Jordan Amspacher is a fifth year PhD candidate in history, working under the direction of Jay Rubenstein. His dissertation, “Troya victa: Empire, Identity, and Apocalypse in the Frankish Chronicles of the Fourth Crusade,” argues that twelfth- and thirteenth-century conceptions of sacred and secular time contributed to a mindset that both anticipated and justified the Latin conquest of Greek Christians

As the recipient of the Marco Institute’s Paul Barrette Fellowship, Jordan traveled to Paris in September 2019. He examined some of the earliest Old French manuscripts of the Fourth Crusade at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Jordan was particularly interested in searching for paleographical and codicological evidence of thirteenth-century conceptions of Frankish identity. When not immersed in the archives, he also ate cheese, drank wine, and attended Parisian street fairs.