Department of History

Personal Statement:

My current academic interests include medieval women and gender, relations between Northern France and the globe, medieval environmental history, and forms of vulnerability in pre-modern societies.  I have also become interested in permaculture agriculture as one way of mitigating climate change.

Advisor to:

• Julia F Crisler
• Giulia Giamboni

Research and Teaching Interests:

Medieval women and gender, medieval towns, medieval poor, relations between western Europe and the east

Current Projects:

• Intersections of Luxury and Violence in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
• “The Life and Times of Jehanne la Fouaciere, Parisian Linen Merchant”
• Gender and the Making of the Vegetable Gardens of Medieval Suburban Paris

Selected Publications:

• Monographs:

• Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Cornell University Press, 2001)
• Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Cornell University Press, 1991) Available as a free download at: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501740596/communities-of-saint-martin/#bookTabs=1
• The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological  Innovation, and Gendered Experience (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016 http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15563.html
  

  Edited and Co-Edited Volumes:

• Editor of: Conflict, Encounter, and the Materiality of the Text: Christian and Jewish Sacred Texts in Europe and North America, c. 1250-1700  (special issue of The Journal of the Bible and its Reception, 2016)
• Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations  (Brepols, 2015) http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503555478-1
• Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, co-edited with Carol Pasternack (U. of Minnesota Press, 2001)
• Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts, co-edited with Barbara Rosenwein (Cornell University Press, 2000)
• Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values, co-edited with Paula Cooey-Nichols and Mary Ellen Ross (Harper & Row, 1987)
  

  Selected Articles

• Global and Gendered Perspectives on the Making of a Parisian Alms Purse, c. 1340
• “Les privilèges des métiers, l’integration verticale, et l’organisation de la production des textiles de soie à Paris au xiii^e et xiv^e siècle,” Médiévales 69(fall, 2015) (special issue on work in medieval Paris). http://medievales.revues.org/7559
• “From Personal Charity to Centralized Poor Relief: The Evolution of Responses to the Poor in Paris, c. 1250-1600,” in The Experience of Charity in Medieval and Early Modern France and England, ed. Anne Scott and Susan Broomhall (Ashgate, 2015)
• “Medieval Paris and the Mediterranean: The Evidence from the Silk Industry,” French Historical Studies 37/3 (Summer, 2014)
• “Aristocratic Power and the ‘Natural’ Landscape: The Garden Park at Hesdin, c. 1291-1302”http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9018048&fileId=S0038713413001863
  Speculum: A Journal of Medieval History 88(2013), issue 3, pp. 644-680
• “La Zisa/Gloriette: Cultural Interaction and the Architecture of Repose in Medieval Sicily, France and Britain”http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/0068128813Z.00000000017
  Journal of the British Archaeological Association (2013)
• “Parisian Merchant Women and the Administrative Glass Ceiling in High Medieval Paris” in Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Palgrave, 2010)
• “Low Country Ascetics and Oriental Luxury: Jacques de Vitry, Marie of Oignies, and the Treasures of Oignies”
  in: History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. by Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger (2007)
• “The Leper in the Master Bedroom: Thinking Through a Thirteenth-Century Exemplum” in Framing the Family: Narrative and Representation in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed.Wolfthal and Voaden (MRTS, 2005)
• “Young, Male and Disabled,” in Le petit peuple dans la société de l’Occident médiéval, terminologies, perceptions, réalités, ed. by Pierre Boglioni, Robert Delort and Claude Gauvard (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001)
• “Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61(1986) http://www.jstor.org/stable/2851594?origin=crossref&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Courses Taught:

Honors and Professional Activities:

Election to Society of Fellows, Medieval Academy of America, Spring, 2015

EURIAS Fellow, Institut d’études avancées-Paris, 2013-4

John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2007-8

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2005-6

Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1997-8

Former PhD Students

• Anna Katherina Rudolph.  PhD 2022.  Diss.: “Rewriting Radegund of Poitiers: Shifting Models of Women’s Sanctity and Gender Expectations from the Merovingian Era to the Twenty-First Century.”
• Sarah Hanson. PhD 2019. Lecturer, UC Irvine. Diss.: “The Boinebroke Women: Elite Urban Families and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Douai, c. 1285-1384”https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=6791
• Caitlin Koford. PhD 2019. Diss.: “Piety as a Call to Action: Christian Devotion Encouraged through Representations of the Adult Life of Christ”
• Abigail Dowling. PhD 2014. Associate Professor, Mercer University
  Diss.: “Landscape, Politics and Identify: Countess Mahant of Artois’ Natural Resource Management, ca. 1302-1329” https://cla.mercer.edu/history/faculty-staff/abigail-dowling/abigail-dowling.cfm
• Jessica Elliott. PhD 2014.  Assistant Professor, Missouri State University, Springfieldhttps://history.missouristate.edu/jessicaelliott.aspx
  Diss.: “The Changing Status of Converted Jews in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century Northern France”
• Katrin Sjursen. PhD 2010.
  Diss.: “Peaceweavers’ Sisters: Medieval Noblewomen as Military Leaders in Northern France, 1000-1337”
• Nicole Archambeau. PhD 2009. Associate Professor Colorado State Universityhttps://history.colostate.edu/author/nambeau/ Monograph: Souls Under Siege: Stories of War, Plague, and Confession in Fourteenth-Century Provencehttps://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501753664/souls-under-siege/#bookTabs=1
  Diss.: “Healing Emotional Distress in a Time of Plague and War: Witnesses to the Canonization of Delphine of Puimichel”
• Tanya Stabler. PhD 2007. Associate Professor Loyola Univ., Chicago
  Diss.: “Now She is Martha, Now She is Mary: Beguine Communities in Medieval Paris, 1250-1470”; Monograph: The Beguines of Medieval Paris, Univ. of Penn. Press, 2014
• Mark O’Tool. PhD 2007.
  Diss.: “Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris: Life at the Quinze-Vingts, 1250-1430”
• Nancy McLaughlin. PhD 2005. Associate Professor UC Irvine
  Diss: Universitas, Secular-Mendicant Conflict and the Construction of Learned Male Authority in the Thought of Jean Gerson, 1363-1429; Monograph: Jean Gerson and Genderhttps://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137488824
• Andrew Miller. PhD 2003. Adjunct Professor, DePaul University
  Diss.: “Carpe Ecclesiam: Households, Identity and Violent Communication (‘Church’ and ‘Crown’ under King Edward I”; recent publication: Tails of Masculinity: Knights, Clerics and the Mutilation of Horses in Medieval England. Speculum 88.4 (October 2013). Monograph: Patronage, Power and Masculinity in Medieval England: A Microhistory of a Bishop’s and Knight’s over the Church of Thame:https://www.routledge.com/Patronage-Power-and-Masculinity-in-Medieval-England-A-Microhistory-of/Miller/p/book/9781032290744
• Laura Wertheimer. PhD 2000. Associate Professor Cleveland State University
  Diss.: “The Ecclesiastical Construction of Illegitimacy in the Middle Ages”
• Fiona Harris Stoertz. PhD 1999. Associate Professor Trent University
  Diss.: Adolescence in Medieval Culture: The High Medieval Transformation