Rachel Welsh
Department of History (PhD)
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medieval Iberia, legal and intellectual history, women’s and gender history, history of the body
Rachel is a doctoral candidate in History at New York University, and her research focuses on the use of the body as legal proof in medieval Iberia. Her dissertation examines local municipal lawcodes (fueros) on the Castilian frontier and their gendered use of the judicial ordeal, as many of the lawcodes prescribe the ordeal of hot-iron only for women accused of specifically secretive, bodily crimes. More broadly, her research is concerned with medieval medical, theological, philosophical, and legal understandings of the body as a potential conduit of truth. Rachel conducted archival research throughout central Spain in the 2016-2017 academic year, funded through a CLIR-Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original Sources. She is currently writing her dissertation, entitled “Proof in the Body: Ordeal, Justice, and the Physical Manifestation of Truth in Medieval Iberia, c. 1050-1300.”