About this Event
BOOK DESCRIPTION
A spellbinding narrative history that defies modern assumptions about women’s lives in the Middle Ages and informs contemporary debates about sexual violence and the limits of justice.
In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door, questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal complaint in an age when victims of sexual violence did so at their own peril. Justice for Jehanne follows Jaques’s investigation as he uncovers one woman’s story of resilience and survival.
Applying forensic analysis to witness testimony and Jaques’s case files, Sara McDougall finds in Jehanne a woman of many lives and many secrets. An outsider on her own in Dijon, Jehanne had every reason to distrust the local authorities, who regularly extorted money from the city’s most vulnerable residents. Separating facts from falsehoods, McDougall challenges preconceptions about the experiences of marginalized women in medieval France, showing how neighbors, clergy, and other residents aided Jehanne throughout her legal struggles—and how justice of a sort was exacted from her attackers.
Richly detailed and powerfully told, Justice for Jehanne paints an unforgettable portrait of a woman who mounted an extraordinary response to a crime that was so difficult to prosecute at the time, and of a community that gave her shelter, protection, and acceptance as she endeavored to survive on her own terms.
AUTHOR
Dr. Sara McDougall is a Professor of History at John Jay College of the City University of New York and is on the faculty in Biography and Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 and Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne. Her fellowships include the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
DISCUSSANT
Dr. Katarzyna Celinska is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration and Director of the Gender Studies Program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is also a faculty member in the Doctoral Programs in Criminal Justice and Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in research methodology, crime and justice, crime and culture, and prisons. Her research interests include corrections, women in Pr*son, violence prevention programs, evaluation research, and international research. Her work has been published in scholarly journals including the Journal of Family Therapy, Journal of Juvenile Justice, The Pr*son Journal, and Women & Criminal Justice.
DISCUSSANT
Dr. Shonna Trinch is a Professor and sociolinguist in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College. Her research and publications span topics including rape, intimate-partner violence, narrative, Brooklyn’s gentrification, urban redevelopment, and messages on storefront signs.
For the past 13 years, she has co-facilitated and co-directed Seeing Rape, a public anthropology and student-written theater project. Her courses include Forensic Linguistics, Sex and Culture, Language and Culture, Ethnographic Writing: Writing for a Multicultural World, Gender, Justice, a Global Perspective: Seeing Rape, and Interviewing for Lawyers.
Her first book, Latinas’ Narratives of Domestic Abuse (John Benjamins, 2003), examines how discrepancies arise in women’s stories of violence. Her more recent book, What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification and Place-Making in Brooklyn (Vanderbilt University Press, 2020), co-authored with Edward Snajdr, explores storefronts as technologies that take space and transform it into “place” for different groups of people.
Her articles have appeared in Language in Society, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Landscape, Text & Talk, Social Semiotics, Cultural Anthropology, and Feminist Anthropology.
MODERATOR
Dr. Amy Adamczyk is a Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research focuses on how different contexts—including nations, counties, and friendship groups—as well as personal religious beliefs shape people’s deviant, criminal, and health-related attitudes and behaviors.
She is the author of Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion (Oxford University Press, 2025), which investigates why attitudes about abortion vary so dramatically across countries and cultures. Fetal Positions received the Ronald F. Inglehart Best Book Award and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences International Section Outstanding Book Award and was a co-recipient of the Steven F. Messner Outstanding Book Award.
She is also the co-author of Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation, a finalist for Christianity Today’s 2022 Book of the Year Award in the Marriage and Family category, and the author of Cross-National Public Opinion about Homosexuality: Examining Attitudes across the Globe, which received the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the International Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Dr. Adamczyk has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, and her research has been supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Global Religion Research Initiative.
Her work has been featured in major media outlets including CNN, BBC, NPR, ABC, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, PBS, The Huffington Post, Journey TV, The Muslim Times, and The Christian Century.
Event venue
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 W 59th St, New York, United States
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