Sharon A. Farmer

My current academic interests include medieval women and gender, relations between Northern France and the globe, medieval environmental history, and forms of vulnerability in pre-modern societies.  I have also become interested in permaculture agriculture as one way of mitigating climate change.

• Julia F Crisler
• Giulia Giamboni

Medieval women and gender, medieval towns, medieval poor, relations between western Europe and the east

• Intersections of Luxury and Violence in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
• “The Life and Times of Jehanne la Fouaciere, Parisian Linen Merchant”
• Gender and the Making of the Vegetable Gardens of Medieval Suburban Paris

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Monographs:

Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Cornell University Press, 2001)

Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Cornell University Press, 1991) Available as a free download at: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501740596/communities-of-saint-martin/#bookTabs=1

The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological  Innovation, and Gendered Experience (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016 http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15563.html

Edited and Co-Edited Volumes:

Editor of: Conflict, Encounter, and the Materiality of the Text: Christian and Jewish Sacred Texts in Europe and North America, c. 1250-1700  (special issue of The Journal of the Bible and its Reception, 2016)

Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations  (Brepols, 2015) http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503555478-1

Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, co-edited with Carol Pasternack (U. of Minnesota Press, 2001)

Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts, co-edited with Barbara Rosenwein (Cornell University Press, 2000)

Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values, co-edited with Paula Cooey-Nichols and Mary Ellen Ross (Harper & Row, 1987)

Selected Articles

Global and Gendered Perspectives on the Making of a Parisian Alms Purse, c. 1340

“Les privilèges des métiers, l’integration verticale, et l’organisation de la production des textiles de soie à Paris au xiii^e et xiv^e siècle,” Médiévales 69(fall, 2015) (special issue on work in medieval Paris). http://medievales.revues.org/7559

“From Personal Charity to Centralized Poor Relief: The Evolution of Responses to the Poor in Paris, c. 1250-1600,” in The Experience of Charity in Medieval and Early Modern France and England, ed. Anne Scott and Susan Broomhall (Ashgate, 2015)

“Medieval Paris and the Mediterranean: The Evidence from the Silk Industry,” French Historical Studies 37/3 (Summer, 2014)

“Aristocratic Power and the ‘Natural’ Landscape: The Garden Park at Hesdin, c. 1291-1302”http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9018048&fileId=S0038713413001863
Speculum: A Journal of Medieval History 88(2013), issue 3, pp. 644-680

“La Zisa/Gloriette: Cultural Interaction and the Architecture of Repose in Medieval Sicily, France and Britain”http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/0068128813Z.00000000017
Journal of the British Archaeological Association (2013)

“Parisian Merchant Women and the Administrative Glass Ceiling in High Medieval Paris” in Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Palgrave, 2010)

“Low Country Ascetics and Oriental Luxury: Jacques de Vitry, Marie of Oignies, and the Treasures of Oignies”
in: History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. by Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger (2007)

“The Leper in the Master Bedroom: Thinking Through a Thirteenth-Century Exemplum” in Framing the Family: Narrative and Representation in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed.Wolfthal and Voaden (MRTS, 2005)

“Young, Male and Disabled,” in Le petit peuple dans la société de l’Occident médiéval, terminologies, perceptions, réalités, ed. by Pierre Boglioni, Robert Delort and Claude Gauvard (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001)

“Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61(1986) http://www.jstor.org/stable/2851594?origin=crossref&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Honors and Professional Activities:

• Election to Society of Fellows, Medieval Academy of America, Spring, 2015
• EURIAS Fellow, Institut d’études avancées-Paris, 2013-4
• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2007-8
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2005-6
• Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1997-8

Former PhD Students                                                                                      

• Anna Katherina Rudolph.  PhD 2022.  Diss.: “Rewriting Radegund of Poitiers: Shifting Models of Women’s Sanctity and Gender Expectations from the Merovingian Era to the Twenty-First Century.”
• Sarah Hanson. PhD 2019. Lecturer, UC Irvine. Diss.: “The Boinebroke Women: Elite Urban Families and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Douai, c. 1285-1384”https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=6791
• Caitlin Koford. PhD 2019. Diss.: “Piety as a Call to Action: Christian Devotion Encouraged through Representations of the Adult Life of Christ”
• Abigail Dowling. PhD 2014. Associate Professor, Mercer University
  Diss.: “Landscape, Politics and Identify: Countess Mahant of Artois’ Natural Resource Management, ca. 1302-1329” https://cla.mercer.edu/history/faculty-staff/abigail-dowling/abigail-dowling.cfm
• Jessica Elliott. PhD 2014.  Assistant Professor, Missouri State University, Springfieldhttps://history.missouristate.edu/jessicaelliott.aspx
  Diss.: “The Changing Status of Converted Jews in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century Northern France”
• Katrin Sjursen. PhD 2010.
  Diss.: “Peaceweavers’ Sisters: Medieval Noblewomen as Military Leaders in Northern France, 1000-1337”
• Nicole Archambeau. PhD 2009. Associate Professor Colorado State Universityhttps://history.colostate.edu/author/nambeau/ Monograph: Souls Under Siege: Stories of War, Plague, and Confession in Fourteenth-Century Provencehttps://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501753664/souls-under-siege/#bookTabs=1
  Diss.: “Healing Emotional Distress in a Time of Plague and War: Witnesses to the Canonization of Delphine of Puimichel”
• Tanya Stabler. PhD 2007. Associate Professor Loyola Univ., Chicago
  Diss.: “Now She is Martha, Now She is Mary: Beguine Communities in Medieval Paris, 1250-1470”; Monograph: The Beguines of Medieval Paris, Univ. of Penn. Press, 2014
• Mark O’Tool. PhD 2007.
  Diss.: “Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris: Life at the Quinze-Vingts, 1250-1430”
• Nancy McLaughlin. PhD 2005. Associate Professor UC Irvine
  Diss: Universitas, Secular-Mendicant Conflict and the Construction of Learned Male Authority in the Thought of Jean Gerson, 1363-1429; Monograph: Jean Gerson and Genderhttps://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137488824
• Andrew Miller. PhD 2003. Adjunct Professor, DePaul University
  Diss.: “Carpe Ecclesiam: Households, Identity and Violent Communication (‘Church’ and ‘Crown’ under King Edward I”; recent publication: Tails of Masculinity: Knights, Clerics and the Mutilation of Horses in Medieval England. Speculum 88.4 (October 2013). Monograph: Patronage, Power and Masculinity in Medieval England: A Microhistory of a Bishop’s and Knight’s over the Church of Thame:https://www.routledge.com/Patronage-Power-and-Masculinity-in-Medieval-England-A-Microhistory-of/Miller/p/book/9781032290744
• Laura Wertheimer. PhD 2000. Associate Professor Cleveland State University
  Diss.: “The Ecclesiastical Construction of Illegitimacy in the Middle Ages”
• Fiona Harris Stoertz. PhD 1999. Associate Professor Trent University
  Diss.: Adolescence in Medieval Culture: The High Medieval Transformation