Dr. Tanya Stabler Miller Co-Edits Volume in Studies in Medieval History and Culture
Dr. Tanya Stabler Miller, Associate Professor of History, co-edited the recently published volume (Routledge, 2025).
The volume honors and engages with the scholarship of medieval historian Sharon Farmer (University of California, Santa Barbara), whose nuanced and ethically engaged approach to the interplay among social position, cultural structures, and power has shaped the fields of social, religious, gender, environmental, labor, and migration history of medieval Europe.
Dr. Stabler Miller and co-editors Abigail P. Dowling and Nancy Ann McLoughlin consider the volume to be a gift to a beloved teacher and mentor. It emerged from two events honoring Sharon Farmer’s career and scholarship. The first, a colloquium on Farmer’s scholarship and pedagogy, was held at the University of California, Santa Barbara in February 2019 to celebrate Sharon Farmer’s retirement. The second was a series of sessions at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo in 2020, sponsored by the Society of Medieval Feminist Scholarship, in honor of Farmer’s recognition as a Medieval Foremother. The papers presented at both events demonstrated how profoundly Farmer has influenced a fresh generation of scholars to think critically and creatively about material culture, social history, and gender.
Attendees of the colloquium on Sharon Farmer’s scholarship and pedagogy, held at the University of California, Santa Barbara in February 2019.
The contributors to this volume, mostly former and current graduate students, all note the ways that Farmer’s published work—in addition to her teaching and personal encouragement—opened up ways to uncover the lived experiences of ordinary people—especially non-elite women—and to draw meaning from the stories people told themselves and their communities.
Beyond paying homage to a dedicated and influential scholar, mentor, and teacher, this volume represents current and future directions in the field of medieval history and how scholars are engaging with unexpected sources and interpreting more familiar sources in new, interdisciplinary ways, specifically in the study of medieval gender, labor, lordship, religious studies, and interfaith encounters.