Dr. Peterson received her B.A. and M.A. in Medieval Studies from Fordham University. She received a Ph.D. certificate in Medieval Studies and Ph.D. in History (dual program in Medieval History and Cultural History) from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Besides teaching "Themes in Modern History," "Medieval Europe," and "Early Modern Europe" at Marist, she offers courses on specialized topics such as "History of Witchcraft and Sorcery" and "Medieval Cultures in Contact," taught as a history seminar and an honors seminar.

Dr. Peterson, along with Dr. Kristin Bayer, is a faculty advisor for the Marist branch of the History Honor Society, Phi Alpha Theta. She is also the faculty mentor for the Marist women's soccer team.

Includes an National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend; a Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant from the American Historical Association; the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award from the American Catholic Historical Association; and a Biblioteca Ambrosiana Microfilms Travel Grant from Notre Dame University, besides internal institutional grants and awards. She was appointed and served on the Graduate Student Committee of the Medieval Academy of America and was a submissions editor for the online journal Hortulus, as well as a reviewer/fact checker for The Rosen Publishing Group. Dr. Peterson served on an Awards Committee of the Society for Italian Historical Scholarship and has been elected to a second term on the executive committee of The Hagiography Society as the Communications Chair.

Besides six published book reviews, she has authored:

“Episcopal Authority and Disputed Sanctity in Late Medieval Italy.”  Forthcoming in Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints: Proceedings of the 4^th Hagiography Conference, edited by John Ott (2012).  

“Hit and Run Heresy: Thoughts on Tackling Medieval Heterodoxy in Survey Courses.”  Forthcoming in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 19 (2012).

"The Malleus Maleficarum" (introduction and analysis of excerpt) in Milestone Documents of World Religions (Schlager Group Publishers, forthcoming 2011).

"'See What is Beneath Your Clothes': The Spectacle of Public Female Dissections in Early Modern Europe," in Angela Laflen and Marcelline Block, eds., Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative (Cambridge Scholars, 2010).

"Assisi," and "Travel" in Larissa Taylor, ed., The Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Brill, 2010).

"Holy Heretics in Later Medieval Italy," Past & Present 204 (2009): 3-31.

"The Politics of Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century Ferrara," Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Thought, History, and Religion 63 (2008): 307-26.

"Social Roles, Gender Inversion, and the Heretical Sect: The Case of the Guglielmites," Viator 35 (2004): 203-219.
**received the April 2005 "Article of the Month" Award by Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index (http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/previous.html)

"Defining a Textbook: Gloss versus Gloss in a Medieval Schoolbook," Essays in Medieval Studies 20 (2003): 18-30.

"The Transmission and Reception of Alberic of Montecassino's Breviarium de dictamine," Scriptorium 57 (2003): 27-50.
 

Dr. Peterson's research focuses on challenges to the authority of the institutional church, particularly with regard to heresy and saint's cults, in late medieval Italy. She is also interested in issues of gender and the marginalization of social groups, as well as cultural interaction in the late medieval Mediterranean basin.

Medieval Academy of America
American Historical Association
American Catholic Historical Association
The Hagiography Society
Society for Italian Historical Studies
International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in History (founding member)

Besides presenting twenty-one papers at regional, national, and international conferences, Dr. Peterson has also served as a panel discussant, commentator, session chair, and session organizer. She was the coordinator of two separate conferences held at Indiana University during her time there (for History and Medieval Studies) and helped to organize several conferences and lecture series while serving as the Assistant to the Director of the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University (1999-2001 and 2005-2007). She also organized, with Dr. James Snyder (Department of Philosophy), a symposium marking the 800th anniversary of the Albigensian Crusade at Marist College in spring 2009.  She currently is a co-coordinator of Marist College's School of Liberal Arts Faculty Forum lecture series.