Ben R McRee Professor of History
Biography
My interests lie in the social and religious history of medieval and early modern Europe. I am attracted to those areas in part because of their distance from our own age, a distance that creates contrasts that I find intriguing, and in part because of the challenging puzzles that the haphazard survival of source material has created. I teach a variety of courses in these areas, including advanced undergraduate seminars on medieval cities, the Black Death, and late-medieval spirituality. My research focuses on late-medieval England, particularly on urban political culture and on the lay religious organizations known as gilds or fraternities that were so important to both urban and rural communities in the fifteenth century.
Education
Ph.D., History, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1987
M.A., History, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1981
B.A., History, Pomona College, Claremont, 1979
Publications
"The Mayor and the Saint: Remaking Norwich鈥檚 Gild of St. George, 1548-49,鈥� Huntington Library Quarterly, 79 (2016), pp. 1-20
鈥淭he Mayor鈥檚 Body,鈥� in Linda E. Mitchell, Katherine L. French, Douglas L. Biggs, eds., The Ties That Bind: Essays in Medieval British History in Honor of Barbara A. Hanawalt (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011)
鈥淎n Urban Fraternity in the Age of Reform: Norwich鈥檚 Gild of St. George, 1516-1548,鈥� in Monika Escher-Apsner, ed., Mittelalterliche Bruderschaften in Europaeischen Staedten (Medieval Confraternities in European Towns) (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2009)
鈥淎fter 1452鈥擳he Evolution of the Gild of St. George in the Wake of Yelverton鈥檚 Mediation,鈥� Norfolk Archaeology, XLV, part I (2006), pp. 28-40
鈥淭raditional Religion,鈥� in Robert Tittler and Norman Jones, eds., A Companion to Tudor Britain (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), pp. 207-20.
鈥淲orking Women in the Medieval City,鈥� co-authored with Trisha Dent, 鈥�96, in Linda Mitchell, ed., Women in Medieval Western European Culture, (New York: Garland, 1999), pp. 241-56
鈥淧eacemaking and it Limits in Late Medieval Norwich,鈥� English Historical Review, CIX(1994), pp. 831-66.
鈥淯nity or Division? The Social Meaning of Guild Ceremony in Urban Communities,鈥� in Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson, eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 189-207
鈥淐harity and Gild Solidarity in Late-Medieval England,鈥� Journal of British Studies 32 (1993), pp. 195-225
鈥淩eligious Gilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages,鈥� Speculum 67 (1992), pp. 69-97
鈥淭he Gilds of Homo Prudens in Late Medieval England,鈥� co-authored with Barbara Hanawalt, Continuity and Change 7 (1992), pp. 1-18
鈥淩eligious Gilds and Regulation of Behavior in Late Medieval Towns,鈥� in Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond, eds., People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin鈥檚 Press, 1987), pp. 108-22.
Course Information
The Middle Ages
Early Modern Europe
Tudor-Stuart England
The End of the Middle Ages: Plague, War, and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval Europe
Heretics, Saints, and Sinners: Religious Life at the End of the Middle Ages
Medieval Urban Life