Charlotte Whatley

Biography

I am a historian of medieval Europe, focused on the development of legal practices and political legitimacy in England. I am interested in the performative nature of law and rituals of process, and how such rituals create and reinforce royal legal authority. My dissertation examines English property disputes pertaining to the right of advowson, particularly litigation strategies, to show the rapid development over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of a complex relationship between legal performance, royal authority, and the creation of political consensus rooted not in martial violence, but in the rule of law.

Education

M.A., University of Houston
B.A., Randolph-Macon Woman’s College

Field

• European History

MA Title

• “Gilded not Golden: Clerical Resistance and Royal Authority in the Age of Edward III”

Working Dissertation Title

• “Property and Power: Legal Performance and Royal Legitimacy in the Reign of Edward III”

Selected Publications

• Whatley, Charlotte. “Excommunication and Its Discontents.” In A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages. Edited by Karl Shoemaker. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2022.
• Neville, Leonora, with David Harrisville, Irina Tarmarkina, and Charlotte Whatley. Guide to Byzantine Historical Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• Whatley, Charlotte. “Temporalities Be Taken: Edward III, Unruly Ecclesiastics, and the Fight for Exeter’s Benefices.” In Fourteenth Century England, vol. 8, edited by J.S. Hamilton, 59-81. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2014.

Selected Awards

• Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellowship, Institute for Research in the Humanities, UW-Madison, 2022-2023.
• Sandoway Graduate Writing Prize, Department of History, UW-Madison, 2022.
• Law and Society Graduate Fellowship, Institute for Legal Studies, UW- Madison, 2020-2022.
• University Dissertator Fellowship, Graduate School, UW-Madison, 2021-22, 2017-2018.
• Courtenay Teaching Fellowship, Department of History, UW-Madison, 2021.
• Vagantes Prize for Best Paper, 21st Vagantes Graduate Conference on Medieval Studies, 2021.
• Herfurth Fellowship, Department of History, UW-Madison, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2020.
• Schallek Award, Medieval Academy of America, 2018.
• Summer Fieldwork Grant, Institute for Regional and International Studies, UW-Madison, 2018.
• Lemoine-Midelfort Award, Medieval Studies Program, UW-Madison, 2018.

Professional Affiliations

• The Medieval Academy of America
• American Society for Legal History

Courses Taught as TA

• History Course Creation Assistantship: The Vikings: Fact and Fiction; History of Punishment; History of Prisons; Medieval Warfare, 2020 Fall.
• History 201 – The Historian’s Craft, Visible History, 2017 Spring.
• History 223 – Topics in European History, The Vikings: Fact and Fiction, 2019 Fall.
• History 309 – Topics in European History, The Crusades: Christianity and Islam, 2016 Fall.

Courses Taught as Instructor

• History 201 – The Historian’s Craft: Plagues and Pestilence in the Pre-Modern World – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)
• History 223 – Topics in European History, “Felony and Society in Late Medieval England,” 2021 Spring.
• History 426/Legal Studies 426 –  History of Punishment – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)
• History 476/Legal Studies 476 –  “Felony and Society in the Middle Ages,” 2022 Summer.
• Legal Studies 450 – “History of Prisons: From Classical Antiquity to Modern America” 2021 Summer.