Janis Gibbs completed her undergraduate work at the College of William and Mary (1981), and went on to earn a law degree at the University of Chicago (1984). After practicing law for four years, she gave it up in favor of learning Latin and German and studying history. She received a Fulbright-Hays fellowship to support her dissertation research in Germany in 1991-92, and earned both her M.A. (1991) and her Ph.D (1996) in history from the University of Virginia. She is currently working on the revision and expansion of her dissertation, “Catholicism and Civic Identity in Cologne, 1475-1570.” Her research interests include popular religion in Reformation Europe, early modern cities, and the development of political and cultural identity. She is an officer in the national Society for Reformation Research.
Professor Gibbs joined the Hope faculty in 1996. She teaches Cultural
Heritage II, as well as courses in medieval, Renaissance and Reformation
history. She has also taught topical courses, including “Women in
Early Modern Europe,” “Medieval Voyages,” “From
the Crusades to 9/11,” and a First Year Seminar, “Does Freedom
Have Limits?” Her topical history methods course has focused on
the European witch-hunt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
on the religious and social history of Europe from 1500 to 1800. She also
offers a course in the history of the classical and medieval Middle East.
In the summer, she offers IDS 172 (Cultural Heritage II) as part of the
Hope College Vienna Summer School. Professor Gibbs also serves as a pre-law
advisor, and as the advisor for Hope’s delegation to the Michigan
Model Arab League. In 2004, Hope students represented Iraq in the Michigan
Model Arab League. New recruits are welcome, and no experience is necessary.
Interested students are invited to speak with Professor Gibbs about participating
in Model Arab League.
When she is not teaching, planning classes, or deciphering sixteenth-century
German handwriting, she enjoys reading (especially science fiction), traveling,
listening to musical political satire, and writing letters and/or e-mail.