Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe

The essays in this volume honor the work of pioneer medieval feminist, Penelope Johnson. Smith (history, University of Puget Sound) and Wells (history, California State University, Los Angeles) both former students of Johnson, have chosen works that reflect her interests in medieval monastic women, medieval women's communities and the experience of the Other in medieval life. The first section looks at the ways in which people defined themselves through sacred spaces, be they physical enclosures or psychological constructs. The second section discusses gender and how religious men and women interacted as well as how lay people involved themselves in religious communities. The final section deals with separation, the bloody revolt of monks against an abbot, the tragic incarceration of Blanche of Burgundy and the reaction of Kabbalists to Christian detractors by associating "impure" secretions with non-Jews. The authors of this fine collection are both those whom Johnson has influenced and some of her sisters in arms who blazed the trail for a gender-balanced view of the Middle Ages. This will be welcomed by historians of gender, monasticism and any who wish to broaden their view of medieval society. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Katherine Allen Smith, Ph.D. in History (NYU, 2004), is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound. She has published articles on medieval monastic communities and their saints, relics, and images. Her current project is a study of representations of war in monastic texts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.Scott Wells, Ph.D. in History (NYU, 2003), is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. He is currently completing a book entitled From Chronicling Monks to Prophesying Nuns: The Search for History's Design in Medieval Germany, ca. 970-1180.