This collection of essays, whose title echoes that of her most well-known book, celebrates the career of Barbara A. Hanawalt, emerita George III Professor of British Studies at The Ohio State University. The volume's contents -- ranging from politics to family histories, from intimate portraits to extensive prosopographies -- are authored by both former students and career-long colleagues and friends, and reflect the wide range of topics on which Professor Hanawalt has written as well as her varied methodological approaches and disciplinary interests. The essays also mirror the variety of sources Professor Hanawalt has utilized in her work: public documents of the law courts and chancery; private deeds, charters, and wills; works of both religious and secular literature. The collection not only illustrates and reinforces the influence of Barbara Hanawalt's work on modern-day medieval studies, it is also a testament to her inspiring friendship and guidance during a career that has now spanned more than three decades.

The period covered by this volume, roughly 800-1450, was one of enormous change in the way people lived in their houses. Medieval people could call a grand castle, a humble thatched hut, or anything in between home, but houses were more than physical spaces. They changed according to technological developments, climatic needs, geological limitations and economic resources. They were also moral units that were themselves symbolic, economic, gendered, and social. At the beginning of our period, the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and the need for defense against some of this movement had an impact on how and where people lived. The codification of laws shaped how people understood the physical integrity of their homes, the reception they should give to those who wanted to enter, and their identification with the house itself. As European economies expanded in the twelfth century, householders increasingly had access to items that changed their day-to-day lives within their houses. This volume argues that through a house and its uses, occupants created, sustained, and understood their relationship to each other and their society.

The Black Death that arrived in the spring of 1348 eventually killed nearly half of England's population. In its long aftermath, wages in London rose in response to labor shortages, many survivors moved into larger quarters in the depopulated city, and people in general spent more money on food, clothing, and household furnishings than they had before. Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London looks at how this increased consumption reconfigured long-held gender roles and changed the domestic lives of London's merchants and artisans for years to come. Grounding her analysis in both the study of surviving household artifacts and extensive archival research, Katherine L. French examines the accommodations that Londoners made to their bigger houses and the increasing number of possessions these contained. The changes in material circumstance reshaped domestic hierarchies and produced new routines and expectations. Recognizing that the greater number of possessions required a different kind of management and care, French puts housework and gender at the center of her study. Historically, the task of managing bodies and things and the dirt and chaos they create has been unproblematically defined as women's work. Housework, however, is neither timeless nor ahistorical, and French traces a major shift in women's household responsibilities to the arrival and gendering of new possessions and the creation of new household spaces in the decades after the plague.

The Good Women of the Parish Gender and Religion After the Black Death Katherine L. French "Contains a wealth of interesting detail, much of it culled from those churchwardens' account that had begun to be kept in the fourteenth century. Women themselves might act as churchwardens, but as French makes abundantly clear throughout her book, such a role was only one among many that women in the late English medieval parish might exercise. French may not with to argue that the Reformation was 'bad' for women, but she does make it clear that thereafter women had to learn--the phrase is hers--quite a new 'vocabulary of piety.'"--"Journal of British Studies" There was immense social and economic upheaval between the Black Death and the English Reformation, and contemporary writers often blamed this upheaval on immorality, singling out women's behavior for particular censure. Late medieval moral treatises and sermons increasingly connected good behavior for women with Christianity, and their failure to conform to sin. Katherine L. French argues, however, that medieval laywomen both coped with the chaotic changes following the plague and justified their own changing behavior by participating in local religion. Through active engagement in the parish church, the basic unit of public worship, women promoted and validated their own interests and responsibilities. Scholarship on medieval women's religious experiences has focused primarily on elite women, nuns, and mystics who either were literate enough to leave written records of their religious ideas and behavior or had access to literate men who did this for them. Most women, however, were not literate, were not members of religious orders, and did not have private confessors. As "The Good Women of the Parish" shows, the great majority of women practiced their religion in a parish church. By looking at women's contributions to parish maintenance, the ways they shaped the liturgy and church seating arrangements, and their increasing opportunities for collective action in all-women's groups, the book argues that gendered behavior was central to parish life and that women's parish activities gave them increasing visibility and even, on occasion, authority. In the face of demands for silence, modesty, and passivity, women of every social status used religious practices as an important source of self-expression, creativity, and agency. Katherine L. French is Associate Professor of History, State University of New York, New Paltz. She is the author of "The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese," also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The Middle Ages Series 2007 352 pages 6 x 9 19 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-4053-5 Cloth $69.95s 45.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0196-3 Ebook $69.95s 45.50 World Rights History, Women's/Gender Studies, Religion Short copy: French argues that medieval laywomen both coped with the chaotic changes following the plague and justified their own changing behavior by participating in local religion. Through active engagement in the parish church, the basic unit of public worship, women promoted and validated their own interests and responsibilities.

The People of the Parish Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese Katherine L. French "Meticulously researched and erudite."--"The Historian" "A coherent, well-written, and stimulating survey of parish life."--"Catholic Historical Review" "By integrating issues of literacy and gender, and considering the tensions as well as cohesion, this book adds a significant contribution to the developing understanding of the role of the parish in late medieval English religious and social life."--Robert Swanson, University of Birmingham "Katherine French puts a human face on the history of the English medieval parish between the end of the fourteenth century and the Reformation."--Carol Davidson-Cragoe, "The Medieval Review" The parish, the lowest level of hierarchy in the medieval church, was the shared responsibility of the laity and the clergy. Most Christians were baptized, went to confession, were married, and were buried in the parish church or churchyard; in addition, business, legal settlements, sociability, and entertainment brought people to the church, uniting secular and sacred concerns. In "The People of the Parish," Katherine L. French contends that late medieval religion was participatory and flexible, promoting different kinds of spiritual and material involvement. The rich parish records of the small diocese of Bath and Wells include wills, court records, and detailed accounts by lay churchwardens of everyday parish activities. They reveal the differences between parishes within a single diocese that cannot be attributed to regional variation. By using these records show to the range and diversity of late medieval parish life, and a Christianity vibrant enough to accommodate differences in status, wealth, gender, and local priorities, French refines our understanding of lay attitudes toward Christianity in the two centuries before the Reformation. Katherine L. French is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York, New Paltz. The Middle Ages Series 2000 320 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 9 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3581-4 Cloth $75.00s 49.00 World Rights History, Religion Short copy: "Katherine French puts a human face on the history of the English medieval parish between the end of the fourteenth century and the Reformation."--Carol Davidson-Cragoe, "TMR"

The period covered by this volume, roughly 800-1450, was one of enormous change in the way people lived in their houses. Medieval people could call a grand castle, a humble thatched hut, or anything in between home, but houses were more than physical spaces. They changed according to technological developments, climatic needs, geological limitations and economic resources. They were also moral units that were themselves symbolic, economic, gendered, and social. At the beginning of our period, the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and the need for defense against some of this movement had an impact on how and where people lived. The codification of laws shaped how people understood the physical integrity of their homes, the reception they should give to those who wanted to enter, and their identification with the house itself. As European economies expanded in the twelfth century, householders increasingly had access to items that changed their day-to-day lives within their houses. This volume argues that through a house and its uses, occupants created, sustained, and understood their relationship to each other and their society.