Series:

The New Middle Ages

2 total works

Cover of Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England
This study sifts through the historical evidence to describe and analyze a world of violence and intrigue, where mothers needed to devise their own systems to protect, nurture and teach their children. The author casts a maternal eye on Bede, the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" and "Beowulf", to reveal mothers who created rituals, genealogies and institutions for their children and themselves. Little-known historical figures - queens, abbesses and other noblewomen - used their power in court and convent to provide education, medical care and safety for their children, showing us that mothers of a thousand years ago and mothers of today had many of the same goals and aspirations.

Cover of Public Medievalists, Racism, and Suffrage in the American Women's College

This study, part of growing interest in the study of nineteenth-century medievalism and Anglo-Saxonism, closely examines the intersections of race, class, and gender in the teaching of Anglo-Saxon in the American women's colleges before World War I, interrogating the ways that the positioning of Anglo-Saxon as the historical core of the collegiate English curriculum also silently perpetuated mythologies about Manifest Destiny, male superiority, and the primacy of northern European ancestry in United States culture at large. Analysis of college curricula and biographies of female professors demonstrates the ways that women used Anglo-Saxon as a means to professional opportunity and political expression, especially in the suffrage movement, even as that legitimacy and respectability was freighted with largely unarticulated assumptions of racist and sexist privilege. The study concludes by connecting this historical analysis with current charged discussions about the intersections of race, class, and gender on college campuses and throughout US culture.