Research

Mapping

Mapping is a critical element of my scholarly work, and a useful form of evidence. Mapping often reveals things that are otherwise hidden in textual, artistic, or material sources.  It offers insights into the physicality of a space, but also into patterns of use. I have found that mapping evidence from our textual sources forces us to recognize that people's experiences differ across the terrain in very concrete ways, and mapping enables these realities to come to life in ways that we might otherwise overlook. To this end, I have built "Paris c. 1400" for use in my research and teaching . This mainly English map builds on the CNRS & LAMOP "Plan restitué de Paris en 1380" and "Paris vers la fin du XIVe siècle" by Jaqueline Leuridan and Jacques Albert Mallet (CNRS 1991, 1999). However, it has included some corrections and additional details. 

I am in the midst of having this transferred over to ArcGIS because it has greater functionality. 

Ongoing Projects

Monograph: A View from the Street: The Genderscapes of Late Medieval Paris

The purpose of this book to confront the long-standing tradition of masculinizing medieval Paris at both a macro level (Paris as a large urban centre), and at a micro level (in particular spaces and places around the city). It consciously applies intersectional analysis to medieval Paris, and is the first to narrow in on how how space, gender, and agency interacted at street level. It is in examining this complex interrelationship that we gain a much more realistic and more comprehensive understanding of the lives and varied experiences of non-noble men and women in this large, densely populated urban space. Therefore, it is a more accurate offering of Paris’ true history. In my study I use spatial analysis to examine how spaces were being used, by whom, and in what circumstances so that we can observe how power operates in real, material ways. Spatial analysis and mapping also enables us to visualize the many complex networks that existed in Paris for men and women, wealthy and poor, Christian and non-Christian. To accomplish my objectives, I examine a variety of places in the city to understand first how they were functioning, and second but equally important, to observe people’s differentiated experiences within those spaces relative to each other and based on their intersecting identities. At the heart of the relationship between space and experience is people’s agency, and it is this intricate relationship that shapes my analysis throughout. I do so by analyzing Parisian spaces as "genderscapes", a concept borrowed from Feminist Geography.  

This project is generously funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant (2021-2024)

Mapping Henri Chapelle's Le Vieux Paris

Graduate Research Assistant Christopher Rancier and I mapped a large majority of Henri Chapelle's sketches of Paris found in his collection, Le Vieux Paris housed in Musée Carnavalet (Paris France): https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/recueil-de-154-dessins-a-la-plume-la-plupart-d-apres-des-documents-anciens#infos-principales We chose to map only those edifices and places that were located within the confines of the fifteenth-century city. Our main goals were, firstly, to place the images in the correct location, and secondly, to observe the continuity or change in those places from the middle ages to the present day.

Grants & Prizes


Prizes

2022 The Faculty of Arts Outstanding Research Award, Mount Royal University

Tri-Council Grants

SSHRC Insight Grant (2021-2024): PI, “Spatial Narratives of Late Medieval Paris”. Funded: $66,003

SSHRC Partnership Grant (2019-2027): Collaborator, “Environments of Change: Digitizing Nature, History, and Human Experience in Late Medieval Sussex”. Funded: $2,500,000. (PI Steven Bednarksi, St. Jerome’s College University of Waterloo).

SSHRC Explore Grant (2019):   PI, “Digital Paris c.1400, Phase I”. Funded: $5,000

SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2016-2018): PI, “Policing Late Medieval Paris”. Funded: $50,000

SSHRC Institutional Grant (2009): PI, Thompson Rivers University, Funded: $4,500 

Internal Research Grants

Institute of Environmental Sustainability (2020-2021): PI, “Environmental Sustainability and the Common Good in Late Medieval Paris” Mount Royal University. Funded: $8856.65

ADC Curriculum Support Project (e-learning) (2018-2019): PI, “HIST 2238: Medieval Paris”, Mount Royal University, Course Release Equivalent, Funded: approx. $7000

Internal Research Grant Funding (2015-2016): PI, “Policing the Streets of Late Medieval Paris: Promoting Peace or Violence?” Mount Royal University. Funded: $4,000

Internal Research Grant Funding (2013-2015): PI, “A View from the Street: Factionalism, Violence, and Agency in the French Civil War,  1411-1435,” Mount Royal University. Funded: $8,000

Faculty of Arts Research Award (2009-2010), Thompson Rivers University. Funded: $1000

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Journal Articles

2023. With Sara McDougall. “Pardonable Sodomy: Uncovering Laurence’s Sin and Recovering the Range of the Possible.” Medieval People 37, n. 1 (2023): 115-145.

2021. “‘Et encore ne me puis taire’: Voice, Gender, and Class in Christine de Pizan's Political Writings, 1405-1413,” in Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song, eds. Rachel May Golden and Katherine Kong, 230-252. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.

“Sex, Knowledge, and the ‘Women of Sin’ in the Registre criminel du Châtelet of Paris (1389-1392).” Gender & History 32.1 (Mar. 2020): 131-148

“Knowing One’s Place: Space, Voice, and Legitimacy in Early Fifteenth-Century Paris” Medieval History Journal 20.1 (2017): 1-51.

“The Politics of Grief in the Outbreak of Civil War, 1407-1413.” Speculum 91, n.2 (April, 2016): 422-452.

“Winning Hearts and Minds in Early Fifteenth-Century France: Burgundian Propaganda in Perspective,” French Historical Studies 35, n.1 (2012): 1-30.

“Partisan Identity in the French Civil War, 1405-1418: Reconsidering the Evidence on Livery Badges.” Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007): 250-274. 

Book Chapters

2023. “Treason in Late Medieval France and England,” Companion to Crime and Deviance in the Middle Ages ed. Hannah Skoda (Arc Humanities Press, forthcoming).

“‘Et encore ne me puis taire’: Voice, Gender, and Class in Christine de Pizan's Political Writings, 1405-1413,” in Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song, eds. Rachel May Golden and Katherine Kong, 230-252. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2021.

“Defamation, A Murder More Foul? The Second Murder of Louis, Duke of Orleans (d. 1407) Reconsidered,” in Medieval and Early Modern Murder, ed. Larissa Tracy, 254-280. The Boydell Press: 2018.

“Passionate Politics: Emotion, Affect, and Identity Formation among the Menu Peuple in Early Fifteenth-Century France” in Affective and Emotional Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, eds. Andreea Marculescu and Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier, 19-50. Palgrave: 2017.

“Treason in Late Medieval France and England,” Crime and Deviance in the Middle Ages: A Handbook, ed. Hannah Skoda (Arc Humanities Press, forthcoming). (Under Review)

Book  Reviews

“Popular Memory and Gender in Medieval England: Men, Women, and Testimony in the Church Courts c. 1200-1500, by Bronach C. Kane,” Law and History Review 39, n. 3 (2021): 601-603.

“Treason and Masculinity in Medieval England: Gender, Law and Political Culture, by E. Amanda McVitty,” The English Historical Review, 2021, https://doi-org.libproxy.mtroyal.ca/10.1093/ehr/ceab353. 

Other Publications

Podcasts

Interviews

Select Recent Scholarly Presentations

Invited Presentations

2021, September 27. Respondent at the Columbia Seminar on Women and Gender.

2018, March 1. “The Mean Streets of Late Medieval Paris: Policing Bodies and Spaces in the Capital, 1380-1422,” The Medieval and Renaissance Cultural Studies Research Group, University of Calgary, Calgary AB. 

2017, November 27. « Les enjeux de la régulation de la violence et le genre dans les rues de Paris », Famille, parenté et genre au Moyen Âge (XIIe -XVe  siècle), Séminaire Doctorat et Master 2, 2017-2018 Histoire médiévale, Paris-Diderot (Université de Paris 7), Paris, Séance 7.

Conferences

2022, January 5-7. “Women in the Marketplaces of Late Medieval Paris,” Gender and Medieval Studies Confrence: Resilience, Persistence, and Agency, The American University of Paris, Paris France.

2019, September 20-22. “Mutual Suspicion and Distrust: Servants and Masters in the Criminal Records of Late Medieval Paris,” “We are all servants” The Diversity of Service in Premodern Europe International Conference, University of Toronto, Centre for Medieval Studies.

2018, May 3-6. “The Paradox of Knowing: Carnal Knowledge, Public Women, and the Construction of Abject,” Medieval Bodies Ignored: Politics, Culture and the Flesh, University of Leeds, Institute for Medieval Studies, Leeds UK.

2018, April 13-14. “I am a woman of good fama and reputation: Intersectionality, Queerness, and Resistance in the Crime Narratives of Late Medieval France,” The Forty-Fourth Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

2016, October 6-8. “Putting Her in Her Place: Policing Sexually Active Women in Late Medieval Paris,” SEMA: Place and Power, Knoxville Tennessee.

2016, March 11 (Invited lecture).  “Policing the Streets of Paris in the Early Fifteenth-Century,” Department of History, University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON.

2015, June 18-21. “The Time of Mourning: The Transformative Politics of Death,” Attending to Early Modern Women: It’s About Time, Milwaukee WI.

2015, May 30-June 1. “Posthumous Defamation, a ‘Second Murder’? Beyond the Coporeal in the Assassination of Louis, Duke of Orleans,” Canadian Society of Medievalists Annual Congress, Ottawa.

2015, May 14-17. “Passionate Politics: Emotion and Identity Formation in Early Fifteenth-Century France,” 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo MI.

2014, April 24-26. “‘And they shall remain good friends together, without dissensions, debates, or divisions between them’: Broken Promises of Friendship in the Outbreak of Civil War in France, 1404-1413,” Society for French Historical Studies 60th Annual Congress, Montreal QC.

2013, November 8 (Invited lecture) “Knowing One’s Place: Space, Voice, and Agency in the 1413 Parisian Uprising,” Department of History, University of Alberta, Edmonton AB.

2013, May 31-June 2. “From Joy to Fury: Emotional Turmoil and Civil Unrest in Paris at the Outbreak of the French Civil War, 1407-1413,” Canadian Society of Medievalists Annual Congress, University of Victoria, Vitoria BC.

 2012, May 28-31. “Avoiding the Stain of Infamy: The Politics of Honour, Shame, and Vengeance in Early Fifteenth-Century France,” Canadian Society of Medievalists Annual Congress, University of Kitchener and Univeristy of Waterloo, Kitchener-Waterloo ON.

2012, May 10-13. “Cries for Justice and Tears for Vengeance in Valentina Visconti’s Plea to the King (September 1408),” 47th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo MI.

Public Presentation

“Love and Sex in the Middle Ages,” Telus-Spark Adults Only Night: Beyond the Binary, May 9, 2019.

Student Research Assistant Supervision

Undergraduate Research Assistant Supervision   

2022-Present  Morgan Angus

2021-Present  Kate Uzeloc

2020-2021    Christopher Rancier

2020-2021    Amanda Gardiner

2019-2020    John Pittman

2018-2020    Christopher Rancier

2019            Elle Howlett

2017-2018    Shannon Pruden

2017            Damon Johnson

2016-2017    Timothy Say

2016            Erica Potter

2014-2016    Allison Bailey

Graduate Research Assistant Supervision

Christopher Rancier   2020-Present

  Allison Bailey   2016-2018 

    François Pageau               2013-2014