Project: Research on the topic of friendship and political community in medieval Cistercian monasteries; translation of the treatise central to this study (Aelred of Riveaulx's De amicitia spirituali); and the preparation of a chapter examining the currently-held scholarly views of polity in medieval monastic communities, suggesting ways in which the Stoic concepts of friendship may have changed the theoretical relationships of abbot and novice master to junior monks. This work is part of a larger, comparative study of friendship in the twelfth and twentieth centuries