Tracey L. Billado
Assistant Professor

Address: Fahy Hall 348
Phone: (973) 275-2213
E-mail: billadtr@shu.edu

Tracey L. Billado specializes in the history of the social, legal, and political culture of the central Middle Ages in Europe, with a focus on the history of conflict, violence, and dispute-processing, particularly in France. Her research focuses on the relationships among lay lords, ecclesiastical lords, and peasants in western France. Her current project is a study of what 11th-century monastic scribes called “evil customs” (taxes, tolls, peasant labor services, rights over justice). A close examination of these conflicts, she argues, provides a new and different picture of eleventh-century lordship and also illuminates the legal culture of a time often presumed to have been lawless and excessively violent. Not surprisingly, many of the classes that she has previously taught at Emory University and Cornell University have focused on medieval conflict, violence, and noble culture. She has also taught a course on cinematic representations of the Middle Ages, and this year has added a new class on medieval heresy and persecution.