Sara McDougall is a professor of history at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and is an appointed faculty member at the CUNY Graduate Center for the fields of Biography and Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies. Her research focuses on the topics of the judicial decisions on gender in the Middle Ages and how medieval law and religion influenced legal outcomes.
Education
Graduating with a bachelor's degree from Boston University, McDougall also completed a Master's degree from the same university in 2003, with a minor in music. She was a part of Boston University's College of Arts & Sciences and originally was interested in becoming an opera singer before switching her focus to history. She went on to earn a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2009 and became a Golieb Fellow in Legal History that same year at the New York University School of Law. While working on her Ph.D., she spent one summer traveling across France to search through church records alongside her interests in gender, marriage, and legal decisions.
Career
After completing her degrees, McDougall became an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and later a full professor. For her first publication in 2012, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne, McDougall searched through records in Troyes that listed Church investigations of bigamy. She found that while husbands usually had serious punishments if found guilty, most women were merely fined a small amount, which McDougall referred to as a "useful misogyny" at the time. Since men were viewed as the head of household, they were considered responsible for their own actions and the actions of their spouse.
In 2020, McDougall acted as the Norman Freehling Visiting Professor for the University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities. Her research project for that semester was titled "Surviving Illicit Pregnancy in Medieval Christian France".
Bibliography
- —; Emsley, Clive, eds. (2023). A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Renaissance. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 219. ISBN 9781472584618.
- — (2017). Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230. Oxford University Press. p. 310. ISBN 9780198785828.
- — (2012). Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 240. ISBN 9780812206548.
References
- ^ "Sara McDougall". jjay.cuny.edu. John Jay College of Criminal Justice. 2024. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- ^ Frith, Susan (Winter 2013). "Can This (Medieval) Marriage Be Saved?" (PDF). Bostonia: 52–53. Retrieved September 7, 2024.
- Binkley, Evan (February 14, 2020). "Interview with Visiting Professor Sara McDougall". lsa.umich.edu. University of Michigan. Retrieved September 7, 2024.
- Reviews for Royal Bastards:
- Petrizzo, Francesca (2017). "Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230" (PDF). Cerae: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 4. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Jordan, Erin L. (Winter 2019). "Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 by Sara McDougall (review)". The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth. 12 (1): 139–141. doi:10.1353/hcy.2019.0008. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Earenfight, Theresa (January 2020). "Reviews: Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230". Speculum. 95 (1): 281–282. doi:10.1086/706286. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Mitchell, Linda E. (February 2019). "Sara McDougall. Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230". The American Historical Review. 124 (1): 315–316. doi:10.1093/ahr/rhy471. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Butler, Sara M. (September 2018). "McDougall, Royal Bastards". The Medieval Review (42). Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Neal, Kathleen (July 2017). "Neal on McDougall, 'Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230'". networks.h-net.org. H-Net. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Duggan, Anne J. (October 2018). "Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230. By Sara McDougall". History. 103 (357): 640–642. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.12635. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Gerber, Matthew (September 2020). "Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230" (PDF). H-France Review. 20 (157). Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Chevalier, Romain (2020). "Reviewed Work: Royal bastards. The birth of illegitimacy 800-1230 Sara McDougall". Annales de démographie historique. 139 (1): 276–278. Retrieved September 2, 2024 – via JSTOR.
- Avignon, Carole (2018). "Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards. The Birth of Illegitimacy. 800-1230". Cahiers de civilisation médiévale. 241: 90–92. doi:10.4000/ccm.5283. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Audebrand, Justine (Spring 2020). "Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards. The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230". Genre & Histoire. 25. doi:10.4000/genrehistoire.5453. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Harder, Clara (October 2018). "Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards. The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230". Historische Zeitschrift. 307 (2): 487–489. doi:10.1515/hzhz-2018-1428. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Demets, Lisa (2018). "Book Reviews: Royal bastards. The birth of illegitimacy 800-1230". Women's History Review. 27 (3): 494–496. doi:10.1080/09612025.2018.1424747. hdl:1854/LU-8545335. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Vasselot, Clément (December 2017). "Sara McDougall, Royal Bastards. The Birth of Illegitamacy, 800–1230". Francia Resensio. 4. doi:10.11588/frrec.2017.4.43425. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- Reviews for Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne:
- Rosenthal, Joel T. (Spring 2013). "Reviewed Work: Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne Sara McDougall". Renaissance Quarterly. 66 (1): 303–305. doi:10.1086/670492. Retrieved September 3, 2024 – via JSTOR.
- Livingstone, Amy (December 2013). "Sara McDougall. Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne". The American Historical Review. 118 (5): 1585–1586. doi:10.1093/ahr/118.5.1585. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
- Stuard, Susan (July 2013). "Reviews: Sara McDougall, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne". Speculum. 88 (3): 831=832. doi:10.1017/S0038713413002170. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
- Davis, Adam J. (Winter 2014). "Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne by Sara McDougall (review)". Journal of Social History. 48 (2): 476–478. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
- Anderson, Joel Douglas; Falk, Oren (October 2013). "McDougall, Bigamy and Christian Identity". The Medieval Review (25). Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- Adams, Tracy (2015). "Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne by Sara McDougall (review)". Parergon. 32 (2): 389–390. doi:10.1353/pgn.2015.0144. Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- OP, W Becket Soule (January 2014). "Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne. Sara McDougall". Ecclesiastical Law Journal. 16 (1): 103–105. doi:10.1017/S0956618X13000951. Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- Kelleher, Marie A. (2014). "Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne by Sara McDougall". Medieval People. 29 (1). Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- Vleeschouwers - Van Melkebeek, Monique (January 2013). "Sara McDougall, Bigamy and Christian identity in late medieval Champagne". Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis. 81 (1): 296–298. doi:10.1163/15718190-1305B0017. Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- Seale, Yvonne (2015). "Book Review: Yvonne Seale, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne". UCLA Historical Journal. 26. Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- van Houts, Elisabeth (January 2014). "Bigamy and Christian identity in late medieval Champagne. By Sara McDougall". The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 65 (1): 178–179. doi:10.1017/S0022046913001115. Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- Lester, Anne E. (June 2013). "Sara McDougall, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne" (PDF). H-France Review. 13 (82). Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- Firnhaber-Baker, Justine (2014). "Reviewed Work: Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne Sara McDougall". Medium Ævum. 83 (1): 163–164. doi:10.2307/43633085. Retrieved September 5, 2024 – via JSTOR.
- Butler, Sara M. (April 2013). "Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne by Sara McDougall (review)". The Catholic Historical Review. 99 (2): 351–352. doi:10.1353/cat.2013.0094. Retrieved September 7, 2024.
- Bosworth, Amy K. (2014). "Until Death Do You Part? Men, Women, and the Practice of Marriage in the Middle Ages". History: Reviews of New Books. 42 (2): 41–44. doi:10.1080/03612759.2014.874868. Retrieved September 7, 2024.
- Blazek, Pavel (2013). "Sara McDougall: Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne". Sehepunkte. 13 (12). Retrieved September 7, 2024.