Jennifer Edwards

Professor, History

Education

  • PHD, University of Illinois
  • MA, University of Illinois
  • BA, U. of Massachusetts Amherst

Courses Taught

HIST 200      Introduction to the Study of History
HIST 217      World History to 1600
HIST 304      Europe in the Middle Ages
HIST 308      European Women to 1500
HIST 319      The Crusades
HIST 320      Rome
HIST 337      Britain to 1688 

HIST 490      Senior Seminar:The Body
LLRN 102      Classical Origins: West Culture

  • Research

    Medieval Europe, particularly France and England; ancient Mediterranean world; Church history, with a focus on monasticism and the cult of saints; women and gender studies; history of violence; history of deviance, disease, and disability. She/her pronouns.

  • Publications and Scholarly Activities
    Books
    Co-edited Special Issue
    • Co-edited with Linda K. Mitchell, Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Special Issue: Microaggressions, Harassment, and Abuse--Medieval and Modern, 53, no. 1 (2017).
    Articles
    • “Building Community: Material Concerns in the Fifteenth-Century Monastic Reform,” Gendered Perspectives on Monastic Reform, edited by Julie Hotchin and Jirki Thibaut (Boydell Press, 2023)
    • “Medical and Spiritual Healing of Death and Disease in Medieval Miracle Stories,” Death and Disease in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Perspectives from across the Mediterranean and Beyond, edited by Nükhet Varlik and Lori Jones (York Medieval Press, 2022).

    • “‘I'm Being Nailed to the Cross Like Jesus Was’: Martyrdom and Suffering in Medieval Hagiography and Modern Real Housewives” in Historians on Housewives, edited by Jessica Millward, Kacey Calahane, and Max Speare (forthcoming)
    • “The SMFS Survey on Harassment,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Special Issue: Microaggressions, Harassment, and Abuse--Medieval and Modern, 53, no. 1 (2017). 
    • “#Femfog and Fencing: The Risks for Academic Feminism in Public and Online,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Special Issue: Microaggressions, Harassment, and Abuse--Medieval and Modern, 53, no. 1 (2017).

    • "Wiki Women: Bringing Women Back Into Wikipedia Through Activism and Pedagogy,” The History Teacher 48, no. 3 (May 2015): 409-36.

    • “Casting, Plotting, and Enchanting: Arthurian Women in Starz’s Camelot and the BBC’s Merlin,” Arthuriana 25, no. 1 (2015): 57-81.

    • “My Sister for Abbess: Fifteenth-Century Power Disputes over the Abbey of Sainte-Croix, Poitiers,” Journal of Medieval History 40, no. 1 (2014): 85-107. Awarded the 2015 Society for French Historical Studies William Koren, Jr. Prize

    • “Reading Telemachus through Orestes: Using the Oresteia to explain The Odyssey,” The Classical Outlook 90, no. 1 (2012): 1-3.

    • “‘Man Can be Subject to Woman’: Female Monastic Authority in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers” Gender & History 25, no. 1 (2013): 86-106.  Co-runner up for the 2013 Society for French Studies Malcolm Bowie Prize.

    • “Their Cross to Bear: Controversy and the Relic of the True Cross in Poitiers,” Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007).

    Reviews

    • Review of “Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500-900,” by Zubin Mistry, Gender & History, 29, no. 2 (2017).

    • Review of  “Des Comptes d’apothicaires: Les épices dans la comptabilité de la maison de Savoie (XIVe et XVe s.),” by Fanny Abbott, Speculum 90, no. 4 (2015): 1076-77.

    • Review of “Preaching in the Age of Chaucer: Selected Sermons in Translation,” by Siegfried Wenzel, Medieval Sermon Studies 55 (2011): 94-95.

    • Review of “Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. AEthelthryth in Medieval England, 695-1615,” by Virginia Blanton, for Medieval Feminist Forum 45, no. 2 (2009)

    • Review of Brian Golding, “Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066–1100” for The Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 3, no. 2 (2002).

    Presentations

    • “Leprosy Miracle as Demonstration of Sainthood,” The Haskins Society Conference, University of Richmond, VA, October 2022 (virtual presentation)

    • “‘I have seen the Saints perform many miracles, but it is very rarely that they heal lepers’: Limitations on Miraculous Cures of Leprosy,” Medieval Academy Annual Meeting, Charlottesville, VA, March 2022 (virtual presentation)

    • “Christine de Pizan and the Querelle des Femmes: A Reacting to the Past Game in Development,” Women and Society Seminar, Columbia University, New York, September 2021

    • “A Holy Arms Race: Leprosy Miracles in the Cults of St. William of York and St. Thomas Becket,” American Association for the History of Medicine, Madison, WI, May 2021 (presented virtually)

    • “Reacting and Christine de Pisan: Examining Medieval Women's Power through the Querelle de la Rose in a Reacting to the Past Classroom,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2021 (presented virtually)

    • “Holy Healing: Saints and Leprosy in Medieval Europe,” Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies, New York, December 3, 2020 (presented virtually)

    • “’Preferable to the lips of a king who must die’: Queens, Holiness, and Leprosy,” Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, Baltimore, MD, July 2020 (accepted; cancelled due to COVID-19)

    • “Making Quarantinis out of Quarantine: Continuing on without the Archive,” Gender and Medieval Studies Annual Conference, University of Surrey, UK, January 2021 (presented virtually)

    • “Building Community: Material Concerns in the 15th-Century Monastic Reform,” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 2019

    • “Blessed With Leprosy: Disease and Devotion in the Cult of the Saints,” Leprosy and the “Leper” Reconsidered, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada, September 2018

    • “’The restoration of your health lies in Ely’: Saints’ Shrines, Enclosure, and Holy Healing,” Southeastern Medieval Association Annual Meeting, Charleston, SC, November 2017

    • “Who Heals and Who Cares: Medieval Women, Gender and the Holy Treatment of Leprosy,” Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, NY, June 2017

    • “Still On Top? Dissonances in Holy Healing Practiced by Male and Female Saints,” American Association for the History of Medicine, Nashville, TN, May 2017

    • “Holy Healing: Saints, Healing and Leprosy in Medieval Europe,” Dante group, Manhattan College, February 2017.

    • “SMFS Survey on Sexual Harassment,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2016.

    • “Not so Grands Jours: Abbess Marie Berland's Exile from the Abbey of Sainte-Croix, Poitiers,” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 2015

    • “Si me non osculeris, hinc mihi cura nec ulla est”: Radegund, the leper’s kiss, and holy healing in Poitou," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2015
    • “Holy Healing: Defining Boundaries between Medical and Spiritual Healing in Medieval England,” Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Toronto, May 2014
    • "Competition between Medical and Spiritual Healing in Medieval Miracle Stories," Invited paper for "The Healing Arts Across the Mediterranean" colloquium, Rutgers University Medieval Studies Program, March 2014
    • “Election Disputes and Medieval Women,” Invited Lecture, Rhode Island College, March 2012
    • “Casting, Plotting, and Enchanting: Morgan(a) and Guinevere/Gwen in Starz’s Camelot and the BBC’s Merlin,” 26th Annual International Conference on Medievalism, October 2011
    • “Reading Telemachus through Orestes: Using the Oresteia to explain The Odyssey,” Association for Core Texts and Courses Seventeenth Annual Conference, April 2011
    • “My Sister for Abbess: Election Disputes at Sainte-Croix in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers,” Society for French Historical Studies Annual Meeting, February 2011
    • “Female Power and Monastic Reform: Fifteenth-Century Abbesses of Fontevraud and Sainte-Croix,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 2011
    • “Petty Nobility in Serious Contests: Marking Poitiers' Religious Spaces,” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 2010
    • “Gendering Space and Power in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers,” International Medieval Society, Paris Sixth Annual Symposium, June 2009
    • “Power Plays and Feast Day Celebrations in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers,” Forty-Fourth International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2009
    • “Poitiers’ Revolting Nuns,” Forty-Second International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2007

     

  • Professional Experience and Memberships

    Professional Memberships

    • American Historical Association
    • Medieval Academy of America
    • Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
    • Hagiography Society
    • Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (Advisory Board member 2013-present)
    • Associate Editor, Medieval Feminist Forum
  • Honors, Awards, and Grants
    • Named a runner up for the 2020 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Book Prize for Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers' Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford University Press, 2019).
    • 2015 Society for French Historical Studies William Koren, Jr. Prize for “My Sister for Abbess: Fifteenth-Century Power Disputes over the Abbey of Sainte-Croix, Poitiers,” Journal of Medieval History 40, no. 1 (2014): 85-107.
    • Co-Runner up for the 2013 Society for French Studies Malcolm Bowie Prize for “‘Man Can be Subject to Woman’: Female Monastic Authority in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers” Gender & History 25, no. 1 (2013): 86-106.  

    Grants/Fellowships

    • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on "Law and Culture in Medieval England," Kalamazoo, MI 2021, held virtually.
    • Fordham University Medieval Fellow, 2020-2021.
    • Manhattan College Sabbatical, 2015, 2020-2021.
    • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar “Health and Disease in the Middle Ages,” London 2012
    • Manhattan College Summer Grant 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018.
    Student Research Supervision

    Branigan Scholars Summer Research

    • Charles Ohene-Karikari, “Semper Praesens: Black People in the Roman Empire,” Branigan Scholars Grant research project, 2021
    • John Evans, “Searching for the Historicity of Arthurian Legend,” Branigan Scholars Grant research project, 2016
    • Andrea Castano, "The History of Sex Trafficking and How the Past is Relevant to Today’s Policies" Branigan Scholars Grant research project, 2014

     Egan Award

    • Victoria Thomas, “Medieval Women's Sexuality: Men's Expectations and Perceptions of It,” winner of the 2017 Egan Award
    • John Ray Mechmann, “Nam Subiectio Repugnantium: Reevalutaing St. Augustine’s Influence on Gregory VII’s Penitential War,” winner of the 2012 Egan Award