Eleanor Janega | |
---|---|
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Jan Milíč of Kroměříž and Emperor Charles IV: Preaching, Power, and the Church of Prague (2015) |
Doctoral advisor | Martyn Rady |
Academic work | |
Discipline | History |
Sub-discipline | |
Institutions | London School of Economics |
Eleanor Janega is an American broadcaster and medievalist. Her scholarship focuses on gender and sexuality; apocalyptic thought; propaganda; and the urban experience, in the late medieval period. [1]
Despite her initial interest in pursuing Chinese history in college, particularly the 17th century transition from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing dynasty, upon encountering professors Barbara Rosenwein and Theresa Gross-Diaz at Loyola University Chicago, she says, "It was over," and her career studying Medieval history had begun. [2]
Janega gained her undergraduate degree in History (with honours) from Loyola University Chicago, and holds an MA (with distinction) in Medieval Studies and a PhD in history, both from University College London. [3] Her doctoral thesis on the 14th-century Bohemian preacher Milíč of Kroměříž was titled Jan Milíč of Kroměříž and Emperor Charles IV: Preaching, Power, and the Church of Prague, and was supervised by Martyn Rady. [4]
She is a guest teacher in the London School of Economics Department of International History, [3] and teaches a standalone online course on Medieval Gender and Sexuality. [5]
Janega co-hosts the Going Medieval documentary strand on the History Hit streaming service. [6] She also co-hosts the Gone Medieval podcast, and has appeared as a talking head on radio and television. [3]
Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. A historian who studies medieval studies is called a medievalist.
Gwerful Mechain, is the only female medieval Welsh poet from whom a substantial body of work is known to have survived. She is known for her erotic poetry, in which she praised the vulva among other things.
Casual sex is sexual activity that takes place outside a romantic relationship and implies an absence of commitment, emotional attachment, or familiarity between sexual partners. Examples are sexual activity while casually dating, one-night stands, prostitution or swinging and friends with benefits relationships.
Lesbianism is the sexual and romantic desire between women. There are historically fewer mentions of lesbianism than male homosexuality, due to many historical writings and records focusing primarily on men.
Milíč of Kroměříž was a Czech Catholic priest and the most influential preacher of the emerging Bohemian Reformation in the 14th century. Together with other Bohemian preachers and writers of that time, he paved in a certain sense the way for the reforming activity of Jan Hus. He is sometimes known as Jan Milíč of Kroměříž in modern literature, but in historical sources he's only referred to as Milíč of Kroměříž.
John Rykener, also known as Eleanor, was a 14th-century sex worker arrested in December 1394 for performing a sex act with John Britby, a man who was a former chaplain of the St Margaret Pattens church, in London's Cheapside while wearing female attire. Although historians tentatively link Rykener, who was male, to a prisoner of the same name, the only known facts of his life come from an interrogation made by the mayor of London. Rykener was questioned on two offences: prostitution and sodomy. Prostitutes were not usually arrested in London during this period, while sodomy was an offence against morality rather than common law and so pursued in ecclesiastical courts. There is no evidence that Rykener was prosecuted for either crime.
Women in the Middle Ages in Europe occupied a number of different social roles. Women held the positions of wife, mother, peasant, warrior, artisan, and nun, as well as some important leadership roles, such as abbess or queen regnant. The very concept of women changed in a number of ways during the Middle Ages, and several forces influenced women's roles during this period, while also expanding upon their traditional roles in society and the economy. Whether or not they were powerful or stayed back to take care of their homes, they still played an important role in society whether they were saints, nobles, peasants, or nuns. Due to context from recent years leading to the reconceptualization of women during this time period, many of their roles were overshadowed by the work of men. Although it is prevalent that women participated in church and helping at home, they did much more to influence the Middle Ages.
Amber L. Hollibaugh was an American writer, filmmaker, activist and organizer concerned with working class, lesbian and feminist politics, especially around sexuality. She was a former Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice and was Senior Activist Fellow Emerita at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Hollibaugh proudly identified as a "lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke."
Medieval female sexuality is the collection of sexual and sensual characteristics identified in a woman from the Middle Ages. Like a modern woman, a medieval woman's sexuality included many different aspects. Sexuality does not only refer to a woman's sexual activity, as sexual lives were as social, cultural, legal, and religious as they were personal.
Joan Cadden is Professor Emerita of medieval history and literature in the History Department of the University of California, Davis. She served as president of the History of Science Society (HSS) from 2006 to 2007. She has written extensively on gender and sexuality in medieval science and medicine. Her book Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (1993) received the Pfizer Award in 1994, from the History of Science Society, as the outstanding book on the history of science.
Accounts of transgender people have been uncertainly identified going back to ancient times in cultures worldwide. The modern terms and meanings of transgender, gender, gender identity, and gender role only emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, opinions vary on how to categorize historical accounts of gender-variant people and identities.
Menna van Praag is an English novelist and writing educator. Her magical realism novels include The House at the End of Hope Street (2013), The Dress Shop of Dreams (2014), and The Sisters Grimm trilogy.
Jane Chance, also known as Jane Chance Nitzsche, is an American scholar specializing in medieval English literature, gender studies, and J. R. R. Tolkien. She spent most of her career at Rice University, where since her retirement she has been the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor Emerita in English.
Ruth Mazo Karras is an American historian and medievalist, whose academic research and publications are focused on the disciplines of sexuality, religion and marriage in the late Middle Ages. Her notable works include: From Boys to Men, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages and Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others.
Fedwa Malti-Douglas is a Lebanese-American professor and writer. She is a professor emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington. Malti-Douglas has written several books, including The Starr Report Disrobed (2000). She received a National Humanities Medal in 2015.
Lisa M. C. Weston is a scholar of medieval literature and Old English language. She teaches at Fresno State Department of English, and served as interim chair of the department in 2019.
American singer-songwriter Madonna has been considered a sexual icon. Many have considered Madonna's sexuality as one of the focal points of her career. The Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) even credited her image as a sex symbol as a source of her international stardom. Her sexual displays have drawn numerous analyses by scholars, sexologists, feminists, and other authors. Due to her constant usage of explicit sexual content, she faced censorship for her videos, stage performances and other projects.
Jacqueline Murray is a Canadian medieval historian and professor emeritus of history at the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on sexuality and gender in medieval Europe, with a specific focus on masculinity and male sexuality. She has also studied marriage and the family in the Middles Ages.
Dyan Elliott is a medievalist historian and scholar, whose focus of academic research is "gender, sexuality, spirituality, and the ongoing tensions between orthodoxy and religious dissent". Elliott works as a professor of history at Northwestern University, where she teaches the Medieval period.