Women’s Restorative Medievalisms

Revising the histories of medievalism—the processes by which the Middle Ages are reimagined in later moments to varied political, social, and cultural ends—is critical to the field’s turn away from its oppressive roots and towards a richer conception of the past. Grounded in intersectional feminist interpretive frameworks, Women’s Restorative Medievalisms examines how contemporary women writers engage the premodern past to animate intertwined histories of oppression and resistance in service of visionary futures. These medievalisms create temporal dialogue between the past and the present to restore the voices of women who have been overlooked in medieval studies and medievalism studies. The book’s contemporary focus will appeal both to students and medieval studies scholars who seek to understand the field’s present value amid the backlash of patriarchal, white supremacist power.

Suzanne M. Edwards is Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University. She is the author of The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature (2016) and articles on Gloria Naylor’s medievalism.

Matthew X. Vernon is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of California, Davis. His first book, The Black Middle Ages (2018), explores the understudied relationship between medievalism and Blackness in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.