Susan McDonough, Associate Professor (Ph.D. Yale University)
Susan McDonough specializes in the study of gender and sexuality in the Latin Mediterranean. Her first book was Witnesses, Neighbors, and Community in Late Medieval Marseille (Palgrave, 2013) and she co-edited Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World: Essays in Honor of Paul Freedman (Brepols, 2017). Her published work includes articles in the Journal of Medieval History, the Journal of Women’s History, History Compass, and Gender & History, Speculum, the American Historical Review, Past & Present, as well as chapters in edited volumes. She has received research support from the Dresher Center for Humanities, UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, the Newberry Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is currently at work on a monograph exploring the role of sex workers as knowledge brokers in the port cities of the late medieval Mediterranean. Shifting attention away from their sex lives, this study examines how the women used institutions like notaries and law courts to stake out their community identities. She also enjoys a collaboration with medievalist Michelle Armstrong-Partida, and together they publish Mediterranean topics, including sexuality, migration, and single women. Amongst her regular courses, Professor McDonough teaches seminars on Jews, Christians, and Muslims, lecture courses on the medieval Mediterranean and the history of sexualities, and the beloved Introduction to the Study of History. She holds affiliate appointments in UMBC’s Gender and Women’s + Sexuality Studies program and mentors Master’s degree students in medieval history, gender history, and religious history.
Office: 517 Fine Arts Building
Contact: 410-455-6521 | mcdonoug@umbc.edu