Elizabeth Comuzzi

Ph. D. History, 2020, University of California, Los Angeles

M.A. History, 2014, University of California, Los Angeles

B.A. English Literature and Medieval Studies (High Honors), 2011, Swarthmore College

My research centers primarily on the intersection of social, economic, and institutional history in the late medieval Mediterranean, with a particular focus on Catalonia between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Much of my work seeks to bridge the gap between macro-level institutional history and micro-level social and economic history ("history from below"), by examining the ways in which local actors such as peasants, artisans, merchants and municipal leaders respond to major institutional changes. I explore this through the quantitative and qualitative analysis of notarial registers. These are books of legal and economic acts (such as wills, pre-nuptial agreements, labor contracts, sales, loans, etc.), which record the day to day activities of common medieval men and women. Some of my previous research projects have focused on apprenticeship, artisanal labor and guild formation, trade between Tuscany and Catalonia, the organization and spread of notarial culture, and the extent of “oligarchy” in medieval town governments.

My current monograph project Crisis in the Pyrenees: Institutions, Specialization and Economic Change in Cerdanya, 1177-1360 investigates the causes of the “crisis of the fourteenth century”—the widespread economic downturn experienced throughout medieval Europe in the first half of the fourteenth century—through the economic history of the Pyrenean town of Puigcerdà and its surrounding valley, Cerdanya. Applying a modified version of neo-institutional economic theory, I argue that in this period, macro-level political shifts—such as state-building, shifting political borders, and changing tax regimes often related to territorial warfare—directly altered the market-oriented and increasingly economically-specialized activity of lower level actors, including merchants, artisans and peasants on the ground and more broadly, that the broader “crisis of the fourteenth century,” must be at least partly explained by the rise in territorial warfare and shifting political and institutional frameworks, a spasm of growing pains within a broader process of European state-centralization, that occurred in this period.  

I am also working on a variety of other projects, including investigating the varied customs of marital assigns (donations given at marriage, such as dowry, dower, etc.) in medieval Catalonia and their impact on women’s assets and economic activities, on the extent of coinless exchange in medieval Pyrenean trade, on common people’s motivations for participating in the Iberian “Reconquest,” and on women’s participation and representation in medieval Catalan notarial acts. I am also co-editing a primary source reader on wealth, poverty and inequality in medieval Europe from 1100-1500.

My research has been supported by a Fulbright U.S. Student Grant to Spain, a Frederic C. Lane Dissertation Grant from the Medieval Academy of America, and a UCLA Lynn White Fellowship, among other sources.

“Guild formation and the artisanal labour market: the example of Castelló d’Empúries, 1260-1310.” Journal of Medieval History 48, no.3 (2022): 368-395.

“Mediterranean Trade in the Pyrenees: Italian Merchants in Puigcerdà 1300-1350.” Pedralbes 40, (2020): 55-74.

Undergraduate: 

HIST 1300: Understanding Historical Change: Medieval

HIST 3050: Christians, Muslims and Jews in Medieval Iberia

HIST 3216: Rich and Poor in the Middle Ages

HIST 3301: Medieval Women's Lives 

Graduate:

HIST 6155: Medieval Towns: Urbanization and Urban Life in Medieval Europe

HIST 7024/8024: Proseminar/Seminar: Making Money in the Middle Ages

MVST 5071: Archives, Sources and Materials for Medievalists 

I am happy to answer questions from prospective students whose interests overlap with my own and I encourage any prospective graduate students to get in touch with me before applying.

Available on Request