I have long been interested in the legal history of Europe before 1100. I am fascinated by how people solve their problems when they have limited access to law courts, procedure and precedent. I also like the history of the ordinary and everyday -- the things that are hard to find in primary sources, because they are too commonplace. Most recently I have begun research into medical questions as well as legal ones, and I am working on a book-length study of breast diseases in history. My recent book (2022) is a survey of women's lives during the European Middle Ages.

Books

  • Daily Life of Women in Medieval Europe. New York: Greenwood Press, 2022.

  • Feud, Violence and Practice: Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor of Stephen D. White. Editor, with Tracey L. Billado. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010.

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “Age and Gender,” in the Middle Ages volume of the 6-volume Bloomsbury series, A Cultural History of Death, ed. Ashby Kinch (forthcoming Bloomsbury, 2024).
  • “Correcting the ‘Unnatural’ Breast: Gynecomastia and Gender in Medieval Medicine,” Medicina nei Secoli: Journal of the History of Medicine and Medical Humanities, 33/1 (2021): 3-30.
  • “Care of the Breast in the Late Middle Ages: the Tractatus de passionibus mammillarum,” in Sharon Strocchia and Sara Ritchey, eds., Gendered Histories of Health, Healing and the Body, 1250-1550. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020, 119-137.
  •  “Power and Trauma in the ‘Maid of Arras,’ Cantigas de Santa María 105,” in Wendy J. Turner and Christina Lee, eds., Trauma in Medieval Society. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2018, 105-121.
  • "The Necessitas naturae and Monastic Hygiene,” in Albrecht Classen, ed., Hygiene, Medicine, and Well-Being in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Periods (Berline: DeGruyter, 2017), 129-147.
  • “Lactation and Breast Diseases in Antiquity: Medical Authorities on Breast Health and Treatment,” in special issue “Women and Womanhood in the Middle Ages,” ed. Piotr Górecki, Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 19 (2014): 103-38.
  • “Fashion and Benefaction in Twelfth-Century Western France,” in Emilia Jamroziak and Janet Burton, eds., Religious and Laity in Northern Europe 1000-1400: Interaction, Negotiation and Power. Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2006, 41-62.
  • “Who was Lady Constance of Angers? Nuns as poets and correspondents at the monastery of Ronceray d’Angers in the early twelfth century,” Medieval Perspectives 19 (2004): 255-268.
  • “Women and Ordeals,” in Warren C. Brown and Piotr Górecki, eds., Conflict in Medieval Europe. London: Ashgate, 2003, 163-174.
  • "Politics, Holiness and Property in Angers, 1080-1130," French Historical Studies 24:4 (Fall 2001): 601-618.
  • "Convents," in The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature, ed. Eva Sartori. New York: Greenwood Press, 1999, 125-126.
  • "Disputing Corpses: Le Ronceray d'Angers versus Saint-Nicolas d'Angers, 1080-1145." Medieval Perspectives 10 (1995): 178-188.