Department of History

Doctoral candidate Mariah Cooper traveled to England to consult medieval documents in various depositories.

She describes her experience and discoveries:

"With the Scholarship in the Arts (SITA) travel grant I was able to go to England, in March 2020, and visit three libraries that hold numerous medieval manuscripts that are critical to my PhD research. I planned a very aggressive research trip in the hopes of locating and photographing 174 different documents, which I am pleased to say I accomplished.

I spent three days at The National Archives, in Kew, studying medieval trial documents from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. These included large rolls of criminal trial proceedings that justiciars would carry around with them, as they travelled to local county courts. These records form the foundation of my research on medieval trials of sexual violence, and as such, locating the cases within the large rolls and photographing them was an exciting experience. I then travelled to London and conducted three days of research at the British Library where I was examining medieval law codes and statutes relating to my research. Afterwards, I traveled to the library of The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, a working law library with medieval origins dating back to at least 1422. At Lincoln’s Inn I had access to numerous legal treatises, as well as medieval Year Books which contained precedent setting cases from 1302.

This research trip was extremely crucial to the completion of my doctoral research, as these documents were not available online so to access them, I had to physically travel to England and take pictures of them. Since returning home, I have been transcribing and translating the various cases and law codes from the photographs. Without the Scholarship in the Arts travel grant, I would not have been able to go abroad and study these amazing documents. I was also very fortunate that the British Library had an exhibit on at the time of my visit, which allowed me to see the original works of Christine de Pizan and the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, among other spectacular displays. This was truly a unique trip to England that was full of unexpected discoveries, long days in reading rooms, and unforgettable experiences, which I am ever so grateful to have had."

Mariah Cooper M.A., Department of History