Files

Read PDFs of material I’ve written such as class handouts, documentation, and more. More recent material is posted toward the top, with older stuff farther down.

Current / Most Recent Class Handouts:

• Women’s Work Slideshow – An overview of my research into women in York guild records during the 13th and 14th centuries, with pictures. Updated November 2017.
• Women’s Work Handout – Pairs nicely with the slideshow; this is an abbreviated version of my women in guilds research paper from KASC 2015. Updated November 2017. I also have a version of this paper posted on Academia.edu.
• Grains and Flours of Medieval England – Handout with general background information on grains eaten in medieval England, including cultural significance of grains, evidence for grain types, and where to get medieval flour in a modern world. Updated November 2017.

Materials that might help you organize a “Laurel Mingle”

• Checklist for organizing a Laurel Petting Zoo
• These are the conversation sparking questions I wrote; feel free to use them as is or just as a jumping off point for writing your own.

Kingdom Arts and Sciences Entries (2015)

• Crustardes of Flessh: Documentation for a recreation of a meat pie from Forme of Cury. Includes process photos, annotated historical recipe, modernized recipe, interpretation of relevant archeological data, analysis of pie recipes in the 14th century English corpus, and more.
• Recreating an Early 16th Century French Miniature: Documentation for a series of paintings I did based on The Last Supper in a processional made around 1510 in Paris for the use of a nun in Poissy. Please note that because this documentation was written to accompany a display that included my paints, inks, and finished products I don’t have photos of those things within the document itself.
• Women’s Work A research paper on evidence for women as guild members in York, England between 1272 and 1377. Includes both original research and a literature review. [Recently edited to correct a formatting issue]
• Link to my complete spreadsheet of names from a portion of the Register of Freemen. You may use this spreadsheet for your own research projects, but include an attribution (contact me for my full information).

Kingdom Arts and Sciences single entry (2014)

• Raising a Coffin: A research project (including hands-on experimentation!) into pie crusts in high status contexts in England between 1290 and 1390. Presented as a Kingdom Arts and Sciences Single entry, 2014.

Other Documentation, Class Handouts, and Papers

Food:

• Getting Started with Historical Food — this is my SCA food 101 class, including suggestions of things to bring to potlucks
• Introduction to Historical Food Research Handout — a little different from a typical historical food class, this focuses on what types of research materials are available and how to use them.
• To Raise a Coffin — class handout from WCCS 2016
• Food in England 1250-1350 — A couple of years ago I did a broad survey project which I called my “persona-appropriate foods project.” I took an encyclopedist’s approach to compiling lots of different strands of evidence to create an overview of English food in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. This was my winning entry in Dragon’s Mist’s first Baronial arts and sciences championship.
• Street Food in High Medieval England — Class handout from West Coast Culinary Symposium a few years ago. If you’ve ever wondered about medieval fast food, this is a great place to start. I think I’d take a different approach to some of the suggested recreations, but the research is still solid on this.
• Three Types of English Medieval Bread — Although it feels really outdated to me now, it was one of my first serious forays into using archeological data for experimental food recreations and into looking at how food varied by social class. This was one of my winning entries in The Barony of Three Mountains’ arts and sciences championship that year. Since discovering that I can import medieval-like flour, I have revisited this work. Perhaps an update figures in my future…

Costuming:

• Sleeveless Wool Surcote — a sewing project from a few years ago.
• A Late 13th Century English Woman’s Court Ensemble — this was my first complete outfit for which I did “real” documentation, and was my entry into a 12th night costume contest several years ago. (I took second place in the intermediate division, which I still feel really good about!)

Painting/Scribal:

• Developing your historical “eye” — a guide for scribes (this is also a post on the blog)
• Making your own paints (this is also a post on the blog)

Women’s History:

• Women’s Education in the Middle Ages — Actually a paper I wrote for a college class that I’ve always meant to turn into an SCA class or something but never quite got around to. It’s a pretty broad survey (and you can tell I was in college when I wrote it) but might be a good starting point if the topic interests you. The bibliography in particular is probably worth mining. While writing this paper, I discovered Judith Bennett and the rest is history.

Science and Medicine:

• Modern Perspectives on the Black Death — I nerd out about science and history! What a surprise! (2014)
• Testing the Efficacy of Three Medieval Tooth Cleaning Methods — a project from the same time as my bread research above (and another of my entries from the 3M A&S championship), you can see the roots of many of my current interests in this one: I combined science and history, and I learned about medieval body care and hygiene. Now that I have access to an incubator, I really want to revisit this with more tooth-swabbing and bacterial culturing!