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About Me

My research asks and seeks to answer questions concerning the history of women, gender, childhood, and family and the historical and interdisciplinary study of material culture. My published work has mainly focused on the Carolingian world writ large, but as a broadly trained early medievalist, I remain engaged in the study of much of northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages and am committed to understanding that region in broader temporal and geographic contexts. My book, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (2009) and my published articles demonstrate my range of interests. I am currently finishing a book titled “Textiles, Clothing, and Society in the Carolingian Empire,” which examines a crucial form of material culture in order to reassess Carolingian society. A nascent book project on early medieval childhood that draws from both material and textual sources is also underway. This study will investigate “real” children and ideas concerning children through the methodological lenses of gender studies and material culture studies. In addition, I have edited the forthcoming medieval volume of the Cultural History of Work in the Cultural History Series from Bloomsbury Press. My research has been supported by membership in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; a Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship; a Solmsen Postdoctoral Fellowship; the Fulbright Program; a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society; and a Research Project Grant from the Pasold Research Fund.

I teach a variety of classes about the Middle Ages. My specific teaching interests include the Carolingian world, the social history of the European Middle Ages and the history of women, gender, childhood and family. In addition to teaching history classes, I regularly teach two interdisciplinary courses in medieval studies. I have also offered a course on medieval history and the HBO show Game of Thrones

Recent Publications

“‘Go humbly dressed as befits servants of God’: Alcuin, Clerical Identity, and Sartorial Anxieties,” Early Medieval Europe 26.2 (2018): 203­–230.

“Conceptions of Children and Youth in Carolingian Capitularies,” in Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, ed. Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, London: Routledge, 2017, 209-223.

“Alcuin of York,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

“Material Culture and Social History in Early Medieval Western Europe,” History Compass 12/10 (2014): 784-93.

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

Carolingian Empire

Expertise by Geography

France, Germany, Netherlands, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Medieval

Expertise by Topic

Children & Youth, Family, Gender, Material Culture, Women