This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is in celebration of Barbara Hanawalts life, career as historian and dedicated educator. While learning from her prodigious and wide-ranging scholarship, all of us colleagues, friends, and former graduate students have benefited enormously from her generosity, wisdom, and compassion, all the while learning from her extensive and wide-ranging scholarship. In recognition, reflect both our gratitude and her intellectual impact on the field of medieval English social history. Barbara Hanawalt has enriched medieval English history with her individual and collaborative scholarship and her commitment to graduate teaching. Her model of professionalism, feminism, and bon vivant has taught us better scholarship and gardening and cooking skills, and an appreciation for the riches one reaps when combining scholarship and friendship. All the essays reflect Barbara's interests in the unconventional, challenging use of sources and the need to recover hidden, lost, displaced, or ignored subjects.