Dr. Tomás Valle

Tomás Antonio Valle is a historian of intellectual and religious culture in early modernity. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Notre Dame in 2023 and spent three years as an “Excellence Strategy” postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hamburg in Germany. As a new Assistant Professor at Benedictine, he will teach the introductory history class World Civilization since 1500 and upper-level courses on early modern and modern European history. He is excited to work with Benedictine students and welcomes inquiries for historically-oriented Discovery Day projects.

In his research, Prof. Valle is especially interested in the history of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. His scholarly writing investigates how and why early modern people came up with new ideas, with a particular focus on the role played by universities, classical literature, and different kinds of media. He works primarily with early printed books and manuscripts written in Latin, Greek, and German, held in archives and libraries throughout Europe. He has published several articles and is currently working on two books: The Saxon Socrates: Learning, Religion, and Politics in the Life of Johannes Caselius, which explores how humanists read ancient texts and creatively applied them to issues in the present day; and Reforming the Life of the Mind: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and the Creation of Protestant Intellectual Culture, which argues for a new understanding of the relationship between humanism and Protestantism. Please reach out to him if you find these topics interesting! Prof. Valle lives in Atchison with his wife and three children. He and his family speak German and are always glad to meet other German-speakers. He enjoys learning languages, playing the violin, singing, and listening to music by artists from Hildegard von Bingen to Kendrick Lamar.