I am a historian of medieval Europe, although my reading and teaching interests extend both to the ancient and the early modern. My research focuses on medieval religious movements and communities, the emergence and application of the construct of heresy, inquisitorial procedures, and gender. I am also interested in lay female religious communities across and beyond the medieval centuries, and in the relationship between spiritual discipline, gender, and the social order.

Fall 2012
History 2103: Medieval Europe
History 2001: The Study of History
IS 3217: The Galileo Trial

Other Courses Taught:
History 1101: World History to 1500
History 3008: The Making of the Islamic World
History 3101: Renaissance & Reformation
History 3102: Early Modern Europe
History 3207: The Crusades
History 3210: Popular Religion, Heresy, and Inquisition in the Middle Ages
History 3704: Gender, Women, and Sexuality in the Middle Ages
History 4100: Senior Seminar

Selected Publications & Work in Progress

Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe. Co-editor with Letha Böhringer and Hildo van Engen (Brepols, forthcoming)

Sisters Among: Beguine and Lay Religious Women's Communities in Medieval Germany (monograph in progress)

A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011)

"Pious Domesticities," Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, ed. Judith Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (Oxford, forthcoming)

"Geistliche Schwestern: The Pastoral Care of Lay Religious Women in Wrzburg," in Partners in Spirit: Women, Men and Religious Life in Germany, 1100 – 1500, ed. Fiona Griffiths and Julie Hotchin (forthcoming, Brepols).

"Medieval Domestic Devotion," History Compass (forthcoming)

“Inquiring Minds:  Teaching Heresy and Inquisition through Role-Playing,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (forthcoming, fall 2012).

"The Auffahrtabend Prophecy and Henry of Langenstein: German Adaptation and Transmission of the "Visio fratris Johannis," Viator, 40:1 (2009): 355-386.

"Beguines" Reconsidered: Historiographical Problems and New Directions, Monastic Matrix , Commentaria 3461 (August 2008).

"Archiepiscopal Inquisitions in the Middle Rhine: Urban Anticlericalism and Waldensianism in Late Fourteenth-Century Mainz," The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 92, Number 3 (July 2006): 197-224.

Reviews:

Karen Sullivan, The Inner Lives of Inquisitors (University of Chicago Press, 2011) in Speculum (forthcoming).

Caterina Bruschi, The Wandering Heretics of Languedoc (Cambridge University Press, 2009), in Speculum (forthcoming).

Nancy Bradley Warren, The Embodied Word:  Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350-1700 (Notre Dame, 2010) in Renaissance Quarterly, 64, 3 (Fall 2011): 986-988.

Leigh Ann Craig, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons:  Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Brill, 2009) in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 63, No. 1 (Spring 2010): 197-199.

Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen, and Cary J. Nederman (Ashgate, 2005), in The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 93, No. 2 (April 2007): 398-399.

The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (University of Toronto Press, 2003), in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 2007):

Selected Grants & Honors

Visiting Scholar, Universitaet Tuebingen (Summer 2012)
NEH Summer Stipend, 2011
University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid of Research, 2011, 2007
University of Minnesota Imagine Grant, 2010, 2009, 2008
University of Minnesota International Travel Grant, 2008, 2006
UMM Faculty Research Enhancement Funds, 2005 - 2012
DAAD Annual Research Grant, 1996-1997
Northwestern University graduate funding, 1993-1995
Phi Beta Kappa, 1989

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.