Jennifer Edwards

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.

• Daily Life of Women in Chaucer's England (ABC-Clio, 2022).
• Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers' Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 
  Named a runner up for the 2020 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Book Prize.

• 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).

• “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 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

• 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.

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