education by constructing, co-opting, and normalizing violent, martial masculinities.Dr. Doss’ current book project, Making Monastic Men: Imagined “Childhood,” Education, and Gender in Cistercian Formation, (1100-1250) examines the importance of the metaphor of “childhood” for conceptualizing mature monastic gender identities. His research utilizes an often-overlooked foundational textual genre for medieval pedagogy: ascetic florilegia. These collections of pithy sayings from scripture and para-scriptural sources not only mediated Christian knowledge for monks but also provided them the language for their gendered understandings of vice and virtue.
Doss has published articles in Church History, Cîteaux, and Studies in Medievalism. His research has been supported by The American Catholic Historical Association, the American Historical Association, The Medieval Academy of America, the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, and the University of Texas at Austin.
He grew up in Northwest Arkansas where he attended the University of Arkansas and earned his bachelor’s with a double major in history and anthropology, while minoring in religious studies. He then completed his master’s in church history at Boston College before moving to Austin to attend the University of Texas.
Selected Scholarly/Creative Work
- Doss, J. W. (2023). “Metaphor, Moral Formation, and a Carolingian era Florilegium: The Liber scintillarum and Cistercian Education at the turn of the Thirteenth Century.” Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 73, 101–117. https://doi.org/10.2143/CIT.73.1.0000000
- Doss, J. W. (2022). “Making Masculine Monks: Gender, Space, and the Imagined ‘Child’ in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Identity Formation.” Church History, 91(3), 467–491. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640722002098
- Doss, J. W. (2022). “To be a Monkish Man: Medievalism, Monasticism, Education, and Gender in the United States’ Culture Wars.” Studies in Medievalism, 31, 37–44. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv24cns6q.9
Selected Awards
- Award / Honor Recipient: Best Doctoral Dissertation on the History of Children, Childhood, or Youth Defended in 2022, Society for the History of Children and Youth. 2023
- Award / Honor Recipient: Kuhn Family Intellectual Entrepreneurship Mentor Award, Kuhn Family Intellectual Entrepreneurship Awards. August 2016 - December 2016
Selected Grants
- Doss, Jacob Westbrook. John Boswell Dissertation Grant, The Medieval Academy of America, Professional Society. (Funded: 2018). Grant.
- Doss, Jacob Westbrook. Bernadotte E. Schmidt Research Grant, American Historical Association, Professional Organization. (Funded: 2017). Grant.
- Doss, Jacob Westbrook. Heckman Stipend, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Research Library. (Funded: 2017). Grant.