Assistant Professor of History and Judaic Studies
He/him/his
About
My research centers on the social and legal history of the Iberian world between the 13th and 16th centuries. I am particularly interested in how people used courts, judicial procedures, and documents to navigate social conflicts and power relations within their communities. My current book project, titled 'Royal Justice and the People: Petitioning, Power, and Legal Culture in Late Medieval Castile', examines the practice of petitioning the high courts of the Castilian monarchy to revisit questions of state formation, access to justice for non-elites, and the ways religious and ethnic minorities engaged with the judicial system. Apart from this monograph, I have been studying a variety of other topics pertaining to the history of Jews and Jewish converts in late medieval Iberia.
Publications:
"Petition and Response as Social Process: Royal Power, Justice, and the People in Late Medieval Castile (c.1474-1504)." Past & Present 262, no.1 (2024):3-44.
"Adultery, 'Just Cause', and the Dynamic of Royal Pardon in a Sposual Homicide Case from Late Fifteenth-Century Toledo." Medieval People 39, no.1 (2024): 99-120. [Co-author with Sharon Kisluk]
"The Requerimiento in the Old World: Making Demands and Keeping Records in the Legal Culture of Late Medieval Castile." Law and History Review 40, no.1 (2022): 37-62.
"Defining 'Conversos' in Fifteenth-Century Castile: The Making of a Controversial Category." Speculum 97, no.3 (2022): 609-648. [Co-author with Yosi Yisraeli].
"The Politics of Records: Petitions and Depositions in the Legal Struggle of a Fifteenth-Century Converso." Viator 48, no.2 (2017): 279-303.
"Between Tyranny and the Commonwealth: Political Discourses and the Framing of Violence Against Conversos in the Gesta Hispaniensia of Alfonso de Palencia." In Contested Inter-Religious Conversion int he Medieval World, eds. Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli, 229-244. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Current and Recent Courses:
Winter 2024. From Baghdad to Amsterdam: Jews as a Minority Group in Medieval and Early Modern Times (Judaic 318, section 1/ History 328, section 4)
Winter 2024: Legal Cultures: People, Courts, and Power in Medieval and Early Modern European Polities (History 642)
Fall 2023: Conversion and Inquisition in Early Modern Spain (Judaic 324 / History 323)
Fall 2023: Latin America: The Colonial Period (History 347)
Winter 2023. Rebels and Outlaws in Late Medieval Europe (History 328, section 7).
