Education
2009-2010 - Gotlieb Fellow in Legal History, NYU School of Law
2009 - PhD Yale University
2003 - BA/MA Boston University
Bio
Sara McDougall is an associate professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York (CUNY) and a member of the doctoral faculty in French and History at the CUNY Graduate Center where she is currently the coordinator of the Medieval Studies Certificate Program. She specializes in medieval legal history and has broad interests in the pre-modern world, especially gender and crime. She is the author of Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne (UPenn, 2012), and Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230 (OUP, 2017).
Professional Memberships
Course Taught
Interdisciplinary Topics in Law: Mothers in Law
Sex and Single Mothers in Medieval France
Female Felons in the Pre-modern World
Justice in the Western Legal Tradition
Justice in the Non-Western Legal Traditions
Global History 500-1500
History of Gender and Sexuality to 1650
Introduction to Medieval Studies
Punishment in the Premodern World
Bastards and Thrones in Medieval Europe
Immigrant Justice
Scholarly Work
Royal Bastards: the birth of illegitimacy, 800-1230 (Oxford University Press, Oxford Studies in Medieval European History, January 2017).
Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, March 2012).
Co-editor with Felicity Turner, Forum: Rethinking the Criminalization of Childbirth: Infanticide in Premodern Europe and the Modern Americas, Law and History Review
General Co-Editor with Clive Emsley, A Global History of Crime and Punishment, 6 volumes. Bloomsbury Press (forthcoming, 2020).
Co-Editor with Sarah Pearsall, Gender & History Special Issue: Marriage's Global Past (November 2017).
"Bastard Priests: Illegitimacy and Ordination in Medieval Europe," Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies94/1 (January 2019).
with Charles Donahue, Jr. “France and Adjoining Areas,” in History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law eds. Kenneth Pennington and Wilfried Hartmann (Catholic University Press, November 2016).
“Enclosure as Punishment for Adultery,” in Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Toronto 3-9 August 2012, eds. Joseph Goering, Stephan Dusil, and Andreas Thier, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2016).
“À la recherche des enfants illégitimes dans les archives de l’officialité de Troyes au xve siècle. Un exemple atypique?” in Bâtards et bâtardises dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, ed. Carole Avignon (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016).
“Fiction and Lies: Adultery and Spousal Homicide Accusations in Fifteenth Century France" in Imagining Early Modern Histories, eds. Allison Kavey and Elizabeth Ketner (Ashgate, 2016).
“The Transformation of Adultery in France at the End of the Middle Ages” Law and History Review 32:3 (August 2014)
“The Opposite of the Double Standard: Gender, Marriage, and Adultery Prosecution in Late Medieval France” Journal of the History of Sexuality 23:2 (May 2014).
“Women Before the Officiality of Troyes in the Fifteenth Century” in Les officialités dans l'Europe médiévale et moderne: Des tribunaux pour une société chrétienne (Brepols, 2014).
“The Making of Marriage in Medieval Europe” Journal of Family History 38:3 (July 2013).
“Women and Gender in Medieval Canon Law” in the Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, eds. Ruth Karras and Judith Bennett. (July 2013).
“Bigamy: A Male Crime in Medieval Europe” Gender and History 22:2 (August 2010).
Honors and Awards
Research Summary
- Current projects include a study of illicit pregnancy in Northern France, infanticide prosecutions and pardons in Medieval France, and an investigation of adultery and its consequences across gender and hierarchical divides in fifteenth century France.
- forthcoming:
- "Singlewomen and Illicit Pregnancy in Late Medieval France: The Case of Marie Ribou (1481)" French Historical Studies, accepted for publication in May 2020).
- "The Chivalric Family" in Knighthood and Society in the High Middle Ages, eds. David Crouch and Jeroen Deploige, (Leuven University Press, 2020).
- “Canon Law and Marriage,” in the Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law, eds. Anders Winroth and John Wei (under contract with CUP, expected publication 2020).
- “Adultery,” “Canon Law, Gender in,” Routledge Medieval Encyclopedia Online, eds. Wim Blockmans and Régine Le Jan (2020).