History

See also:

Publications by Belle Tuten

I'm interested in the legal history of western France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. I'm fascinated by how people solve their problems when they have limited access to law courts, procedure and precedent. Right now, I'm working on a project that will examine a large number of lawsuits between monasteries in this period to discuss how ideas of custom, precedent, and canonical reasoning shaped lawsuits within the church. As a secondary interest, I also like to explore how women operated in these complex and heavily stratified legal processes.