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 non-elites used courts, judicial procedures, and legal records to navigate social conflicts and power relations within their communities. My current book project, titled "Royal Justice and the People: Petitions, State Power, and Legal Culture in the Crown of Castile, c.1385-1516", examines the Castilian system of petition and response to revisit questions of state formation, access to justice for non-elites, and the ways Jews and Muslims egnaged with the judicial system. Apart from this monograph, I have been studying a variety of other topics pertaining to the legal and political culture of the Castilian monarchy, including violence against Jews and Jewish converts in the fifteenth century, the prosecution of adultery, or the legal ritual known as the "requerimiento".
Publications:
"Petition and Response as Social Process: Royal Power, Justice, and the People in Late Medieval Castile (c.1474-1504)." Forthcoming in Past & Present (2023).
"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. [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.
Courses:
Winter 2023. Rebels and Outlaws in Late Medieval Europe (History 328, section 7).
Winter 2023. From Mass Conversions to the Inquisition: Religion and Violence in Early Modern Spain (Judaic 318, section 15 / History 328, section 3)
Fall 2022. The Jews of Medieval Spain (Judaic Studies 150 / History 197).
