Forthcoming September 2018: The Profession of Widowhood: Widows, Pastoral Care, and Medieval Models of Holiness, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
“Animals on the Edge: Humans and Hybrids in the Pontificals of Later Medieval France” in Human/Animal: Proceedings from the International Medieval Symposium, eds. Irène Fabry-Tehranchi and Anna Russakoff. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press (2014) 95-113.
Putting on the Garment of Widowhood’: Medieval Widows, Monastic Memory and Historical Writing,” Quidditas 31:1 (2010) The Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 22-76.
Thematic Review: “Visible Negotiations: Widowhood as a Category for Assessing Women’s Lives and Work in Early Modern Europe,” Gender and History (21:1 April 2009) 190-195.
Purgatory, Punishment, and the Discourse on Holy Widowhood,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, (16:2 May 2007) 169-203.
Vowesses,” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, eds. Margaret Schaus, Thomas Izbicki, Susan Mosher Stuard, et al. (Routledge, 2006), 822-823.
Review of Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity, eds. Cindy Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl in The Medieval Review, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/ , 2000.
“Liturgy, Church, and City: Illuminated Pontificals of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Medieval.
Institute, International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 14, 2016.
“Violation and Reconciliation: The Negotiation of Sacred Spaces in Later Medieval Illuminated Pontificals,” New York State Association of European Historians Annual Meeting, October 10, 2015.
“Dancing with Death Across the Pages: Medieval Macabre and Representations of the Body in Later Medieval Liturgical Books,” New York State Association of European Historians Annual Meeting, Rochester, NY, October 2013.
“Pious Widowhood in the Writing and Experience of Christine di Pisan,” Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, MA, March 2013.
“Ritual, Order, and Status: Animal Marginalia and Social Commentary in the Liturgical Books of the Avignese Papacy,” New York State Association of European Historians Annual Meeting, Oswego, NY, October 2012.
“Animals on the Edge: Humans and Hybrids in the Pontificals of Later Medieval France,” International Medieval Society Symposium: Human/Animal, Paris, June 2012.
“Widows’ Spirituality, Domesticity, and the “Holy Household,” American Society of Church History Annual Meeting, Chicago, January 2012.
“Tales of Martyrdom, Models of Marriage: Sex and Violence in the Lives of Medieval Matron Saints,” Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Amherst June 2011, for a panel I organized, Maidens, Wives, Widows: Medieval Sexuality and the Marital Bond.
Invited Talk, National University of Ireland, April 2011: “Tales of Martyrdom, Models of Marriage”.
“Visualizing The Widow’s Spiritual Bereavement: Medieval Texts, Renaissance Images,” New York State Association of European Historians, September 2009.
Keeper and Spy of Deeds and Conscience: The Powers and Functions of Religious Widowhood in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” New York State Association of European Historians, September 2008. Presented as part of a panel, “Women, Power, and Religion in Medieaval and Modern Europe”.
Who Gave These Laws?: Bestiaries, The Widow’s ‘Nature,’ and the Nature of Women in Later Medieval Pastoral Care,” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, England, July 2008.
The Singlewomen and the Ratherrn: Sexual Fantasy and Social Opportunity in Later Medieval Nuremberg,” seminar on “Singlewomen” led by Judith Bennett and Susan Amussen, Berkshires Conference on the History of Women, June 2008.
Putting on the Garment of Widowhood’: Medieval Widows, Monastic Memory and Historical Writing” at the international conference, “The Merry Widow: Widowhood in History, Society, and Culture” sponsored by the Center for Gender, Culture, and Society of the University of Wales, Swansea, July 2007.
“Clothed in the Garments of Widowhood: Medieval Ceremonies Consecrating Widows to Chastity,” Medieval Academy of America, Boston, April 2006.
“The Chaste Widow at Home: Domesticity and the Sacred Space of the Vere Vidua,” New York State Association for European Historians Conference, West Point Military Academy, September 2005
Invited Paper, “Piety, Prophecy, and Punishment: The Purgatorial Visions of Holy Widows in the High and Later Middle Ages,” German Historical Institute, Washington D.C., October 2003.
“Danger and Discretion: Pious Widows in Preachers’ Exempla,” Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association Conference, Colorado Springs, Colorado, April 2003.
“The Widow and the World: Secular Models of Medieval Widowed Piety,” 35th International Medieval Studies Conference, Western Michigan University, May 2000.
Current Projects
I am currently working on a book, Luxurious Ministries, explores medieval liturgy’s relationship to popular religious practice and sensibilities in Europe in later medieval religious life. The book explores ceremonies—such laypeople’s vows, the reconsecration of desecrated churches and cemeteries, and penitential rituals– that integrated laypeople into the liturgical life the church. The book focuses on expressions of popular spirituality and how these were managed by an institutional Church that increasingly defined itself through images of the powerful, celibate male priest.
I am also working on one article on domestic violence in the life of the eleventh-century saint, Godlieve of Gistel and a second on ideas about gender and nature in medieval bestiaries.
