Teaching
I teach a variety of courses, concentrating on Medieval Europe from 900 to 1200. For undergraduates, I regularly offer Hist 1000: Early Western World (to 1500) and History 3600: The Medieval World, along with advanced topical courses, including The Early European Family, a course focusing on family structure, marriage, and sexuality in Europe before 1500, and The Crusades, which examines cultural contact and warfare in western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic world from 1050-1300. For graduate students, I regularly teach Hist 6350: Research Techniques for Medieval History, the required methods seminar for all medievalists. I offer readings seminars (under the Hist 6120 rubric) on a variety of subjects, such as “Medieval France, ca. 950-1350,” “Regions and Rulers in Northwestern Europe,” and “Medieval Social History.” I offer research seminars (under the Hist 6820 rubric) on specialized topics, most recently “Writing and Reckoning in the Middle Ages,” which explored the rise of literacy and numeracy and their impact on European culture, and “Medieval Historians and Their (Hi)stories,” which examines various genres of historical writing in medieval Europe and the expectations of their authors. I have also taught History 6010, the required Historiography seminar for all History students. In the future, I plan to offer new courses on medieval legal history and medieval England.
Research and Publications
My research interests are closely connected to my teaching. I focus on France and England in the High Middle Ages, with particular attention to social, political, and legal problems. Special interests include a diverse (and not necessarily related) set of topics, including: the use and description of land, the relationship of the written and spoken word, and medieval historiography, as well as historical theory more broadly. I am currently working on a new comparative project, examining forgeries and historical consciousness in England, France, and Flanders. Some preliminary findings will soon appear in “The Canterbury Forgeries Revisited” to be published by the Haskins Society Journal.
My book Day of Reckoning: Power and Accountability in Medieval France (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) examined the transformation of ideas of power and rule in northern France from circa 900 to 1200. It used records of five important Benedictine monasteries to examine the rise of accountability both as an idea and a practice. I have also co-edited a volume on The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350 (Ashgate Publishing, 2005), which collected seventeen essays on medieval power, including one of my own.
My article examining some implications of twelfth-century changes in the canon law of marriage, “Marriage, Lordship and the ‘Greater Unfree’ in Twelfth-Century France” was published in Past and Present in the November, 2001 issue. In 1997, I participated in a round table at the École des Chartes in Paris devoted to the written word and administration in eleventh-century France. My paper, “Inventaires de biens et proto-comptabilités dans le nord de la France” was subsequently published in a special volume (no. 155) of the École des Chartes series.
You can learn about my courses and research on my professional page.
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