Ellen Wurtzel

Biography

Ellen Wurtzel is an historian of late medieval and early modern Europe. She specializes in the history of France and the southern Low Countries, focusing on urban spatial, social, and cultural development. Her most recent publication is an article in French Historical Studies (August 2023) on health and crime in northern French bathhouses in the later Middle Ages entitled “Passionate Encounters, Public Healing: Medieval Urban Bathhouses in Northern France.” She is currently working on a monograph on the history of these bathhouses and is also co-editing a special forum for French Historical Studies on medieval environmental history.

Professor Wurtzel teachers a range of courses on gender, urban history, law, and science and medicine in the medieval and early modern periods. She has taught seminars on the Crusades and Sanctuary, medieval to modern, as well as ideas of property and possession. With HIST 412: Lords, Peasants and Pigs on Trial and HIST 208: Miracles and Microscopes she has created and designed two exhibits at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Her new course, HIST 206: Medieval Foodways and Health, draws on medieval recipes, medicinal texts, commercial developments and environmental history.