2009-2010 - Gotlieb Fellow in Legal History, NYU School of Law
2009 - PhD Yale University
2003 - BA/MA Boston University
is Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and appointed to the faculty in Biography and Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She studies gender and justice in the Middle Ages, with a focus on women’s encounters with legal and religious ideas in the society and culture of Medieval France. The author of two books, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), and Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, c.800-1230 (Oxford, 2017), she has also co-edited special issues for Law & History Review and Gender & History on historical responses, infanticide and on marriage in global history, on marriage trials for Medieval People, and a six-volume Global History of Crime and Punishment with Bloomsbury Press. Recent articles examine punishing women for having sex, infanticide prosecutions, consequences of extramarital pregnancy, illegitimacy and the priesthood, and adultery prosecution in medieval France, as well as other writings on the family, marriage, gender, and crime. She has also written on these and other topics for Slate, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
Famous Trials
Women's Stories in Premodern French
Interdisciplinary Topics in Law: Mothers in Law
Sex and Single Mothers in Medieval France
Female Felons in the Pre-modern World
Justice in the Western Legal Tradition
Comparative Perspectives on Justice
Global History 500-1500
History of Gender and Sexuality to 1650
Introduction to Medieval Studies
Medieval Marriage
Punishment in the Premodern World
Bastards and Thrones in Medieval Europe
Immigrant Justice
Medieval Academy of America K-12 Outreach Committee.
Board of Directors, Libraries Without Borders USA.
Board, Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS) Princeton, New Jersey.
Books:
Royal Bastards: the birth of illegitimacy, 800-1230 (Oxford University Press, Oxford Studies in Medieval European History, 2017).
Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
Editorial Projects:
with Arnaud Fossier, Special Issue: "Marriage on Trial: Gendered Justice, Family Strategies," Medieval People 39:1 (December 2024).
with the late Clive Emsley, A Global History of Crime and Punishment, 6 volumes. Bloomsbury Press (August 2023).
with Felicity Turner, Forum: "Rethinking the Criminalization of Childbirth: Infanticide in Premodern Europe and the Modern Americas," Law & History Review 39:2 (May 2021).
with Sarah Pearsall, Gender & History Special Issue: Marriage's Global Past (November 2017).
with Thomas Barton, Susan McDonough, and Matthew Wranovix, Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World. Festschrift in Honour of Paul Freedman, Europa Sacra 22 (Brepols, 2017).
with John Witte and Anna di Robilant, Texts and Contexts in Legal History: Essays in Honor of Charles Donahue, Robbins Collection, UC Berkeley (October 2016).
Journal Articles and Book Chapters:
with Arnaud Fossier, "Introduction: Marriage on Trial: Gendered Justice, Family Strategies," Medieval People 39:1 (December 2024).
with Emily Hutchison, "Women’s Labor in Later Medieval France: Case Studies from Paris," in Medieval Work, Worship and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices Essays in Honor of Sharon Farmer, eds. Abby Dowling, Nancy McLoughlin, and Tanya Stabler Miller (Routledge, 2025).
"Sex with Nuns in Medieval France," in The Learned and Lived Law: Essays in Honor of Charles Donahue, eds. Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Saskia Lettmaire, and Nikitas Hatzimihail (Brill Press, November 2024).
with Emily Hutchison, “Pardonable Sodomy: Uncovering Laurence’s Sin and Recovering the Range of the Possible,” Medieval People 2 (January 2023).
"Judging Sexy Women in Late Medieval France," postmedieval, August 2022.
with Merle Eisenberg and Laura Morreale, "Middle Ages for Educators," New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, 3:2 (2022).
"Canon Law and Marriage," in the Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law, eds. Anders Winroth and John Wei (CUP, January 2022).
"Singlewomen and Illicit Pregnancy in Late Medieval France: The Case of Marie Ribou (1481)" French Historical Studies, 44:3 (August 2021).
"Pardoning Infanticide in Late Medieval France," Law & History Review 39:2 (May 2021).
"The Chivalric Family" in Knighthood and Society in the High Middle Ages, eds. David Crouch and Jeroen Deploige, (Leuven University Press, 2020).
"Bastard Priests: Illegitimacy and Ordination in Medieval Europe," Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 94/1 (January 2019).
with Sarah Pearsall, "Marriage's Global Past: Introduction," in Gender & History Special Issue: Marriage's Global Past (November 2017).
"The Monk-King and the Abbess-Countess: Dynastic Lineage in Twelfth Century Aragon and Boulogne" in Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World. Festschrift in Honour of Paul Freedman, Europa Sacra 22 (Brepols, 2017).
with Charles Donahue, Jr. “France and Adjoining Areas,” in History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Laweds. Kenneth Pennington and Wilfried Hartmann (Catholic University Press, November 2016).
“Enclosure as Punishment for Adultery,” in Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Toronto 3-9 August 2012, eds. Joseph Goering, Stephan Dusil, and Andreas Thier, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2016).
“À la recherche des enfants illégitimes dans les archives de l’officialité de Troyes au xve siècle. Un exemple atypique ?” in Bâtards et bâtardises dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, ed. Carole Avignon (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016).
“Fiction and Lies: Adultery and Spousal Homicide Accusations in Fifteenth Century France" in Imagining Early Modern Histories, eds. Allison Kavey and Elizabeth Ketner (Ashgate, 2016).
“The Transformation of Adultery in France at the End of the Middle Ages,” Law and History Review 32:3 (August 2014).
“The Opposite of the Double Standard: Gender, Marriage, and Adultery Prosecution in Late Medieval France,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 23:2 (May 2014).
“Women Before the Officiality of Troyes in the Fifteenth Century,” in Les officialités dans l'Europe médiévale et moderne: Des tribunaux pour une société chrétienne eds. Véronique Beaulande-Barraud and Martine Charageat, (Brepols, 2014).
“The Making of Marriage in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Family History 38:3 (July 2013).
“Women and Gender in Medieval Canon Law,” in the Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, eds. Ruth Karras and Judith Bennett (July 2013).
“Bigamy: A Male Crime in Medieval Europe,” Gender and History 22:2 (August 2010).
“The Punishment of Bigamy in Late-Medieval France,” Imago Temporis Acti. Medium Aevum 3 (2009).
“The Prosecution of Sex in Late Medieval Troyes,” in History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Albrecht Classen (De Gruyter: 2008).
Co-Founder and Project Editor, Middle Ages For Educators www.middleagesforeducators.princeton.com.
Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library, 2023-2024.
Visiting Professor in legal history, Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas, December 2022
Astor Visiting Lectureship, Oxford University, June 2022
Norman Freehling Visiting Professor, University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, spring 2020.
Mellon Fellow, Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ. 2014-2015.
Golieb Fellow in Legal History at New York University School of Law, 2009-2010.
Distinguished CUNY Fellow, Advanced Research Collaborative, The Graduate School of the City University of New York, spring 2017.
Forthcoming Publications:
-Justice for Jehanne, under contract, currently under review, Princeton University Press.
-with David Perry, "Trial by Battle and Gendered Medievalisms in the Last Duel (2021)," in Law, Justice and Society in the Medieval World: An Introduction Through Film eds. Esther Liberman Cuenca, M. Christina Bruno, and Anthony Perron (Fordham University Press, 2025).
-"On the Margins of Canon Law: Prosecuting Rape in Dijon, 1472" in Women and Gender in Medieval Canon Law, eds. Greta Austin and Gisela Drossbach (Brepols, forthcoming).