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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

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Articles 121 - 150 of 341

Full-Text Articles in Medieval History

Notes On Contributors Jan 2022

Notes On Contributors

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Everyday Arts: Craft, Labor, Performance, Irina Dumitrescu, Emma O. Bérat Dec 2021

Everyday Arts: Craft, Labor, Performance, Irina Dumitrescu, Emma O. Bérat

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Introductory essay to volume 57, issue 1 of Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality.


Seeing Red: Visuality, Violence, And The Making Of Textiles In Early Medieval Enigmatic Poetry, Megan Cavell Dec 2021

Seeing Red: Visuality, Violence, And The Making Of Textiles In Early Medieval Enigmatic Poetry, Megan Cavell

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay explores a group of thematically related, enigmatic poems in Old English, Anglo-Latin and Old Norse that play with gender through their representations of violent textile production. The tenth-century Exeter Book’s Riddle 56, eighth-century archbishop Tatwine’s Enigmata 11 and 13, and the traditional eddic-style poem Darraðarljóð merge the highly gendered activities of textile production and warfare, questioning binaries and naturalized categories in the process. This process ends with the containment of gender play during the act of solving and interpreting the enigmatic, which restores the status quo. In analysing the space that enigmatic poetry provides for subversive …


Performing Female Sanctity—And Reading It: The Visitatio Sepulchri Of Wilton And Barking Abbey, Sarah Brazil Dec 2021

Performing Female Sanctity—And Reading It: The Visitatio Sepulchri Of Wilton And Barking Abbey, Sarah Brazil

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article discusses two traditions of the Visitatio Sepulcri enacted by women religious in late medieval England, based on the exceptional surviving documentation of liturgical performances from the abbeys of Barking and Wilton. Although these documents do not give access to what happened in these Easter morning performances, they do provide evidence for how the agency of the nuns was encoded into every aspect of their respective liturgical tradition. One of the most striking dimensions of this agency is that the abbesses and nuns shaped performance practices to conceptions of their embodiment. I explore how each abbey grounded authority within …


Transforming Community: Women’S Rape Narratives And Gower’S Confessio Amantis, Jennifer Garrison Dec 2021

Transforming Community: Women’S Rape Narratives And Gower’S Confessio Amantis, Jennifer Garrison

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Despite its reputation as socially and politically conservative, John Gower’s fourteenth-century Confessio Amantis highlights sexual violence against women as a central cultural injustice and presents women’s rape narratives as a potentially powerful force for social and political change. This essay focuses on three of Gower’s tales in which women tell their own rape narratives with dramatic and lasting consequences: Mundus and Paulina, Tarquin and Lucrece, and Tereus and Philomena. In all three instances, these women’s narratives of suffering are socially transformative precisely because they threaten the masculine chivalric ideal. For Gower, rape is a direct result of the cultural belief …


Reconstructing Ita At Schaffhausen, Shirin Fozi Dec 2021

Reconstructing Ita At Schaffhausen, Shirin Fozi

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The Nellenburg family looms large in the historical memory of Schaffhausen. Count Eberhard (ca. 1015-1078/1079) and his wife Ita (d. ca. 1105) had transformed the small city with their patronage, most notably through the foundation of the monastery of Allerheiligen; their children held prominent military and ecclesiastical positions across the Lake Constance region. Together with their son Burkhard, his wife Hedwig, and a cousin known as Irmentrud, Eberhard and Ita were buried prominently in Allerheiligen; their collective funerary monument is one of the earliest and most ambitious of its type that is known from the twelfth century. The monument, however, …


Women’S Work And Men’S Devotions: The Fabrics Of The Passion In “O Vernicle”, Jenny C. Bledsoe Dec 2021

Women’S Work And Men’S Devotions: The Fabrics Of The Passion In “O Vernicle”, Jenny C. Bledsoe

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article explores how male Cistercians producing an early fifteenth-century miscellaneous manuscript made devotional use of images representing women’s textile labor. An early manuscript copy of “O Vernicle,” a Middle English arma Christi poem, appears in Royal 17 A. xxvii, likely produced at Bordesley Abbey. The Royal version of “O Vernicle” features a unique marginal illumination of two women of Bethlehem and Jerusalem wearing green and red dresses. The woman in green holds a baby swaddled in a green and blue cloth with red stripes, similar to a Scottish tartan. Three other examples demonstrate the illuminator’s careful attention to fabric’s …


About The Contributors Dec 2021

About The Contributors

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal Of Gender And Sexuality 57.1 (2021) Dec 2021

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal Of Gender And Sexuality 57.1 (2021)

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


A Hive Of Her Own: Early Modern Women Beekeepers, Shannon Jane Garner Dec 2021

A Hive Of Her Own: Early Modern Women Beekeepers, Shannon Jane Garner

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

While much important work has been done on the early modern fascination with the political nature of bees and bee societies, this essay instead takes a closer look at the conflation of honeybees, women, and domestic spaces within the multi-generic textual ecology of early modern beekeeping. In the early modern period women were the primary beekeepers. As key participants in this art of sustained and intimate collaboration across species and environment, these women managed their own hives using the multifaceted skills of the early modern housewife, including textile arts, brewing, distilling, medicine, horticulture, and husbandry. This essay highlights the tension …


Many Words, Many Turds: Middle English Proverbial Wisdom And The Alleged Incontinence Of Female Speech, Mary C. Flannery Dec 2021

Many Words, Many Turds: Middle English Proverbial Wisdom And The Alleged Incontinence Of Female Speech, Mary C. Flannery

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In a passage from The Castle of Perseverance, the reprehensible Malus Angelus dismisses the speech of the personified virtues who are attempting to lead mankind to salvation: ‘Ther wymmen arn, are many wordys. (…) Ther ges syttyn are many tordys’ (2649-51). As the quotation illustrates, likening someone’s words to turds is both an effective brush-off and a colourful insult. This particular insult derives its force from the familiar anti-feminist trope of the voluble woman: like women, the wicked angel implies, the female personifications of virtue talk too much, and the incontinence of their speech is presented in terms that …


Women’S Acts Of Childbirth And Conquest In English Historical Writing, Emma O. Bérat Dec 2021

Women’S Acts Of Childbirth And Conquest In English Historical Writing, Emma O. Bérat

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay explores how female characters in historical literature written in high to late medieval England shape land claims, political history, and genealogy through their acts of childbirth. Recent scholarship has shown how medieval writers frequently imagined virginal female bodies – religious and secular – in relation to land claim, but less work exists on how they also used the non-virginal bodies of mothers and vivid descriptions of childbirth to assert rights to land and lineage. This essay examines three birth stories associated with conquest or claims to contested lands from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, William of …


Mentalités And The Search For Total History In The Works Of Annalistes, Foucault, And Microhistory, Jason U. Rose Oct 2021

Mentalités And The Search For Total History In The Works Of Annalistes, Foucault, And Microhistory, Jason U. Rose

The Hilltop Review

In this brief essay, the links between the Annales, the works of Michael Foucault, and microhistory are analyzed through the theoretical lens of histoire des mentalités (mentalités). Common threads that link these approaches include the willingness of using outside fields of analysis as well as the willingness to work with vagueness in search of those who Foucault calls, “lost people.” Relatedly, each of these groups and individuals are willing to analyze all aspects of the historical record to fully understand the minds, cultures, and histories of past people. The key to recognizing the relationship of these approaches involve knowing and …


Guþcwen And Ides Ellenrof – The Old English Warrior Woman As Role Model For Female Characters In Tolkien’S Works, Flora Sophie Lemburg Aug 2021

Guþcwen And Ides Ellenrof – The Old English Warrior Woman As Role Model For Female Characters In Tolkien’S Works, Flora Sophie Lemburg

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper examines the connection between the motif of the Old English warrior woman and Tolkien’s female characters. It provides a critique of Leslie Donovan’s paper “The valkyrie reflex in J. R. R. Tolkien´s The Lord of the Rings: Galadriel, Shelob, Éowyn and Arwen” and contrasts previous research on Tolkien’s female characters focussed either on gender-studies or on a “Germanic” influence with a more direct and specific connection between Medieval English and his works. The motif of the Old English warrior woman is established by investigating the female characters Judith, Elene, and Juliana from the Old English poems Judith, …


Medieval Infertility: Treatments, Cures, And Consequences, Zia Simpson Jun 2021

Medieval Infertility: Treatments, Cures, And Consequences, Zia Simpson

The Forum: Journal of History

Since the first civilizations emerged, reproductive ability has been one of the most prominent elements in assessing a woman’s value to society. Other characteristics such as beauty, intelligence, and wealth may have been granted comparable consequence, but those are arbitrary and improvable. Fertility is genetic, and for centuries it was beyond human control. Among the medieval European nobility, fertility held even greater power. The absence of an heir could, either directly or indirectly, bring about war, economic depression, and social disorder. Catholicism provided a refuge by allowing barren women to retain their hopes, while simultaneously enriching Rome’s coffers. Other women …


Full Issue Jun 2021

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.


Uprooting Medievalism: Ya And The Future Of Fantasy, Zoe Phillips Apr 2021

Uprooting Medievalism: Ya And The Future Of Fantasy, Zoe Phillips

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This thesis looks at the development of the young adult neo-medieval fantasy genre, measuring famous works from the Medieval period against works such as Tolkien's, to examine the impact of female protagonists and female authors on the genre and readers alike as neo-medieval fantasy continues to gain in popularity. Works examined include: Beowulf, Lanval, Le Roman de Silence, The Hobbit, Uprooted, and The Hero and the Crown.


Stories Of Women In The Middle Ages, Misty Urban Mar 2021

Stories Of Women In The Middle Ages, Misty Urban

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Discovering Constance: Reconstructing The Life Of The Illegitimate Daughter Of John Paston Ii, Jane Clayton Mar 2021

Discovering Constance: Reconstructing The Life Of The Illegitimate Daughter Of John Paston Ii, Jane Clayton

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The Paston Letters contain one letter from Constance Reynyforth, the mistress of Sir John Paston, and one reference to her ‘bastard’ daughter, Constance Paston. The subsequent life of Constance Paston has, until now, remained obscure. My research, which outlines these discoveries for the first time, reveals that, not only was she acknowledged and cared for by the Pastons, but she also married into a local gentry family, had children, and lived a normal lifespan.


Fictions Of Containment In The Spanish Female Picaresque: Architectural Space And Prostitution In The Early Modern Mediterranean, Amanda L. Scott Mar 2021

Fictions Of Containment In The Spanish Female Picaresque: Architectural Space And Prostitution In The Early Modern Mediterranean, Amanda L. Scott

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories Of The African Middle Ages, Angela Jane Weisl Mar 2021

The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories Of The African Middle Ages, Angela Jane Weisl

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020 Mar 2021

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


“Writing History, Writing Trauma” : The Rape Of Igerna In The Medieval Brut Narratives, Gillian Adler Mar 2021

“Writing History, Writing Trauma” : The Rape Of Igerna In The Medieval Brut Narratives, Gillian Adler

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the Brut narratives of medieval historiography, male heroic success and specifically the birth of Arthur are predicated upon the rape of Igerna. A comparative approach to the Tintagel episode across several of these narratives reveals how the emphasis on romance, magic, and nation-building function to validate sexual assault and elide Igerna’s experience. Ultimately, the repetition entailed in translatio studii, specifically the transfer that takes place within history-writing, reinforces the silencing of the survivor’s voice. This repetition lends trauma to the reading experience or creates the risk that readers become inured to the rape.


El Libro De La Oracion De Maria De Santo Domingo, Estudio Y Edicion, Pablo Acosta-Garcia Mar 2021

El Libro De La Oracion De Maria De Santo Domingo, Estudio Y Edicion, Pablo Acosta-Garcia

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Men And Masculinities In The Sagas Of The Icelanders, Amanda Mcvitty Mar 2021

Men And Masculinities In The Sagas Of The Icelanders, Amanda Mcvitty

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Medieval Art In Motion: The Inventory And Gift-Giving Of Queen Clemence Of Hungary, Elena Woodacre Mar 2021

Medieval Art In Motion: The Inventory And Gift-Giving Of Queen Clemence Of Hungary, Elena Woodacre

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Medieval Saints And Modern Screens: Divine Visions As Cinematic Experience, Dorothy Ann Bray Mar 2021

Medieval Saints And Modern Screens: Divine Visions As Cinematic Experience, Dorothy Ann Bray

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Aristocratic Marriage, Adultery And Divorce In The Fourteenth Century: The Life Of Lucy De Thweng (1279-1347), Linda E. Mitchell Mar 2021

Aristocratic Marriage, Adultery And Divorce In The Fourteenth Century: The Life Of Lucy De Thweng (1279-1347), Linda E. Mitchell

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


The Virgin Mary's Book At The Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, And Devotion In Medieval England, Godelinde Gertrude Perk Mar 2021

The Virgin Mary's Book At The Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, And Devotion In Medieval England, Godelinde Gertrude Perk

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020 Mar 2021

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.