Shami Ghosh

I was born in India and spent the twenty-one years of my life in New Delhi; I have since lived mainly in Toronto (sixteen years), London, Cambridge, Mass., and Oxford, with shorter periods in Munich, Hanoi, and Lindi (Tanzania).

I started off thinking I was a musician, then became a Germanist, completed my PhD as a multidisciplinary medievalist, spent the next decade focussed on economic history, and am now returning to Middle High German literature (without abandoning peasants, however). After studying at King's College London, Harvard, and CMS, I was a postdoc at the University of Leicester, at Magdalen College, Oxford, and at PIMS; I returned to CMS as tenure-track faculty in 2016 and have been tenured since 2021. I teach Latin and Diplomatics, and graduate seminars on social and economic and cultural history, and on historical methods and theory; I also teach Directed Reading courses on various historical and literary subjects, as well as on the Old Norse and Old High German languages. 

My students think I'm very scary about matters related to punctuation, formatting, and split infinitives. When I'm not scaring them about these things, they seem to like me: I can't think of any other reason why I have already passed my self-imposed limit of supervising nine dissertations, and am also on a number of other dissertation committees. (A number of my students are finishing this year and I will be back, and intend to stay back, in single digits shortly!) I supervise or have supervised subjects ranging from Old Norse literature to the self-representation of late-medieval queens to the ideology of evangelisation in the early middle ages to late-medieval women religious. My supervisees have published or have papers forthcoming in journals such as Viator, Review of English Studies, Mediaeval Studies, and Journal of Medieval History among others, and have a high success rate in obtaining university, provincial, federal, and international awards, scholarships, and grants. 

My life revolves around my daughters Heidi (dog, 5, pictured), and Farzaneh (human, 18 months). In the days before Covid-19, my cakes brought solace to students in various classes, and once I return from leave, hopefully that will be possible again. Pictures of fuzziness and marine mammals, (dark) chocolate, and baked goods are always gratefully received. (But NB: raisins are instruments of the devil.) I share recipes cheerfully with those who ask, as well as tips on things to eat and do in Toronto, a city I have loved as home for over two decades.  I do not knowingly speak to people who cannot agree that dogs are people too. 

I am on research leave in fall 2022 and the whole of 2023, and return to full-time teaching in September 2024.

Courses

MST1110H Diplomatics and diplomatic editing.
MST3241H Everyday life in medieval Europe.
MST3231H Clio's workshop: history and historiographical methods.
MST1370H From farm to market: social and economic transformation in the Middle Ages.
MST1327H Death, dying, and society in medieval northern Europe. 
Guide to reference works for Medieval Latin.