Department of History, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
Laura Smoller received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991. She taught at Stanford for six years before moving to the Department of History at the Univeristy of Arkansas, Little Rock. She recently received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellowship for 2004 - 2005.
At the University of Arkansas, Dr. Smoller teaches courses on the history of disease, the history of apocalyptic thought, and the history of magic and science. She is the author of "History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d’Ailly" as well as numerous articles on late medieval astrology, eschatology, and miracles. Her current project is a book on the cult of Saint Vincent Ferrer titled "The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer and the Religious Life of the Later Middle Ages".
"The Canonization of Vincent Ferrer." In Thomas Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography: A Sourcebook (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 781-803.
"Of Earthquakes, Hail, Frogs, and Geography: Plague and the Investigation of the Apocalypse in the Later Middle Ages." In Paul Freedman and Caroline Bynum, eds., Last Things: Eschatology and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 156-87.
"The Alfonsine Tables and the End of the World: Astrology and Apocalyptic Calculation in the Later Middle Ages." In Alberto Ferreiro, ed., The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Jeffrey Burton Russell Festschrift). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998. Pp. 211-39.
"Miracle, Memory, and Meaning in the Canonization of Vincent Ferrer, 1453-54." Speculum 73 (1998): 429-54.
History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, 1350-1420. Princeton University Press, 1994