About the Project
Notre Dame 2023 left to right: Nic Curtis, Ellery Seymour, Natalya Hart, Isaac Jimenez, Lily Ryall, Corissa Ross, Dr. Sasha Pfau, Josh Thomeczek, Olivia Larson, Grant Reilmann, Lauren Seckington
Notre Dame 2024 left to right: Ayden Huckelbury, Samantha Vaccarella, Emma Sampson-Green, Andy Chaffin, Bethany Sanders, Lathan Smalley, Campbell Christensen, Betty Wolfe, Dr. Sasha Pfau [Miguel Velazquez, not pictured]
Thanks to generous funding from the James and Emily Bost Odyssey Professorship, for this project, Hendrix College students used their skills in Historical Research, Artistic Creativity, and Computer Science to design and create a website focused on specific documents from medieval legal sources. We approached these documents as microhistories, understood in depth as an individual narrative and as it relates to wider themes in medieval history.
Premodern historians often turn to legal documents to give them a better sense of daily life. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French crime narratives available in letters of remission have formed the centerpiece of Dr. Aleksandra “Sasha” Pfau’s research projects since graduate school, and were the focus of her recently published manuscript, Medieval Communities and the Mad. Her work has engaged with these narratives in order to help me make sense of larger themes within medieval history, but she has always been fascinated by what they can tell us about the mundane, daily experiences of medieval people. This project allowed the students to dig further into some of these specific stories in order to reveal the quotidian as well as the extraordinary and make these stories available to a wider audience of students and scholars. The Archives Nationales de France have digitized the original documents and they are available online, but there are significant barriers of language and paleography (reading old writing). For this project, Dr. Pfau transcribed and translated a set of letters to give students a chance to develop the necessary contextualization for these narratives. As a group, we explored the wider contexts and the physical spaces and material culture represented in the narratives to immerse the audience in the medieval world that is represented.
Historical Research Students selected a letter that to focus on for the project and worked together with Visual Artists. After a semester of background reading, the researchers and artists visited France, one group in Summer 2023 and one in Summer 2024. The trip allowed students to immerse themselves in the medieval world of their letters, through museums, architectural remains, and experiential archaeology. The Historical Researchers then developed their contextual essays with recommended bibliographies, intended to serve as guidance for other students who might want to study these sources. Working closely with their Researchers, the Visual Artists created artists’ renditions of spaces, objects, and scenes from the narratives.
Researchers 2022-2023: Hannah Diggs ‘23, Natalya Hart ‘24, Isaac Jimenez ‘24, Grant Reilmann ‘24, Lily Ryall ‘24, Corissa Ross ‘24, Ellery Seymour ‘24
Researchers 2023-2024: Emma Sampson-Green ’25, Bethany Sanders ’26, Lathan Smalley ’26, Samantha Vacarella ’25, Miguel Velazquez ’25, Betty Wolfe ‘25
Artists 2022-2023: Nic Curtis ’24, Olivia Larson ’24, Lauren Seckington ‘23
Artists 2023-2024: Andy Chaffin ’25, Campbell Christensen ’26, Ayden Huckelbury ‘25
Computer Scientists: Kaden Franklin ’23, Ryan Fuller ’25, Hayden Moussa ’25, Josh Thomeczek ’24
Troyes 2024 left to right: Andy Chaffin, Emma Sampson-Green, Samantha Vaccarella, Betty Wolfe, Ayden Huckelbury, Dr. Sasha Pfau, Miguel Velazquez, Bethany Sanders, Lathan Smalley, Campbell Christensen
Group at Sainte Chappelle 2024 left to right: Miguel Velazquez, Bethany Sanders, Emma Sampson-Green, Lathan Smalley, Campbell Christensen, Andy Chaffin, Dr. Sasha Pfau, Samantha Vaccarella, Ayden Huckelbury, Betty Wolfe
