Norman F. Cantor | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 19, 1929 |
| Died | 18 September 2004(2004-09-18) (aged 74) |
| Occupation | Historian,essayist,teacher |
| Alma mater | University of Manitoba (BA) Oriel College, Oxford Princeton University (MA,PhD) |
| Spouse | Mindy Mozart (m. 1957) |
| Children | Howard Cantor, Judy Cantor |
Norman Frank Cantor (November 19, 1929 – September 18, 2004)[1] was a Canadian-American medievalist. Known for his accessible writing and engaging narrative style, Cantor's books were among the most widely read treatments of medieval history in English. He estimated that his textbookThe Civilization of the Middle Ages, first published in 1963, had a million copies in circulation.[2]
Born inWinnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to a Jewish family, Cantor received aBachelor of Arts degree at theUniversity of Manitoba in 1951. He moved to the United States to obtain anM.A. degree (1953) fromPrinceton University, then spent a year as aRhodes Scholar atOriel College, Oxford. He returned to Princeton and received hisPh.D. in 1957 under the direction of eminent medievalistJoseph R. Strayer. He also began his teaching career at Princeton.[1]
After teaching at Princeton, Cantor became a professor atColumbia University from 1960 to 1966. He was a Leff professor atBrandeis University until 1970 and then was atBinghamton University until 1976, when he took a position atUniversity of Illinois at Chicago for two years. He then went on toNew York University (NYU), where he served as Dean of NYU's College of Arts & Sciences, as well as a professor of history, sociology and comparative literature.[1] After a brief stint as Fulbright Professor at theTel Aviv University History Department (1987–88), he returned to NYU where he taught as a professor emeritus until his retirement in 1999, at which time he devoted himself to working as a full-time writer.[3]
Although his early work focused on English religious and intellectual history, Cantor's later scholarly interests were diverse, and he found more success writing for a popular audience than he did engaging in more narrowly focused original research. He did publish onemonograph study, based on his graduate thesis,Church, kingship, and lay investiture in England, 1089-1135,[3] which appeared in 1958 and remains an important contribution to the topic of church-state relations in medieval England. Throughout his career, however, Cantor preferred to write on the broad contours of Western history, and on the history of academic medieval studies in Europe and North America, in particular the lives and careers of eminent medievalists. His books generally received mixed reviews in academic journals, but were often popular bestsellers, buoyed by Cantor's fluid, often colloquial, writing style and his lively critiques of persons and ideas both past and present.
Cantor was intellectually conservative and expressed deep skepticism about what he saw as methodological fads, particularlyMarxism andpostmodernism, but he also argued for greater inclusion of women and minorities in traditional historical narratives. In his booksInventing the Middle Ages (1991) andInventing Norman Cantor (2002), he reflected on his strained relationship over the years with other historians and with academia in general.[4]
Upon retirement in 1999, Cantor moved toMiami,Florida, where he continued to work on several books up to the time of his death, including theNew York Times bestsellerIn the Wake of the Plague (2001). He was also editor ofEncyclopedia of the Middle Ages (1999).[1]
He died of a heart failure inMiami at the age of 74.[1]
