Graduate Students

Research Interests

In my research, I explore the complicated relationship between kings and lords during a crucial stage of early state formation. In my dissertation, "Worthy Lords and Honorable Violence: Chivalry and Kingship in Angevin Naples," I argue that a chivalric identity fashioned by Charles I of Anjou and characterized first and foremost by praiseworthy violence set a precedent with which all Angevin monarchs and their courtiers had to contend in late medieval Naples. The practice of violence was indeed a crucial pillar of royal ideology in southern Italy. But the crown brought with it the obligation to maintain peace and private favor in the kingdom, too. This seemingly paradoxical royal existence in Naples situates the kingdom into the larger context of European kingship since monarchs in England and France also struggled to reconcile the knightly desire to protect and vindicate their honor privately with the need to secure public peace. Ultimately, viewing Neapolitan history through the lens of chivalry helps us better understand the uneasy balance between public and private order. I take a transnational approach to my research and use a range of voices that can be found in letters, archival documents, chronicles, chivalric biography, and imaginative literature.

Dissertation

Worthy Lords and Honorable Violence: Chivalry in Angevin Naples, 1250-1382

Education

MA, History, University of Rochester, 2017
BA (Honors), History, Indiana University Kokomo, 2016

Selected Publications

• Review: Sandro Carocci. Lordships of Southern Italy: Rural Societies, Aristocratic Powers and Monarchy in the 12^thand 13^thCenturies. Tr. Lucinda Byatt. In H-Net Italy (Forthcoming, Summer 2019).
• Review: Joanna Bellis and Laura Slater, eds., Representing War and Violence, 1250-1600. In the Journal of Medieval Military History (January 2019).
• Review: Martin Aurell, The Lettered Knight: Knowledge and Aristocratic Behaviour in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. In Journal of Medieval Military History (August 17, 2017). 
• Essay: "Professor Richard Kaeuper: Beyond Prowess, Piety and Public Order"

Presentations

• "'we were being mercilessly killed': Chivalry, Warfare, and Death in Trecento Naples," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2019. 
• "Refashioning the Chivalric Elite in Fourteenth Century Naples, c. 1335-1362," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2018.
• "'the filthy odor from the bloody carnage': Chivalric Violence and Knightly Deaths in Fourteenth Century Naples," Indiana University Medieval Studies Institute Symposium, April 2018.
• "Giovanni Boccaccio's Understanding of Chivalry and Gender in the Regno (1335-1341)," Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, St Louis, MO, June 2017. 
• "Resisting the New Solomon: Knightly Kingship and Lordship in the Teseida and Regia Carmina of Fourteenth-Cenutry Naples (1335-1341)," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2017.
• "From Sorrow to Anger among the Chivalric Elite of Late Medieval Florence," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2016.
• "An Economy of Honor in Late Medieval Florence," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2015.

Teaching

• Instructor, HIST 192 Barbarian Europe, University of Rochester, Fall 2020.
• Instructor, HIST 385 Medieval & Renaissance Europe, Wells College, Spring 2020. 
• Instructor, HIST 385 Ancient Roman Civilization and Society, Wells College, Fall 2019.
• Teaching Assistant, Knights, Kings, and the Crown, University of Rochester, Spring 2021. 
• Teaching Assistant, Hitler's Germany, University of Rochester, Spring 2019.
• Teaching Assistant, History of Modern Japan, University of Rochester, Fall 2018.
• History of Latin America Through Soccer (1867-2017), University of Rochester, Fall 2017, Apprentice Teacher. 

Honors

• Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung Research Fellowship, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany (2019).
• American Friends of the Herzog August Bibliothek Research Funding (2019).
• Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Research Grant (2017 and 2019).
• Harkins Prize, for the graduate student who has written the best seminar paper, University of Rochester (2018).
• Dr. Bruce F Pauley Research Fellowship, University of Rochester (2019).
• Lina and A. William Salomone Prize, for the graduate student who has done outstanding work in Modern European history, University of Rochester (2018).
• Coates Book Prize, for the graduate student most fully demonstrating historical imagination and the capacity for research, University of Rochester (2017). 
• Research and Travel Funding, University of Rochester History Department (2017-18).
• Distinguished Alumni Scholarship, Indiana University (2015).