Re/de-centering women and books in the Middle Ages

Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages Seminar series 2019/20 - Writing and Records

• Speaker: Elizabeth L'ESTRANGE (Birmingham)
  

We welcome anyone who is at all interested in the research and concerns of the Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages. Each paper will be followed by a pause for refreshments, then questions. After that anyone who wishes will retire for more relaxed conversation, and then we take the speaker out for an early dinner. If you would like to join the speaker for dinner please let the convenor know (Naomi Standen, n.standen@bham.ac.uk) by the end of the Monday before the seminar.

Abstract

This paper considers how medieval women and book culture have been approached in scholarship, beginning with Susan Bell's ground-breaking article in 1982. It examines the enormous progress that has been made in bringing women into the centre of historical enquiry through analyses of their interactions with book as readers, writers, and commissioners. It also explores questions about the field of 'women and the book' has it has come to exist within academia and the possibilities for research in this area to take account of broader calls for decentring and decolonising medieval studies.